Where the Long Trail Crosses — a stop on Vermont Route 100.
Somewhere along here you'll cross the Long Trail, and it deserves a mention because of what it started.
The Long Trail runs two hundred and seventy-two miles along the main ridge of the Green Mountains, from the Massachusetts line to the Canadian border. Work began in nineteen ten and finished in nineteen thirty, which makes it the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the United States — and it was the direct inspiration for the Appalachian Trail, which shares its footpath for its first hundred miles in Vermont.
It's maintained by the Green Mountain Club, largely by volunteers, and there are simple shelters and lodges spaced roughly a day's walk apart the whole way. Through-hikers take about three to four weeks and arrive looking like it.
What that means for a driver: there are trailheads off this road offering everything from a twenty-minute walk to a genuine mountain climb. If you want a taste, pick a short one — the woods here are beautiful, mossy, and full of birdsong, and even a half mile in gets you total quiet.
Wear real shoes. Vermont trails are famously rooty, rocky and — the local word — muddy. Mud season is a real season here, roughly April into May, and hikers are asked to stay off the high trails during it.