Driving west on Route 17, the road’s pitch starts to noticeably change as it rounds past Mad River Glen and climbs to an elevation of 2,375 feet in Buel’s Gore. The area, known as the “App Gap,” is also referred to as the McCullough Turnpike—a...
More than 8,500-hundred miles of dirt roads zig-zag across Vermont, and that’s a lot of ground to cover by car, foot, or bike. Paulette Staats and her husband, Paul Shriver, take it one road and one step at a time. The retired couple, married for 43...
An interesting but not surprising fact: Vermont has more dirt roads than paved ones. With nearly 8,600 miles of unpaved roads across the state (compared to 7,151 miles of paved roads), Vermont has no shortage of scenic dirt roads to explore by car, bike, or on...
Vermont is home to more than 8,000 miles of unpaved roads. One of the most historic is the Bayley-Hazen Military Road, the Northeast Kingdom's oldest thoroughfare. Traces of the road, most of it unpaved, extends diagonally 48 miles from Wells River to Montgomery Center. Much of...
I recently came across a 20-year-old article in the New York Times titled, “In Slow-Paced Vermont, the Dirt Road Reigns.” The reporter wrote, “To a lot of Vermonters, an unpaved road is a better road. People go more slowly on a dirt road. In rural Vermont,...
The Green Mountain State is home to more than 8,600 miles of Vermont dirt roads. To put that in perspective, 8,000 miles is twice the length of the continental United States and roughly the entire diameter of the planet. That’s a lot of ground to...
I recently stumbled upon East Bethel Road after taking a wrong turn in Randolph Center. Dave, Phoebe and I were heading north on Interstate 89 back from my sister's place in New Hampshire when we decided to get off the highway and meander over to...
Vermont dirt roads are a perfect outing during mud season. I'm serious. After a long, cold, and relentless winter in New England, we’re all eager to be outside. Still, even though it’s officially spring (yes, it snowed last night), we’ll still have to wait until...
