Get Out of Town: Weekend Getaways Just Outside Rhode Island
If, like us, you're in need of a little weekend R and R this fall, we have some perfect close-by solutions.
Adventurer’s Getaway
Woodstock Inn and Resort
Woodstock, Vermont
The Woodstock Inn and Resort can make arrangements if you are interested in fly fishing, kayaking, hiking or other local adventures.
Woodstock, Vermont, is New England’s version of hygge. With no exposed power lines, chain stores or stoplights — and a “Woodstock Town Crier” board that advertises the week’s events — it’s a postcard town of covered bridges and church spires perfect for a getaway.
At the Woodstock Inn and Resort, guests can take advantage of the property’s amenities and concierge arrangements for fly fishing, hiking, area canoeing or kayaking. Nearby, New England Falconry offers a rare opportunity to learn about the 4,000-year-old hunting sport of falconry. While outdoors flying is weather-contingent (and often still happening in October), visitors can watch as resident eagles, hawks, owls and other raptors soar in a forty-acre meadow.
In autumn, the hotel-owned athletic center offers mountain biking tracks and clinics for novices on trails framed by birch, sweet maple, pine and spruce trees. The facility houses a Pilates studio, spin room, cardio machines, racquetball, pool and yoga studio, with classes ranging from tennis clinics to aqua aerobics and happy hour yoga. Nearby is the historic Nordic Center, which opened in the 1970s. Guests can ski or snowshoe to Mt. Tom cabin for a soup kettle lunch or — as part of a special package — a candlelit dinner. For Alpine skiing, Suicide Six, the resort’s independently owned ski mountain, has twenty-four trails and once operated the first rope-tow in North America.
Courtesy of Woodstock Inn and Resort.
Guests can watch cooking demos and explore the garden at the inn’s Kelly Way Gardens, which overlook the resort’s golf course. When Benjamin Pauly planned to leave his job as the hotel’s concierge to pursue landscape architecture or farming, management didn’t want to let him go. They asked him to write his dream job description; Kelly Way Garden was the result. Its restored barns include an 11,000-square-foot kitchen with maple dining tables and white pine walls, where the inn hosts a community-style dinner series that celebrates its harvest while partnering with artisanal cheesemakers, farmers and beekeepers.
There are also guided garden tours like the five senses tour, the flower garden, slow tea in the garden, culinary and gardening classes and tastings, flower arranging classes and much more. The gardens include 200 varieties of vegetables and yield 9,000 pounds of produce in a year with the goal of providing 100 percent of in-season fruits and vegetables for the resort’s restaurant operations. “We focus on being a legitimate working farm,” says Pauly. “It’s not just a small farm to table garden.”
Following the two-year multimillion-dollar redesign of the property that Laurance Rockefeller purchased in 1967 (notable guests include Lady Bird Johnston, Ted Turner and Henry Kissinger), the resort marries history with modern rustic luxury. With oil paintings, antiques and a ten-foot fieldstone fireplace in the lobby, the ambience is that of a historic elegant lodge. The Red Rooster restaurant is spare and modern, centered by a fountain “pond” below a sleek skylight. Much of the furniture — which includes tamarack woodwork and Vermont marble — is created by Vermont artisans.
For deep hygge visit the $10 million, 10,000-square-foot spa, with Shaker woodstoves and Japanese pine soaking tubs, plus an outdoor meditation area, sauna and hot tub made for starry cobalt nights.
14 The Green, 802-332-6853, woodstockinn.com. Fall rates start at $479 per night.
