At Seven Days, we’re always on the lookout for interesting stories about Vermont. Our culture staffers write about amazing local destinations almost every week — often long-form, comprehensive, time-sensitive pieces. Although great reading upon publication, they soon get buried on our website among all our other news, food and arts content. That approach to coverage doesn’t lend itself to the “concierge” level of guidance that friends and family often require when they come here to ski, leaf-peep or sample the state’s best brews.
In late August I hosted friends from San Diego who know the state well enough to have compiled a list of things they wanted to do. In the course of a few days, we hiked Barre’s Millstone Trails and biked to the end of the Colchester Causeway. We went to Bread and Puppet Theater, Hill Farmstead Brewery and Lake Willoughby. We broke bread at Red Hen Baking, Mirabelles, Blackbird Bistro, Deep City and Harry’s Hardware.
I saw more of Vermont in three days than I normally do in a year. Full disclosure: At one point I had to email our food writers to make sure I wasn’t leading the group astray.
We all need a little help navigating this place we call home, to connect Vermont’s natural wonders with its cultural and culinary ones. That takes comprehensive, up-to-date, easy-to-use intel.
We’ve long wanted a landing page on our site that compiles in one place all we’ve written about Vermont destinations — a handy guide for locals and visitors alike. For it to really be a helpful resource, we’d need to repackage our stories into an evergreen, timeless format — quick listings that can serve as an itinerary.
Over the years we’ve rolled these out in special publications such as What’s Good, our former guide for college students; and the pandemic-era Staytripper, which helped readers reacquaint themselves with in-state attractions. We’ve also compiled event-focused itineraries for job seekers attending the Vermont Tech Jam and, more recently, for our 2024 Solar Eclipse Guide, which was produced in partnership with the state tourism department. The department loved our bite-size itineraries — for 10 towns in the path of totality — so much that its staffers asked us to write a bunch more. We agreed to compile mini guides to 28 towns as part of a paid content-licensing arrangement in which the state gets the stories for its Vermont Vacation website and we have full rights to them, too. We exercise full editorial control over the content.
It was just the nudge we needed to create the Seven Days “Visiting Vermont” destination on our website, curated by culture coeditor Carolyn Fox. Before she stepped into her current job, Carolyn was our chief proofreader and special publications manager. She was the driving force behind Staytripper.
Each itinerary includes a short intro about a town and at least seven listings for what to see, do and eat while you’re there. It’s not meant to be comprehensive but rather to offer a taste of what a visit to each area offers — every piece certainly provides more than enough ideas for a fun day trip. The culture reporters, including three of our summer interns, pitched in to write them.
As this project kicked off, we also relaunched our “3 to 6 Hours” series of long-form Vermont travel stories, a day-trip riff on the New York Times’ “36 Hours” series. So far, we’ve been to Manchester, Rutland, Greensboro, White River Junction, Newport and Windsor. These stories also live on the new landing page. Go to sevendaysvt.com/visiting-vermont to find a mix of short itineraries and more in-depth town guides — just in time for peak foliage.
Related Stories
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2024.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
