My experiences at HF during the 4th of July week have been a breeze. Practically no wait the last few years, but I go during the weekdays. Anyway, I’d love to support the Walcot bottle shop, I just don’t know if it will be open when I am in VT next.
That’s because they’re all down overrunning my town of Portsmouth and wall to wall at our beach and cottage in York, Maine on the 4th. They save HF for Han Solo boots and Big Hat season.
Roads to HF are in good condition except for mid March to early April. It does help to know where you're going. Study google maps a bit before setting sail. The route out of Hardwick via Slapp Hill/Center Road is quite scenic.
I live across the river from Waterbury and work near Montpelier. I've seen foliage season traffic backed up a mile from exit 10 on 89. Never saw anything like this in winter.
+1 A) Listen to the locals, not a Buckeye. B) Skiers have a destination for a day. The leaf-peppers are just wandering aimlessly up and down I-89, I-91, Route 7, Route 100, etc. and thus the backups as noted by @skivtjerry.
One mile? A single mile? I've seen it like that in the summer there too. Not the most efficient area for traffic. In Ohio if the traffic jam is measured in singular miles we call that Tuesday. This is so weird. I've been to Vermont, intentionally for leaf peeping, four times. It was one of the most chill experiences I've ever had on any vacation. On two of those trips we detoured through Boston and Maine. Both were 100x busier than Vermont. Let alone the couple times I've been to Vermont for ski season were absolute shit shows. Maybe if you avoid resort towns you don't see it, but kind of hard to avoid if you want to go to Alchemist or von Trapp, even if you don't ski. If you're driving around on the highway all day, what are you even doing? Hey you do you, some of us actually get out of our cars. Y'all just seem like you're trying to run interference for VT tourism, which hey I totally get, you don't want it to be what you fear it could turn into. But let's be real, in this economy, with these gas prices, you'll be fine. Chill. This isn't TikTok, it's BeerAdvocate, there's no risk of causing a giant viral crush here. There's no reason to recommend avoiding Vermont in the autumn, especially when talking to someone from Illinois. There's almost nothing on planet Earth that can compare to Chicago traffic.
