Lake Champlain, VT, Weekend

Summer sojourners looking to enjoy Lake Champlain often head for Milton, Vermont’s Sandbar State Park, with its broad beach, safe shallow waters, and convenient location, just a few miles up Route 7 from Burlington. But the more curious among them often wonder just what lies at the other end of that long causeway that swings out into the lake past the park — the one that appears to end at a point that certainly isn’t the New York side, but isn’t the Vermont mainland, either.

That green horizon belongs to the Champlain Islands, one of the big lake’s greatest treasures — and a splendid reason to fold up your beach chair and follow the causeway west. Twenty-eight miles long, barely four miles across at their widest point, the three bridge-linked main islands and one peninsula of Grand Isle County offer spectacular water’s-edge views of the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks — plus myriad ways to get out and enjoy the lake and its surrounding attractions.

Read more — including a driving tour.

Yankee‘s picks for the Champlain Islands area. Click on any destination below for a map and more information.