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.