Vermont · Outdoors
The Vermont Outdoors
State parks, waterfalls and lakes, with the guides to plan them.
Where should you go outdoors in Vermont?
Start with Smugglers' Notch State Park, Quechee State Park and Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, then use the guides on this page to choose by what you want to do. Trails, hours and fees change, so check each park's official page before you go.
Making a drive of it? See Vermont road trips, or browse places by region.
Parks and sights worth the trip
- Smugglers' Notch State Park: 1,000-foot cliffs on a pass that smugglers used, and Scenic Route 108 wrapping around Vermont's highest peak.
- Quechee State Park: Vermont's deepest gorge, with the Ottauquechee River 165 feet below viewing points on Route 4.
- Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park: Walk the Mount Tom Forest, the oldest continuously managed scientific forest in the United States.
- Mt. Philo State Park: Vermont's first state park, from 1924: 237 acres atop 968-foot Mt. Philo, with views over the Lake Champlain Valley to the Adirondacks.
- Burton Island State Park: A Lake Champlain park you can reach only by boat; a passenger ferry with no cars leaves from Kill Kare State Park.
- Camel's Hump State Park: No entrance and no office: the park spans five towns and you start from trailhead parking in places like Huntington.
- Mount Mansfield: Vermont's tallest peak at 4,393 feet, reached by trails from Underhill and Stowe, a gondola or an auto toll road.
- Lake Willoughby: One of Vermont's deepest lakes, with a skyline defined by the rugged Mount Pisgah and Mount Hor.
- Lake Champlain: New England's biggest lake, 435 square miles, with the Adirondacks on the far shore from Burlington.