Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom

While not one spot per se, the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont holds a special place in my heart because it’s where I spent most of my childhood summers. As an adult, I generally went up for the fall foliage, but it’s really great at almost any time of the year except Mud Season (aka late winter/early spring). While I hadn’t returned since moving out to California, this year I was lucky enough to visit during a very, very white Christmas.

This lakes region on the Canadian border is not your typical postcard picture of Vermont—or “New York Vermont” as we called it growing up. This is hard-core rural Vermont, where gun racks outnumber ski racks by a wide margin and our favorite event at the Orleans County Fair was the Demolition Derby. While there are touches of the picturesque, such as the historic green of Craftsbury Common (seen most notably in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry), and touches of the hippie-bohemian, such as the annual Bread & Puppet “Our Domestic Resurrection Circus” outdoor festival, by and large, this is a land of fishermen and hunters, with “camps” not lake houses.

You never know when you may have to

cut up a moose...

...or need snowmobile directions.



A great example of this unique atmosphere is Currier’s Market in Glover. 

Got moose?



Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays

this bear from his duty.



Guns, germs, and steel. And sleds?

It's certainly worth the detour!