Ball Mountain Lake Winhall Brook Campground (seasonal 3rd weekend in May to Columbus Day weekend) offers streamside campsites; modern restrooms with hot showers; trailer dump station and resident campground attendants. The river and 75-acre lake offer fishing, and reservoir lands are open for hunting.
Finger Lakes National Forest The Finger Lakes National Forest provides plenty of "room to roam," with few restrictions on recreation use. Popular recreation activities include auto travel, blueberry picking, hunting and fishing, observing nature and wildlife, camping, hiking, cross-country skiing, horseback riding, and snowmobiling. The Forest has over 25 miles of interconnecting trails, including the 12 mile Interloken National Recreation Trail and two miles of the Finger Lakes Trail. Attractions include spacious pastures, cool ravines, and varied forests.
Green Mountain National Forest The Green Mountain National Forest is a four season (some say six with mud and Black Fly season) recreation experience. The most popular season is autumn when the mountains are ablaze with color. Summer is popular for camping, hiking, backpacking, fishing, and canoeing. Winter brings out colorfully-clad skiers (both downhill and cross-country), snowboarders, snowmobilers, and snowshoe enthusiasts. In Spring, the Forest bursts forth from the grip of Winter with emerging leaves on the trees, migrating birds, and blooming wildflowers that are visible along many of the Forest trails. The first fishing days are enjoyed by a lot of people. Mud season is usually short but intense. Mountain biking and hiking on wet trails is not encouraged during this time.
Marsh - Billings - Rockefeller National Historical Park Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park is the only national park to focus on conservation history and the evolving nature of land stewardship in America. Opened in June 1998, Vermont's first national park preserves and interprets the historic Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller property.
The Park is named for George Perkins Marsh, one of the nation's first global environmental thinkers, who grew up on the property, and for Frederick Billings, an early conservationist who established a progressive dairy farm and professionally managed forest on the former Marsh farm. Frederick Billings's granddaughter, Mary French Rockefeller, and her husband, conservationist Laurance S. Rockefeller, sustained Billings's mindful practices in forestry and farming on the property over the latter half of the 20th century. In 1983, they established the Billings Farm & Museum to continue the farm's working dairy and to interpret rural Vermont life and agricultural history.
The park was created in 1992, when the Rockefellers gifted the estate's residential and forest lands to the people of the United States. Today, the Park interprets the history of conservation with tours of the mansion and the surrounding 550-acre forest.
Missisquoi NWR Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge consists of quiet waters and wetlands which attract large flocks of migratory birds. The refuge provides important feeding, resting, and breeding habitat for migratory birds, especially waterfowl. The refuge is a major migration stop for mallards, black ducks, wood ducks, ring-necked ducks and occasionally snow geese. The refuge supports a large great blue heron, rookery and provides breeding habitat for osprey, black terns and numerous other species of migratory birds.
North Hartland Lake At the upper end of the reservoir, the Ottaquechee River flows through sheer-faced 165-ft-deep Quechee Gorge, one of the outstanding natural spectacles in the state. An overlook area and state-managed campground are nearby. A park with small beach offers swimming, picnicking and boating at the 215-acre lake. For a nominal fee a picnic shelter can be reserved for a group event.
