It’s easier to negotiate Stowe on a bicycle than in a car, and the popular year-round bike path is a welcome alternative to the congested Mountain Road. The 5.3-mile trail starts next to the Stowe Congregational Church and crosses the West Branch River 11 times as it meanders north past shops and restaurants.

Willow Hill Farm produces award-winning Cheeses and Sheep Milk Yogurt.
Our new viewing room and retail is now open for guests every day from 9-4! Best viewing times are Mon-Fri 10-2.

The Fairbanks Museum is Vermont’s Smithsonian. Founded in 1889 by St. Johnsbury industrialist and amateur naturalist Franklin Fairbanks, it was an outgrowth of his own personal “cabinet of curiosities”: 175,000 items, as it turned out, that included more than 2500 dolls, 55,000 archival photographs and North America’s largest collection of stuffed hummingbirds. Don’t leave without seeing John Hampson’s patriotic bug art. Once apprenticed to inventor Thomas Edison, Hampson created nine works of art composed entirely of colorful beetles and moths.

The Fairbanks Museum is Vermont’s Smithsonian. Founded in 1889 by St. Johnsbury industrialist and amateur naturalist Franklin Fairbanks, it was an outgrowth of his own personal “cabinet of curiosities”: 175,000 items, as it turned out, that included more than 2500 dolls, 55,000 archival photographs and North America’s largest collection of stuffed hummingbirds. Don’t leave without seeing John Hampson’s patriotic bug art. Once apprenticed to inventor Thomas Edison, Hampson created nine works of art composed entirely of colorful beetles and moths.

The days of the annual “Domestic Resurrection Circus” are over, but Bread and Puppet is still using its political puppet pageantry to fight the power. The current president has certainly given them plenty of material. B&P perform stage shows in a barn with bleacher seats. See the website for a schedule. Leave time to tour the museum of papier-mâché masks and puppets. PHOTO: JORDAN SILVERMAN

It’s Isle La Motte’s Shelburne Farms, but a lot more chill — a gallery, concert venue and teahouse. Presidents William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt were both guests. You can always stop in and look at the art in the 19th-century horse-and-carriage barn, but on Sunday afternoons from 1 to 5, they serve tea and dessert to live acoustic music.

You can’t bring them home, but the fossilized corals that make up the Chazy Reef on Isle la Motte are definitely worth a visit. Paleontologists believe the reef was formed almost half a billion years ago, when Lake Champlain was part of the shallow Iapetus Ocean, where Zimbabwe is today. A well-marked path leads through the field to outcroppings swirled with signs of life — swirled skeletal remains of cephalopods and stromotoporoids. “Discovery Areas” are numbered and identified. The one-room museum sheds light — when it’s open.

You can’t bring them home, but the fossilized corals that make up the Chazy Reef on Isle la Motte are definitely worth a visit. Paleontologists believe the reef was formed almost half a billion years ago, when Lake Champlain was part of the shallow Iapetus Ocean, where Zimbabwe is today. A well-marked path leads through the field to outcroppings swirled with signs of life — swirled skeletal remains of cephalopods and stromotoporoids. “Discovery Areas” are numbered and identified. The one-room museum sheds light — when it’s open.