Lake Champlain

Lake Champlain runs 120 miles between Vermont's Green Mountains and New York's Adirondacks, and the Vermont shore alone covers two different ways of living on it. Burlington anchors the south end of that split — a small city with a working waterfront, not a resort town dressed up to look like one. The Community Boathouse handles 185 slips and the departure docks for the Spirit of Ethan Allen and the Whistling Man Schooner Co.'s wooden sloops; Foam Brewers and the Zero Gravity Beer Hall sit close enough to walk to from any downtown rental. Church Street Marketplace covers the retail and people-watching; the Island Line Trail runs north out of Waterfront Park onto the Colchester Causeway, a marble-and-granite spine laid over open water that the Local Motion bike ferry bridges at the gap known as the Cut. North of Burlington, the Champlain Islands — South Hero, North Hero, Grand Isle, and Isle La Motte — trade density for orchards and quiet coves. Snow Farm Vineyard's ice wine and Hackett's and Allenholm's apple stands run the length of South Hero's Route 2; Sand Bar State Park's shallow beach and Knight Point's pickleball courts cover the family half of an Islands week. The North Hero House still runs its Pier Bar over City Bay each summer, though a longtime Islands favorite, the Blue Paddle Bistro, closed for good in August 2026 after twenty-one years — worth knowing before planning a trip around it. South of Burlington, Shelburne's working farm-and-museum pairing and Basin Harbor's grass-airstrip resort near Vergennes round out a third character entirely: old-money Vermont, seasonal, and slower than either the city or the Islands. Most weeks on this lake split the difference — a few nights walking to dinner in Burlington, the rest on a dock in the Islands with a boat tied up outside. Plan the split before booking; the two halves of this lake don't feel like the same trip.