How to Plan a New England Fall Trip

This is a pretty common question that I receive in one form or another. First off, it can be either very straightforward or very unique based on your likes and dislikes. I can help with some things like where to go based on the dates of your travel.

Silver lake in autumn at Barnard Vermont — Silver Lake in autumn at Barnard Vermont, view in my gallery.

But if you ask me, “Where are the best farm-to-table restaurants in a certain area?”, I will say that you have to do some due diligence here. (We actually ate at a farm-to-table restaurant last fall, next to a covered bridge, so we know of one but there are so many).

So let’s create a checklist. I’m going to even attach a PDF of the checklist when I’m done, and you can download it and print it out. You can also write your own out based on what we talk about here.

Fall Foliage Checklist

These are the items I take into consideration for a Fall Foliage trip. Some trips I’ve taken have been nothing more than “I’m heading to Dixville Notch today”… This year I have set days off so Lisa and I have to choose our locations to stay based on where Jeff Foliage Thinks there will be good fall colors.

Each year is different for Lisa and me and we try to stay in different locations. This is because we like to write-up a few new B&Bs or Inns to add to our list of places to stay. What follows below are things Lisa and I think about as we start forming our plans. Lisa pours over, tourism sites like “Only In (state of interest)” where they send you daily articles that might pique your curiosity.

bucket list Click here to download the PDF of this.

Dates of travel for vacation (fixed or fluid)
how long to get here to New England and how long to get home (Live here? …problem solved)
How many days in any one location?
Where to stay
- Hotel
- Motel
- B&B
- Camping
Fall Festivals
Primary Interests
- Covered Bridges
- Meeting Houses
- Orchards and farms
- Antiques
- Historical locations
  - Battlefields
  - Presidents
  - Living history museums
- Movie sets
Foodie Interests
- Vermont Cheese Trail and Western Massachusetts Wine & cheese tour
- Beer trail
- Rhode Island Wine Trail
Exploring Methods
- Walking/hiking trails
- Kayaking
- Biking
- Hot air balloons
- Gondola ski lifts
Specialty interests
- Art History private galleries and museums
- Literature trails Poets, writes and more
National Parks (yes other than Acadia, New England has National Historic Sites)

Look below and click the link for the FULL checklist

As you can see this covers several different areas, but I feel I could add some more. How about adding each New England state that you want to visit? Let me know what you think I missed and how you would improve it.

You could also print out one of these per day because you might want to cover different things on different days. Click on the link for a copy of your own New England Fall Foliage travel checklist.

Jeff Foliage Folger

Autumn is a state of mind more than a time of year – Jeff Foliage

Visit my Amazon affiliate store for items that Lisa and I have curated for you. These items are either New England-made or things we think will make your fall foliage trip more successful.