These Lakeside Towns On Lake Champlain Deserve A Long Weekend

In November 1954, a tugboat pushed the 220-foot steamboat Ticonderoga into a specially dug basin at the edge of Shelburne Bay. The Ticonderoga left Lake Chaplain for good, but it didn't sink and it wasn't scrapped and, by the following April, this classic old steamer was two miles inland, winched across farmland on railroad trucks to a museum lawn, where it still is today. That's exactly the kind of thing that happens on Lake Champlain.

Nobody scrapped the boat. Nobody tore down the port village of Essex when the railroad took its trade in 1849. And nobody retired the ferry that the British started in Ticonderoga in 1759. By habit more than plan, the towns on Lake Champlain tend to keep what other communities might throw away. Today, it's that habit of preserving their past that makes the best of them worth exploring over a long weekend.

Burlington, Vermont

Church Street Marketplace opened in 1981 as a two-block pedestrian mall and has since grown to four blocks and more than 100 businesses. Walk downhill along College Street, and you reach Waterfront Park with its boardwalk, an ideal place for a stroll or two during a weekend getaway.

The park's neighbor, ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, is home to an aquarium and science center with more than 100 interactive exhibits and over 50 species of fish, reptiles, and amphibians, and its 15,000-gallon Lake Tank is billed as Vermont's largest freshwater aquarium. There's also an exhibit about Champ, the lake's supposed monster, with a 30-foot sculpture of the creature. The Spirit of Ethan Allen III sails from the Burlington Waterfront and offers scenic cruises past Juniper Island and Shelburne Bay. It also features dinner and murder mystery sailings.

Cyclists also get to enjoy great views of the lake. The paved Burlington Greenway connects Oakledge Park to the Winooski River and is part of the 13.4-mile Island Line Trail, which continues onto the Colchester Causeway. A 200-foot gap in the causeway is crossed by a donation-based bike ferry, with suggestions for $5 one way and $10 for a round trip donation for passage. The route passes North Beach, a lifeguarded municipal beach with a campground, an ideal spot to stay for a weekend of camping.

Other places to stay include Hotel Vermont, which offers great lake views from its terrace, and Hotel Champlain Burlington, home to the Original Skiff Fish + Oysters restaurant. Time a stay for the first week of June and you'll catch the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, with free shows in Waterfront Park.

Essex, New York

The ferry from Charlotte, Vermont, takes 25 minutes to cross three miles of lake and lands in the middle of Essex, making it a wonderful way to kick off a long weekend. Beside the landing, you'll see the Old Dock Restaurant. Go there first (after checking into your hotel) and enjoy a summer meal on its lakeside patio, or in the old stone warehouse itself, built after the War of 1812.

It's one of 150 buildings in the Essex Village Historic District, where only seven were built after 1860. Many date from Essex's period as the leading port on Lake Champlain, when the Ross and Eggleston shipyards turned out sloops and steamboats. The arrival of the railroad in 1849 ended the port's prosperity, which is when the village stopped growing.

For accommodations, check out the Essex Inn on the Adirondack Coast on Main Street. It has been welcoming guests since 1810, and its Tavern serves dinner Friday through Sunday all year round. If you'd rather have a place to yourself, Cupola House, a Greek Revival double house beside the marina, is split into two vacation rentals.

Time your weekend to coincide with Essex Day. This town-wide garage sale brings food trucks and music and falls on the first Saturday in August. Alternatively, the Liberty on the Lake celebration features fireworks over the water on July 3 and a parade on July 4 to celebrate Independence Day.

Shelburne, Vermont

The Ticonderoga steamboat is only the start in Shelburne. The ship itself is part of the Shelburne Museum, a sprawling collection of 39 buildings and more than 150,000 objects spread across 45 acres. Standouts include the Colchester Reef Lighthouse, originally built in 1871 and moved here in 1952, and the Round Barn, dating from 1901.

West of the village, the 1,400-acre Shelburne Farms is an estate that William Seward Webb and Lila Vanderbilt Webb assembled from 33 farms starting in 1886. Now a National Historic Landmark, its brick mansion is now the Inn at Shelburne Farms with 24 rooms, while the Vineyard Cottage on the property rents year-round. The Farm Barn, completed in 1890, houses the cheesemaking room where cheddar is made from the farm's Brown Swiss herd.

Shelburne Bay Park has a boat ramp and a recreation path, and the Ti-Haul Trail follows the steamboat's overland route from the bay to Harbor Road. The Shelburne Shipyard, where boats have commercially been built since the 1820s, is still a working marina and worthy of a visit.

Check out the Shelburne Vineyard, established in 1998, and Fiddlehead Brewing, which runs a taproom next to Folino's wood-fired pizza. Shelburne Orchards is also open for apple picking in September and October and sells cider doughnuts.

Ticonderoga, New York

It was a group of French engineers who laid out Fort Carillon on the point between Lake Champlain and Lake George in 1755. Renamed by the British as Fort Ticonderoga when they captured it in 1759, it later became the scene of the first offensive American action of the Revolution.

Before dawn on May 10, 1775, Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys, a Vermont militia, and Benedict Arnold captured the fort, and that winter Henry Knox hauled its guns 300 miles to Boston. The ruins were sold to the Pell family in 1820, and the rebuilt fort opened to the public in 1909. Highlights of a visit include the King's Garden and the road up Mount Defiance, the 853-foot summit where British guns forced the Americans out in July 1777.

Downtown, the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour is a licensed, full-size rebuild of the show's 1960s sets. Quirky and fun, the tour includes replicas of the Enterprise's bridge, sickbay, and transporter room, all of them built by local Elvis tribute artist James Cawley.

For a place to stay while you explore, the Best Western Plus Ticonderoga Inn and Suites is just three miles from the fort and has an indoor heated pool and its own restaurant, the Burgoyne Grill. To stay in town, the Circle Court Motel is close to both the Star Trek set tour and the Black Watch Memorial Library.

To cross to Vermont, the Fort Ti Ferry, a cable ferry to Larrabee's Point in Shoreham, takes 18 cars at a time on a seven-minute crossing from May to mid-October.

North Hero, Vermont

North Hero Island is accessed via US Route 2, which hops the Champlain Islands by bridge and causeway. A weekend getaway here is best spent at the North Hero House Inn and Restaurant, which started taking guests in 1891, when they arrived by paddle-wheel steamer at what's now the inn's Steamship Pier marina. Another option is Shore Acres Inn and Restaurant, with several rooms facing the lake and a lakeside bar called Bravo Zulu.

Also on Route 2, Hero's Welcome General Store fills an early 1900s building with a deli, Vermont-made goods, and lake charts, and has a 160-foot dock with a gas pump. It also rents kayaks, canoes, and paddleboards. At the island's north end, North Hero State Park covers 399 acres with a swimming beach, part of which is closed each summer while spiny softshell turtles, a species with fewer than 300 adults in Vermont, nest in the sand.

The island's also popular among cyclists. The Champlain Islands Bikeways loop, aptly named "A Trail to Two Beaches," covers 17.5 miles of road from North Hero State Park to Alburgh Dunes State Park, a site with a 1.25-mile beach. Make a detour to Snow Farm Vineyard in South Hero. Billed as Vermont's first commercial winery, it puts on free summer concerts.

A long weekend on Lake Champlain

Lake Champlain is 120 miles long, so fitting these five towns into a single weekend isn't doable. What is doable, though, is choosing one and planning a long weekend around it. Whether you're looking for an island getaway or somewhere that offers easy access on the mainland, book a room and a table and start exploring. The Ticonderoga isn't going anywhere, and neither, it seems, is anything else on this lake.