The proverbial fall foliage road trip, in my road-meets-the-rubber experience, is a tale of (hopefully pleasant) compromises. For every traveler seeking roadside-farmstand apple-cider stops, another is seeking small-batch calvados at a darkened, quiet bar, and the number of mobile art-seekers is somehow always cosmically counterweighted by the number of monomaniacal leaf-seeker purists. How, then, to make yin as happy as yang as one makes the seasonal procession in search of natural beauty?
It’s quite simple: Make the journey itself just as fun—dare I say more fun?—than the destination. When I was recently lent the brand-new Ferrari Purosangue—the first-ever four-door, four-seat Ferrari—for a few days, the decision was easy and instant: Let’s point our way north, and maybe even get there before everything peaks (likely this coming weekend). You don’t really have to be a gearhead to be thrilled by the sound alone of the Purosangue’s colossal V-12 engine—though if you have any gearhead tendencies, pop the hood and swoon a bit—but the interior leather trim, combined with seats that heat, cool, or massage at the touch of a finger, have their own charm. (My kids tucked in back also felt the thrill—not merely the punch of acceleration, but the feeling, in their individual racer-style bucket seats, that they were independent operators on some thrilling adventure.)
One perhaps overlooked feature? (Aside from the trunk, which actually held enough luggage and gear to see a family of four through a long weekend.) While I’ve driven my fair share of high-end English and, more often, Italian performance cars, because I’m generally starting out in New York City and generally headed to more rustic environs, I’ve become very wary of the garish colors and often overdesigned profiles of many of these cars. The Purosangue, though, comes across, at first glance, as merely a low-profile elegant beast, not a look-at-me (or try-to-steal-me) spectacle. (Look a bit closer, though, and there it is: The infamous Ferrari “prancing horse” badge.)
As for the getting-there: Let’s not complicate things. If you’re anywhere in or near New York City, you simply drive north. Until we reach the final extension of our journey—at which point there is, yes, one magic road you absolutely must take, but more on that later—there’s no one prescribed route. Just don’t take I-87, the New York State Thruway, a.k.a. the fastest way up according to most GPS routes. Even if, yes, you’ve got a fast car. Why take the express lane when it’s the moment-to-moment you want to hold tight to? Also: As tempting as it may be, on a big highway, to see just how fast a car like this goes and what that feels like, the thrill of navigating winding, banked curves while your tires hug the road like they’re never letting go is far more sublime.
I do, of course, have a few suggestions along the way. If you need a quick burst of foliage and a beautiful, winding, billboard-free kick-start right away, make your way out of the city via the Palisades Parkway (the first exit off the George Washington Bridge). From there, depending on how fast you want or need to make your way up (or not), punch in anywhere from Storm King (vast outdoor sculpture hiking) to Cold Spring (bustling small-town Main Street vibes—Cold Starts Moto is a good vintage-y place to start, with plenty of coffee and food options across the street).
Never made it to The Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate and museum in the Berkshires near Lenox, Massachusetts, as sumptuously photographed for us by Annie Leibovitz? Now’s your moment—or, a bit farther up in North Adams, take in the James Turrell exhibition at Mass MoCA. Or if you disregarded my only real rule earlier and set yourself up on I-87, atone for your sins with a stop in charming Saratoga Springs, New York, the perfect mid-journey respite, where the exhibition currently up at the Saratoga Automobile Museum, conveniently, is Enzo Ferrari: An Obsession With Speed, consisting of an impeccably curated selection of historical Ferraris, from a 1950 166 Barchetta to Michael Schumacher’s F310B.
What’s important is that you end up in one particular place: Waterbury, Vermont. From here, keep heading north on Route 100, and when you reach Stowe, veer left onto Route 108 toward Smuggler’s Notch resort. As you approach the resort, the route officially becomes known as the actual Smuggler’s Notch—so named because of its use to ferry goods illegally between Canada and the U.S. early in the 19th century, during an official trade embargo. The Notch, as the locals call it, is so twisting and curvy as to be non-navigable by trucks and large cars, and you’ll be keeping your speeds quite low, but all of this serves a purpose: Namely, to display New England’s mecca of fall foliage outside your car windows, often in the kind of full-leaf canopy that shuts out the rest of the world.
Where to stay, when the peeping is over for the day: If you’ve got kids in tow, as we did, staying right at Smuggler’s Notch resort is a no-brainer. While foliage spectating is a decidedly adult affair, Smuggs, as it’s known, comes replete with endless options for entertaining everyone from toddlers to adolescents with laser tag; an adventure camp you can send them off to for a whole day; Kids Night Out, an all-around wunderkammer for the evening; indoor and outdoor rock climbing and pool-hopping; family movie nights; evening s’mores. They can even line you up for a hands-on visit to a nearby team of sled dogs, or arrange a tour of the original Ben Jerry’s headquarters and factory down the road (the Flavor Graveyard, featuring tombstones of various discontinued flavors over the years, may tug at the heartstrings of grownups). Then, have dinner on-site at the Hearth Candle, or just around the corner at Lot Six, featuring killer local beers and Korean-style karaage chicken clubs, banh mi, and a tater tot poutine.
Closer to Stowe, Topnotch Resort is a sporty-chic place to hang your hat, particularly if you’re traveling without kids, or if your kids are beyond the laser-tag-and-chicken-nuggets demographic (no judgments!). Topnotch comes with two cozily heated outdoor pools (one of them adult-only) and a gorgeous inside pool next to their state-of-the-art spa—perfect for working out the kind of kinks one accrues sitting in a Ferrari while craning one’s neck to peep leaves. Their restaurant, The Roost, will keep anyone happy from breakfast (homemade corned beef hash; waffles and berries and local maple syrup, among a million other things) through dinner (wagyu burgers, pumpkin gnocchi, ditto), and the after-dinner s’mores fixin’s are in abundance near the fire pits off their big lawn. In the morning, steal over to their expansive indoor tennis facility (it’s just across the road) for a lesson before making your way back.
Elsewhere, along the way, whether to or fro: Keep an eye out for covered bridges, which dot the area here, as well as the 1957-vintage White Cottage Snack Bar off Route 4 one mile west of Woodstock, Vermont, for everything from banana splits and homemade ice cream to burgers and lobster rolls—and take your lunch (or your ice cream) right down to the Ottauquechee River below and skip rocks while you eat it.
Finally, if you’re headed back to New York, it might seem a treat to make a dinner stop in New Haven for the famous pizza to be found there. Problem is, along with that legendary pizza come legendary lines and waits. Skip the tourist route and veer over to Roseland Apizza in Derby, Connecticut, which has been besting their New Haven confrères at their own game since 1935.
The most difficult part of the whole journey? Handing back the keys to the Ferrari.
