7 Fantastic Fall Road Trips

My childhood was filled with stories of the wondrous old city, with its cobblestone streets, baroque architecture and the painters and writers from around the world who called it home. Thanks to the stories I heard around the dinner table and the photographs of colonial churches that hung on the walls of my childhood home, I could almost picture San Miguel.

It had been 38 years since my parents last stepped foot in their beloved San Miguel, but they were hopeful it would look the same. In 2008, UNESCO recognized the city as a World Heritage Site, so there was a good chance that their old apartment, their favorite watering hole and the iconic salmon-hued Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, the church in the city center, would be just as they remembered.

Once we reached the city limits, we parked at an overlook to take in the entirety of the city. It was a cloudy day, but the sun still felt bright on our shoulders. My parents, both in their 70s, carefully shuffled to the iron fence that safely corralled tourists away from the cliff’s edge, then turned their faces to me so I could snap their picture.

Memories of San Miguel began to sharpen as the city lay at their backs, and with it came the heartbreak of a city that had moved on without them. San Miguel had grown; it was more sprawling than they remembered. The next day, as we walked through the neighborhood of their first apartment, they realized it looked so unfamiliar, even the sidewalk once used for daybreak strolls to the bakery was unrecognizable. 

But San Miguel’s El Jardin, the park square in the city center, was exactly as it always had been, the brick path lined with neatly manicured laurel trees providing shade for wrought iron benches. Names on the brightly colored stores surrounding the square had changed, but the concrete facades remained immutable. And the emblematic neo-Gothic parish continues to watch over visitors to the square, be they residents, tourists or those who have loved San Miguel as both.

Sheeka Sanahori is a freelance travel journalist and video producer. She writes about family travel, ancestry travel, food and the South.

The historic Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge connects New Hampshire with Vermont.

Craig Zerbe/Getty Images

Hanover to Plainfield, New Hampshire

​When I was growing up in New Hampshire, fall was my favorite season. There’s nothing better than a crisp New England fall morning, when mist hovers above the ground as the sun peeks through the trees. Spring is supposed to be the season of renewal, but for me, it’s when the green leaves of summer turn yellow, red and orange and cool mornings give way to warm afternoons. 

I’ve taken many fall road trips, and one of my favorites is when my adult daughter and I visited Windsor, Vermont, and Cornish, New Hampshire. We began our day trip in our hometown of Hanover, the picturesque home of Dartmouth College and a beautiful destination in its own right (about 125 miles north of Boston). Hanover sits about midway up the state on the banks of the Connecticut River, which separates New Hampshire from Vermont. 

We crossed the river into Norwich, Vermont, where we stopped at Dan & Whit’s general store for coffee. The store’s motto is “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it,” and that’s not just a marketing slogan. The deceptively small entrance opens to aisles that snake behind the butcher’s counter and up and down ramps to shelves stocked with everything from maple candy and baked goods to hiking boots and fishing gear.

About a mile down the road, we hopped onto Interstate 91 South and drove about 20 minutes to Windsor — the “birthplace of Vermont.” One of the joys of driving in the state is that billboards are banned, so there is nothing to spoil the gorgeous views. 

Our first stop was Artisans Park. We ordered a craft beer at Harpoon Brewery Taproom and Beer Garden and watched master glassblowers at work at Simon Pearce. The park also has a distillery, preserves and cheese shops, outdoor dining, cornhole, badminton and a playground, making it the perfect destination for multigenerational families. Adventurous travelers can book day or overnight river trips at Great River Outfitters.

Heading south on Route 5, we had sweeping views of the foliage just across the river in New Hampshire, passing Mt. Ascutney State Park (popular with hikers and hang gliders) on our way to the American Precision Museum. Housed in an 1846 armory building, the museum has the largest collection of historically significant machine tools in the country.

We crossed back into New Hampshire over the Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge (1866) and headed north on Route 12A. Within five minutes, we reached Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, the former home of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who established Cornish as an art colony in the late 19th century (attracting, among others, painter and illustrator Maxfield Parrish). Visitors can tour the house, other venerable buildings and art exhibits, and stroll along numerous walking trails.

Our last stop was Riverview Farm in Plainfield for the quintessential autumn experience of picking apples and finding our way through a corn maze. We topped it off with a cup of hot cider and a maple doughnut in the late afternoon sun, just as we did when I was a kid.

Jaimie Seaton has lived in and reported from South Africa, the Netherlands, Singapore and Thailand. She’s written on travel for Skift, The Independent and CNN.

Writer Berit Thorkelson, far right, and family traveled the North Shore Scenic Drive from Duluth to Grand Marais, Minnesota. A hike to Eagle Mountain, with a rest stop at Whale Lake, was a trip highlight.

AARP (Courtesy Berit Thorkelson 2)

Duluth to Grand Marais, Minnesota

The first time I drove on Highway 61 along Lake Superior’s North Shore in Minnesota, the beauty was hard to process. I’d grown up regularly visiting the state’s plentiful lakes, but the drive unfolding before me along its far northeastern corner felt like something entirely different.

Forested hills rise on one side of the highway’s two lanes, and basalt cliffs plunge into the great ocean-like lake on the other, for about 150 miles between the port city of Duluth and the Canadian border. State parks with waterfall-studded hikes, popular pie shops and smoked-fish stands, scenic overlooks, and so many other draws line the drive, and thankfully so. It’s a relief to have a reason to pull over and soak in that amazing view.

When my kids were born, I wanted to imprint the North Shore on them earlier than it had been for me. Our new little family stayed at the 100-year-old Gunflint Lodge up the shore, right on the edge of the almost entirely motor-free 1.1-million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), when the kids were a toddler and a baby.

I’ll never forget our boat ride out to the vast, watery Minnesota-Canada border and my baby’s chunky cheeks splayed across the top of an orange life vest about as big as she was. I do wish, however, that I could forget the million-hour drive home, when her crying stopped only if the car did.

We made the trip again as a family in the fall of 2024 to explore those charms along the route, officially and aptly termed the North Shore Scenic Drive. Our primary goal: hiking 2,301-foot Eagle Mountain, Minnesota’s highest point, amid the fall colors. It’s among hundreds of miles of hiking accessible along the drive, a moderately challenging 7 miles — 3½ miles up, 3½ back — requiring a self-issued BWCAW day permit at the start.

The kids were both into double digits, giving my husband and me hope that the trail would present the only real challenge. It did just that, with rocky parts, steep parts and a lovely little lake for a snack break along the way. The biggest thrill: the long-distance multicolored view from the top, which we admired over a packed PB&J lunch. All in all, it was five leisurely hours well spent.

Once down the mountain, we motored to nearby Grand Marais as a reward. It’s a little fishing village-turned-artists’ colony with lots of shops and great spots to eat. My husband and I waited for our table at the Angry Trout Cafe, drinks in hand, from lake-facing chairs on the restaurant’s adjacent rocky beach. The kids still had enough energy to run to the lighthouse on the breakwater and back. Dinner on the bayside back deck was delicious and timed with the sunset.

With our main goal met, we spent the rest of the weekend driving the byway to explore the shore. Our remaining challenge was deciding what to focus on. We planned a bit, chiefly Lutsen Mountains’ Alpine Slide because reservations are recommended on busy fall weekends. The hours-long wait for the minutes-long experience left us wishing we’d taken the mountain’s gondola instead — a more drawn-out, yet equally color-filled, experience.

But it’s fun to stumble into things along the drive, too. We loved our unplanned hangout and game time over local beer and sodas at the Castle Danger Brewery in Two Harbors, and the town’s Northshore Pizza Cafe taught us that wild rice, a Northern Minnesota classic, is a delicious topping.