A Day in Vermont: Quechee Gorge and Vermont’s Only National Park

Travel date: June 16, 2018

We left off with our extended family scattered all over New England: Dave, his mom, and the younger kids were still on Cape Cod, and Ari, Dave’s dad, and I were in western Mass visiting Amherst and Williams colleges. But we were all reunited in Quechee, Vermont, where we made a stopover for a couple of days near Dave’s parents’ house just over the state line in West Lebanon, NH. We spent a good bit of our time there hanging out with family in not very blogworthy ways (and checking out Dartmouth, where Dave’s dad was a math professor until he retired recently and where he still has an office). But we did spend one day visiting some sites in Vermont.

We realized after we booked our campground that the Quechee Balloon Festival was happening the same weekend we’d be in town. At first, we were very excited about this and Dave made some noise about wanting to go up in a balloon. Then we looked into the prices–both of balloon rides (SO EXPENSIVE!) and of just festival admission (still pretty expensive when you multiply times six)–and we also remembered that festivals generally sound better to us in theory than in reality (crowds!)….and decided to do other things instead.

First we visited Quechee Gorge, right down the street from our campground (the Quechee KOA–review coming up soon):

This is a fun and easy hike (around a mile round trip) down into the gorge, with a nice pay off at the end, since you get both lovely views and a chance to play around in the water and jump on the rocks. There’s ample parking at the Visitor’s Center (which also has bathrooms and some exhibits about the gorge).

It was very crowded while we were there–not sure if that was because of the balloon festival or if that’s typical of summer weekends with nice weather. We had the dogs with us, and it wasn’t much fun walking the terriers with so many other dogs on the trail. Fergus the anxious Scottie was particularly aggravating; we think maybe he had picked up a cold or something while he was in boarding either in New York or on the Cape and that was making his behavior more challenging than usual.

After the gorge hike, we dropped the dogs back off at the trailer and then went out for lunch at the Public House Diner (near the gorge):

This was a fun place, with good food (we ordered many pancakes) and the shopping center it was in was a bit of a tourist trap, but a fun one. Abe rode the train there:

And we all got to pet and feed alpacas! There’s a store in there that sells things made out of their wool. We didn’t buy an alpaca sweater, though, just alpaca food:

We met up with Dave’s parents here and then we all went together to the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park, about 15 minutes away in Woodstock, VT. Dave’s parents suggested we take an alternate scenic route which involved going over this covered bridge:

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller is Vermont’s only National Park, and I had a hard time figuring out from the website exactly what it was….there was talk about a historic farm, and then also about a focus on conservation history, and a house tour….I wasn’t really sure what we were going to actually DO when we got there, but I figured it was a national park so it was definitely worth a visit.

So it turns out the historic farm is a separate site from the National Park–right across the street and with a shared history, but run by a different organization and with a separate admission cost. Admission to the National Park is free, but there’s a fee of $8 to tour the mansion (or $4 for seniors, and free for kids 15 and under). The farm is called Billings Farm and Museum, and the admission is a much heftier $16 for adults, $14 for seniors, $9 for students with ID, and $8 for kids 5-15. And $4 for 3 and 4 year olds. There are a lot of different prices.

It happened to be Cheese and Dairy Celebration Weekend at Billings Farm (!) so we started there. Billings Farm is a working dairy farm, and there’s a ton to do there even when they’re not celebrating cheese and dairy. We were just in time for ice cream making:

We toured (self-guided) the farm house (they were making some cheesy recipes in the stove while we were there):

We did some cheese tastings and checked out their museum with tons of farm equipment and historical exhibits:

And then we went to a milking demonstration. I’m not going to tell you how we know this, but you might want to make sure not to stand too close to the cows if you go to a milking demonstration:

By the time we headed across the street to the National Park, we only had about an hour and a half before they closed, which gave us just enough time to do the Junior Ranger book (no mansion tour for us). The program here is set up so that they tell you exactly where to go in what order and give activities to do at each stop, which is generally my favorite way for Junior Ranger programs to be set up, at least in parks like this where you’re likely only spending a day or half a day.

So we headed off our hike around the property, learning about its history and all the conservation efforts that have happened there and got back in time for Abe to get sworn in:

Listening for sounds in the forest:

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