Planning Fall Foliage Trips-Accommodations

Planning can take hours of your time and you may ask yourself, “Is it really necessary?“

Hmmm, no it’s not. BUT! please read on why it may pay to plan and make reservations.

Chambery Inn - Lee Massachusetts — Chambery Inn, in Lee Massachusetts. A great place to stay and visit western Massachusetts

I will admit that on many of my trips, I have headed out the door with only a final destination in mind. This worked for me because I was trying to locate where the color is and blog about it. I would be by myself, but if Lisa, my wife, was with me, then the ball game changed… (read on)

Why this might not work for you?

For you, it’s a bit different. You want/need to go out and find fall colors. You will stop at various locations to have lunch or maybe take a walk/hike in the woods. There is also that New England favorite, a lobster dinner followed by some luscious maple or pumpkin dessert!

At the end of the day, you are most likely needing to stop for the day at a hotel/B&B or Inn. I get to return to Salem and my nice warm bed… There are many factors for you to consider so you need to sit down with whoever is going with you and start answering the questions below.

Your pain level with answering this question, :”Do you need to plan the trip?“

You have to decide if you can sleep in the car if you can’t find lodging. (in 20 yrs this hasn’t happened to me)
Can you sleep in a motel room where smokers slept/smoked? (speaks to flexibility)
If you need room service and want the TLC that goes along with it, then you need to plan.
Does getting in the car with no set destination make your palms start to sweat? Then you need to plan.
Does the idea of not knowing where you are on the map worry you? Then you need to plan.
Can you afford a trip where every night may cost you $150 or more? If not, then you will have to plan.
Are you bringing the kids? Then, BOY, do you have to plan for it!
Do you enjoy free-wheeling it, have a devil-may-care attitude, and you don’t mind doing #1? Then maybe you don’t have to plan it.

Our first steps in planning involve picking out places to visit

First Lisa grabs a Delorme Gazetteer which is our map book of preference. What’s a map book got to do with picking your accommodations? Actually, a lot, and as you read, you will see why.

It doesn’t really matter what map book you take with you as long as you have one. The Gazetteer has landforms such as lakes, ponds, and rivers. It has the elevation marked so if you understand the geography you can look for roads that have walls of color on both sides of the road. It also has state parks, geographical features, and places of interest which have given us good places to go when we don’t know the area. That’s why we like them so much.

If you are planning on picking one up when you get here, no problem, they’re sold everywhere from bookstores to gas stations. You can even pick one up from this link here (makes a great gift for your travel junkie).

The way a foliage trip goes for me and my wife

I have my own specific needs when I take a fall foliage trip and they are far fewer than when I vacation with my wife. But she knows that I am looking to make good images to sell, and I know that she doesn’t want to spend the entire day in the car driving. So we plan to do various things for each other while on the road.

Our Requirements are Simple, but They are Rigid.

Nice, comfortable establishment, We would like a B&B with a relaxing porch or deck, fireplace, and whirlpool are all nice extra features.
Breakfast and dinner are readily available. (Can you deal with dinner, the next town over? Do you need coffee first thing in the morning?)
Central to the areas I can travel to in a one to two-hour drive. I don’t want to have to still drive more than I have to. I want to get somewhere quickly and be able to take my shots and Lisa can sketch or explore.
Places of historical significance to visit like, Hildene, or museums or antique shops. etc…Plan B or when the light isn’t right for my photography

Other Things to Consider

How touristy is the town (this can be good or bad depending on what you like)
How many roads pass through this town providing easy access to nearby towns
Is it just scenic or does it have a balance of scenic and amenities (like the ones we listed as our requirements above)
How much did you want to spend
How much do you want to drive around and how much do you want to relax

Vermont fall colors in autumn — Mad Toms Notch through
mad fall colors

These may be self-explanatory, but I thought I might explain further-

First, How Touristy- Stowe Vermont is a good example. There are a lot of places to stay, lots of places to eat, and lots to see, and during foliage season we avoid it like the plague. Not that I haven’t stayed there. if you check this article about staying in Stowe VT, you will see that while “we” (Lisa and I) don’t plan to stay IN Stowe, I have stayed there before. The main consideration is that popular towns like Stowe are crowded and our preference is less crowded towns. You may feel differently and that is perfectly ok.

Second, a town that lies at a crossroads allows us to go off in many different directions, So we can go North or South…, all depending on what the colors are doing. If we are early, we can go north to find the colors, and if we are late, we can go south. This way we don’t worry as much about where we stay, as long as we aren’t TOO far from the colors.

Third, a smaller town like Stark New Hampshire has the B&B that we stayed at (Stark Inn, Stark NH). It’s a very nice place and a great breakfast. However, beyond the B&B, Covered Bridge, and church, even though waking up next to a covered bridge and church is pretty awesome, dinner was about a 20-minute drive away. We prefer to have at least a diner nearby, or maybe a few eateries to choose from. Another example was a B&B in Danville VT that had several places but! many of them we not open on Mondays. So be sure to ask your B&B or research carefully how many places are open during your stay…

Fourth, places to stay have a wide range of pricing. Places out in the country will be cheaper but see above about that. Weigh your expectations when making a decision. What are more amenities worth to you? See above for the pain level. I, nor anyone else, can make those decisions for you. YOU have to do that research.

Finally, a base of operation (BOP) (yes, I’m retired AF, so it sounds like a military term) is by far a more relaxing way to have a vacation. Using the guidelines here, you should be able to find a BOP and see lots of fall colors and enjoy your trip.

So, Here is an Example

In 2009, Lisa said, “Let’s do Southern Vermont.” So with that simple goal in mind, I started looking through the Vermont Gazetteer for the different areas in the southern Green Mountains. What I found there was a road named “Mad Tom’s Notch Road”.

Yes, I had to find it!

I built my entire trip around locating and driving on this notch road. I wanted to find someone to talk to about why Tom was mad or was he some mountain man that lived up in the mountains and was considered mad?

You know, I never found out the answers to these questions, but I did drive on Mad Tom’s Road. I had to turn around when we started to cross the Appalachian trail (We’re in a sedan and not a jeep!) 🙁

We also found Hildene, and the home of Pearl S. Buck which, after Hurricane Irene, is now in a nearby river. If you don’t know what or who these things are… well it sounds like you need to do some planning of your own.

We stayed at a great old inn, The Brandon Inn, which fits all our requirements.

*****If it is a year like 2021 where everyone was making their vacation plans to be in the United States, and everyone had “stay-at-home fatigue” from not being able to travel, then we highly recommend having reservations.*******