New England

New England is the northeastern corner of the United States — the six states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine — and the country's most historically resonant travel region. This is where colonial America began and where the Revolution ignited, and the past remains unusually tangible: white-steepled churches on village greens, clapboard seaports, stone walls threading through the woods, and Boston's Freedom Trail linking the sites of 1775 in the middle of a modern city. Yet the region's identity is as much natural as historical, defined by two great edges — a deeply indented Atlantic coastline running from Connecticut's shore past Cape Cod to the granite headlands of Maine, and an interior of forested mountains that stages North America's most famous autumn foliage display.

The pleasures here are compact and varied. Boston supplies the urban anchor — universities, museums, seafood and history in walkable doses. The coast offers the dune-backed beaches of Cape Cod National Seashore and the arts colony of Provincetown at the Cape's tip, the maritime heritage of Mystic in Connecticut, and, far Down East, the fishing-town charm of Bar Harbor beside Acadia National Park, where mountains literally meet the ocean. Inland, Vermont's red barns and sugarhouses roll toward ski-and-foliage towns like Stowe, while New Hampshire's White Mountains draw hikers and leaf-peepers alike.

New England rewards nearly every kind of traveller: history and food lovers in its cities and seaports, families on classic beach summers, hikers and skiers in the northern mountains, and road-trippers for whom the scenery between stops — covered bridges, lobster shacks, small-town commons — is the point. Distances are short by American standards, making it one of the easiest US regions to explore deeply in a single trip.

The region is organised along two axes. The coastal axis runs southwest–northeast from Connecticut's Long Island Sound shore through Rhode Island and Massachusetts — where Cape Cod hooks into the Atlantic — up the increasingly rocky Maine coast to Acadia. The interior axis follows the Appalachian uplands north: Connecticut's and Massachusetts' wooded hills rising into Vermont's Green Mountains and New Hampshire's White Mountains, the latter topping out at Mount Washington, the Northeast's highest peak and home to some of the world's most violent recorded weather. Nowhere in the six states is more than a day's drive from anywhere else.

Weather quirks to respect: Atlantic nor'easters can disrupt travel in any cold-season month, coastal fog is common in early summer along Maine, and mountain summits create their own severe conditions year-round.

Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) is New England's dominant gateway, with extensive domestic and transatlantic service, and sits within a 2–4 hour drive of nearly everything in the region. Bradley International Airport (BDL) outside Hartford is the convenient entry for Connecticut and the southern interior, while Portland International Jetport (PWM) puts arrivals directly on the Maine coast, about three hours' drive from Acadia. Many travellers also reach southern New England overland from New York City, which borders the region.

The road network is the true connective tissue. Interstate 95 traces the coastal corridor from Connecticut through Boston and up the Maine coast; I-91 runs north through the Connecticut River valley into Vermont; and I-93 climbs from Boston into New Hampshire's White Mountains. Typical hops are short: Boston to Cape Cod about 1.5–2 hours, Boston to Portland 2 hours, Boston to Stowe around 3.5 hours, Portland to Bar Harbor about 3 hours. Rail supplements the car: Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and high-speed Acela serve Connecticut, Rhode Island and Boston, the Downeaster links Boston with Portland, and the Vermonter runs up the Connecticut River valley. Seasonal ferries connect Boston with Provincetown across Cape Cod Bay.