My mom and I crossed off a major bucket list item at the beginning of October—road tripping through New England during the fall! I want to visit every U.S. state, so this was the third trip we’ve taken together to knock out some of the remaining ones (we did Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey two years ago and explored Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia last October). While not every state was new for me this year, we spent 10 days traveling around Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, finishing with a day in Salem, Massachusetts. Today I’ll be sharing details like our overall itinerary and what I packed, and you can read about each destination at the blog posts below.

Fall New England Road Trip: Maine

Fall New England Road Trip: New Hampshire and Vermont

Fall New England Road Trip: Salem, MA

Itinerary

Most fall New England road trip itineraries have you flying in and out of Boston Logan International Airport, since it’s the closest major airport. However, after a lot of deliberation, we decided to fly into Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in Manchester, New Hampshire, instead—and I’m SO glad we did. This airport was small and way less stressful than flying into Boston. It only took a few minutes to rent our car, and we didn’t have to deal with any city traffic to get on our way. I feel like normally regional airports are a lot more expensive, but our tickets were pretty comparable to the Boston tickets—only a little more expensive and totally worth it, in my opinion.

Our itinerary was as follows:

• Day 1: Land in Manchester, NH, in the afternoon and drive 1.5 hours to Portland, ME
• Day 2: Day in Portland
• Day 3: Drive 3 hours to Bar Harbor, ME (stopping in Freeport and driving through Camden)
• Day 4: Day in Bar Harbor
• Day 5: Drive 5.5 hours to Lincoln, NH (taking a longer route to make a pitstop in Bangor, ME)
• Day 6: Morning in Lincoln and then drive 2 hours to Stowe, VT (stopping at an apple orchard along the way)
• Day 7: Day in Stowe and Waterbury
• Day 8: Drive 4 hours to Salem, MA (making a pitstop in Woodstock, VT)
• Day 9: Day in Salem
• Day 10: Drive 1.5 hours to Manchester, NH, and fly home!

We visited four states in total, two of which I had never been to before (Maine and Vermont). You may be wondering why we decided not to include Connecticut, for the ultimate Gilmore Girls fall experience… CT was in my initial plans for this trip, but after a lot of consideration we decided to cut it—which turned out to be another very smart move. I was trying to learn from my mistakes from last year’s trip, which ended up having way too much driving. If we had included CT this go around, we either would have had less time in each location with a lot more driving, OR we would have had to extend the trip a couple of days. I feel like we planned it perfectly, regarding both amount of time in each location and amount of time overall. Ten days was just right for what we were doing—I still enjoyed our last day in Salem, but any longer and I would have gotten to the point where I was just ready to be home.

When originally planning this trip I was worried it would feel too slow or like we didn’t have enough to do, since a lot of the places we visited are very small towns. But boy was I wrong! Our days ended up being jam-packed, and CT definitely would have been too much.

Transportation

As I mentioned, we rented a car at the Manchester airport at the beginning of our trip and returned it to the same airport at the end of our trip (it’s usually cheaper if you rent from and return to the same place). For a while I had toyed with the idea of only renting a car for part of the trip and using public transit in some locations to save money, but it really was so much easier (and just made more sense) to have a car the entire time. There were only a few times/locations where we decided to walk to avoid the hassle of driving and parking, such as downtown Bar Harbor and Salem.

One thing to keep in mind is tolls—the East Coast loves their toll roads! It’s almost always (if not always?) cheaper to pay the tolls yourself than to use the rental car company’s toll system. We made sure to bring lots of dollar bills and quarters so we could pay exactly in the cash-only lane. Some toll rolls only allow you to pay cash during certain hours of the day, so just make sure you do your research!

Another consideration is the type of car you rent. Of course, you could request a specific car and be given something completely different… because rental car companies are annoying like that… Usually on road trips I try to request a compact car with a proper trunk (non-hatchback) so that we can park easily and leave our suitcases in the car without worrying about them being visible. However, this trip we ended up doing a bit of “off roading” to drive to an apple orchard and maple farm, so I was glad to have a higher clearance, all-wheel drive Ford Bronco this time around.

Accommodations

Because fall/“leaf-peeping” season is a huge tourist attraction for several New England towns, a lot of the accommodations we looked at had a two-night minimum—keep this in mind when planning your itinerary! Even if there wasn’t a minimum, I much preferred when we stayed multiple nights in the same place because it made the overall experience more easygoing and less “pack up and go-go-go” feeling.

Most of the places we stayed were old-school motels. They were expensive due to peak pricing, but I really enjoyed the retro feel of most of them. We did have a couple of streaming/network problems since the tech was older, so I wouldn’t have too high of expectations in that regard, even if the place advertises it.

A Note on Names

One thing we learned driving around New England was that colonists were very uncreative when it came to naming towns and cities. We encountered two different Manchesters; several Woodstocks; and a Salem, New Hampshire, just outside of Salem, Massachusetts. Talk about confusing! It would be really easy to accidentally book a hotel room in the wrong town, so just be careful when securing lodging and tickets.

Planning Ahead

I’m not sure if this is because the “fall New England road trip” is such a thing or if this is just the nature of travel now, but you really have to plan ahead. Hotels, attractions, and even restaurant reservations booked up several weeks (and sometimes months) in advance, especially for Salem in October (not surprising). I never used to plan restaurant reservations, but thank goodness my mom got us reservations for both nights in Bar Harbor—otherwise we would have had to wait hours to eat.

Food

I was really impressed by the food on this trip, so much more so than our trip to the south last year. Not only was the seafood incredible (duh), but there were so many gluten-free options. Every restaurant we went to in Maine, both in Portland and Bar Harbor, fried their seafood in a naturally gluten-free flour, so I got to partake in fried shrimp, fish and chips, a fried fish sandwich, etc. It was also pretty easy to find gluten-free lobster rolls, and we went wild on GF sweets (donuts, blueberry cinnamon rolls, cheesecake…). Of the three big U.S. trips we’ve done together, this one had the best food BY FAR. We even found a GF burrito. I couldn’t tell you the last time I ate a burrito… Probably when I was eight, before I learned I was allergic to wheat. You can imagine my excitement.

Fashion I Saw

I always try to include a little blurb about the fashion I noticed in a particular location because I think it’s fun to be observant of both the locals’ and tourists’ style. Of course, it varied by stop. I would say Portland and Bar Harbor both seemed pretty casual, and I didn’t really notice any particular outfits. In New Hampshire and Vermont I saw several very cutesy outdoorsy ‘fits—think puffer vests, boots, beanies. In fact, I saw this vest on at least two different gals. Salem was expectedly witchy, with lots of dresses and witch hats, a couple of really cool steam punk outfits, uniquely printed tights (think spiderweb fishnets), and lots of cute spooky-themed sweaters and tees. I wore my skeleton t-shirt and fit right in!

What I Packed

We were there from October 1 to October 10 and experienced unseasonably warm weather. I packed a handful of sweaters, lots of light layers, gloves, hats, scarves, boots, and only one warmer weather outfit (a skirt and t-shirt) for what ironically turned out to be the coldest day. Overall, I ended up being pretty hot—especially when we went to the apple orchard. It was 80 degrees and I was in a sweater and jeans! Thankfully by our second day in Vermont it was foggy in the morning and cool—the fall weather we were expecting—so we didn’t completely miss out. I do think we were there in an unusually warm time, but either way I recommend packing lots of light layers, like long sleeve tops that can be paired with vests, thinner jackets, scarves, etc. Keep in mind that it’s also always cooler out on the water, if you decide to do any boat tours in Maine or Salem.

Non-clothing items that we packed included binoculars for our boat tours, Dramamine (just in case, though we didn’t end up needing), dollar bills and quarters for the toll roads, a lunch box-sized cooler for picnics and snack storage, a car phone charger, and fun thematic jewelry (like leaf earrings and black cat earrings for Salem).

Overall it was an incredible trip that felt like three wrapped into one: the coastal portion in Maine, the stereotypical fall New England road trip in New Hampshire and Vermont, and the spooky visit to Salem. It felt like a really long vacation in the best way possible, and my mom and I agreed that it was our favorite of the three trips we’ve been on. I don’t know how a month has already passed since we returned (I’m the worst at timely posting) but I’m excited to share more pics and activities from each location over the next couple of days!

 

Miles of smiles,
Grace