New England Travel and Vacation Gazette and Other Wicked Good Content

Article and photo (2008 photo of Big Apple Farm, Wrentham, Mass.) by Eric H. If you're overwhelmed on where to start when traveling the six New England states during the fall foliage season, we have a resource to make autumn trip planning easier. The VisitingNewEngland.com "Best New England Fall Foliage Travel Destinations, Vacations and Scenic Drives" offers tips on places we have been to and regard as scenic, fun and relevant autumn New England fall travel spots. We cover a wide variety of New England fall foliage season information, including our favorite vacation destinations and hotel getaways, dining spots tailor-made for autumn, best leaf peeping spots, driving tours, hikes, day trips, apple picking and apple cider recommendations. Realizing that you might have a limited amount of time to travel -- like, perhaps, a weekend -- we feel that our "New England Fall Travel Guide" acts as sort of a "greatest hits" of New England fall foliage season t...

One of our Twitter followers, http://twitter.com/RuthieB2 , just gave us a great autumn tip, stating the "Connecticut Wine Trail is a fantastic trip for a cool fall day." The Connecticut Wine Trail takes visitors through 20 vineyards in some of Connecticut's most picturesque towns. This eastern and western Connecticut excursion offers award-winning wines. All wineries are members of the Connecticut Vineyard and Winery Association. The wineries include: Bishop's Orchards Winery and Farm Market, Guilford Chamard Vineyards, Clinton DiGrazia Vineyards, Brookfield Gouveia Vineyards, Wallingford Haight-Brown Vineyards. Litchfield Heritage Trail Vineyards, Lisbon Hopkins Vineyard, New Preston Jerram Winery, New Hartford Jonathan Edwards Winery, North Stonington Jones Winery, Shelton Land of Nod Winery, East Canaan Maugle Sierra Vineyards, Ledyard McLaughlin Vineyards, Sandy Hook Miranda Vineyard, Goshen Priam Vineyards, Colchester Rosedale Farms & Vineyard, Simsbury Shar...

Article by Eric H. We've posted before on Phantom Farms in Cumberland, R.I., and will do so periodically in the future. The reason: like everything else we write here, Phantom Farms is a New England destination we love to visit and recommend (without any vested interest, of course). Why write about anything else? That way, we pass along straight-from-the-heart travel recommendations along to you! Phantom Farms is a quintessential New England year-round farm stand that is best visited in the fall, in our opinion. With its apple picking, freshly-squeezed apple cider, pumpkins, and cornstalks, Phantom Farms, for many, seems synonymous with autumn fun in the northern Rhode Island, Blackstone Valley region. Add pies, pastries, jams and jellies, more native produce, a garden center and a beautiful rural location and Phantom Farms is truly a "one-stop" shopping roadside farm destination. Fall events make Phantom Farms even that much more fun. For the rest of this month and Octo...

Article by Eric H. If you're looking for an apple picking experience that goes beyond just picking apples, then Belkin Lookout Farm in Natick, Mass., is the place to "pick." In the same town that brings you the densely-populated commercial stretch of Route 9 with just about every store imaginable -- and a seemingly continuous traffic jam -- Belkin Lookout Farm resides on 180 acres of beautiful farm land in a truly quiet rural section of South Natick. Belkin Farm is also one of the oldest continuously working farms in the country, having some form of farming operation since the mid-1600s! It's simply a beautiful fall New England destination, and a true oasis from growing suburbia. You'll feel like you're hundreds of miles away from the shopping mall and center craziness of Natick and neighboring Framingham -- also a bastion of shopping frenzy on Route 9. Not that Belkin Lookout Farm doesn't become overcrowded itself, given its high level of entertaining th...

Editor's note: Welcome to the debut of our series on the best New England fall season attractions, destinations and places to shop, dine and stay. Today we feature a famous New England attraction, the Flume in the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire ... Article and photo by Eric H. The Flume, in Franconia Notch State Park, N.H., offers a natural greatest hits package of everything that's good about New Hampshire scenery. The natural chasm with its wide gravel paths and boardwalks takes you through covered bridges, beautiful waterfalls and an 800-ft long gorge with a slightly scary 90-ft drop, affording amazing scenes of scenic pools glacial boulders and mountain views. Visitors can enjoy the Flume in two different ways -- walking through the gorge or taking on the moderate challenge of walking the two-mile loop (with inclines and what seems like a lot of stairs). The visitor center is impressive, also, with an information center, gift shop, cafeteria and auditorium feat...