If you can’t afford a trip to the North Pole this year to go with Santa on a tour of his workshop, there’s another holiday factory tour worth checking out. Find out where Teddy Bears come to life, as the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory welcomes one and all to take a look through their workshops just outside of Burlington each and every day.

On the guided tour, you’ll visit the cutting station where about 20 different parts of fur are cut out to make all the bears, and then you can see where they start to put about 430,000 bears per year into commission in the sewing room. If you’ve ever been to one of those Build-a-Bear places you know the best part of the tour has got to be where the little bags of fur are stuffed. Even though the machines they use are from the 1940s, the workers are able to stuff the bears with fuzz and fluff at 100mph. ]]> kjb 2010-12-01T12:11:05-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/10/15/23551/803

This goat, the very one you see above, resides in a treehouse-type pen in a farm field outside of Montpelier, Vermont. He doesn't go anywhere and do much, and yet the busloads of tourists come to him. Why? Because this is a goat that can do a stupid animal trick, and apparently people will travel to see that, and pay a quarter to participate.

He happens to live at Morse Farm a maple syrup producer locally famous enough to attract the fall foliage bus tours, especially the ones full of Europeans eager for a peak at traditional Americana. Maybe the goat helps souvenir sales? Anyways, here's his gig: you walk out to his pen in the field, put a quarter in an old gumball machine to retrieve goat feed. You put it in a cup at the end of a rope, and the goat hears the food drop into the cup and he begins to frantically bite at the rope, quickly raising the cup up his treehouse perch and to his lips. He quickly gobbles it down and the tourists go crazy. It'd be kind of cute if goats didn't have freaky, horizontal rectangle-shaped pupils.]]> JetSetCD 2010-10-20T16:05:06-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/10/15/211947/51

If big 747s or even 737s are not your cup of tea and you instead prefer to see the smaller regional jets, private jets and a few Airbus A320s scattered in there, then plane spotting at Vermont's Burlington International Airport is for you. Aside from the concentration of regional jets that visit BTV, the airport is unique in that the public can come up to the old Control Tower to enjoy the best view for free.

The trick is to go to the second level of the terminal—don't go through security—and there's a hallway with a simple sign pointing to the "observation tower." Up a few flights of cramped stairs and you're in the old control booth. Now all it's got are stools, but a wise plane spotter will bring the binoculars and professional camera lenses to capture shots of the planes taking off with the mountains in the background. ]]> JetSetCD 2010-10-19T14:00:05-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/10/10/222613/47

What's better on a rainy fall day in Vermont than a pint of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream? Nothing, that's what. So last week when we found ourselves up in the Green Mountains, we did a road trip to Waterbury, to the original factory and home of Ben & Jerry's for their production tour. We ate ice cream, we got rained on in the Flavor Graveyard and we spent way too much on souvenirs.

The biggest obstacle to taking the Ben & Jerry's tour is getting up to Waterbury, because believe us—this place is rural and without any nearby public transportation. The options aside from renting a car and road tripping there is to join a group bus tour, and that was definitely the most popular option when we visited. Whole busloads of German, Welsh and Japanese tourists dropped by, in addition to Americans on fall foliage tours.

Once you're up at the factory, it's not long until the ice cream starts flowing. Pay $3 per adult for the tour, or check-in on Foursquare to get the tour for free. ]]> JetSetCD 2010-10-11T11:30:01-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/10/8/0711/86474

Earlier this year in May, we had the blessed news that Europe had put a expiration date on their liquids ban, and that was April 2013. Well, it looks like that longed-for day could come far sooner, even in 2012, if the International Civil Aviation Organization gets their way and US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano backs down. The development that's pushing this change is the arrival of better technology in the airport security and scanning areas at airports, which would allow the machines to decide whether or not a liquid is dangerous.

Surprisingly, we saw proof of this desire to end the liquids ban on actual TSA signs at the security checkpoint of Burlington Airport (BTV) this week. There it is above, snapped with our iPhones, the words "What's next? Future advances to AT X-ray technology will enable our officers to distinguish between harmless and potentially dangerous liquids." ]]> JetSetCD 2010-10-08T11:37:57-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/10/5/105148/289

In just less than two weeks, the stunning fall foliage you see above will be gone and the road on which we drove just yesterday will be closed off for the winter, in anticipation of heavy snows. This is the Vermont State Park area called "Smugglers' Notch," a thin pass between two mountains near the ski resort of Stowe and it boasts some of the best views and most pleasurable road tripping in all of the Northeast.

To reach it, you've either got to drive or be one of the crazy cyclists who pedal up here as part of their training and conditioning. The elevation is 2,170' and your reward for making to this place, a mountain haven between Burlington and Montpelier, is a little wonderland of small mountain streams and waterfalls, natural large boulders upon which free climbers practice, and a manmade stone staircase so that almost everyone that drives through can get out of the car, have a stretch, and walk up to capture the perfect photograph. ]]> JetSetCD 2010-10-05T16:42:58-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/10/4/161553/501

You know you're in Vermont when...souvenir shops include journals made of cow poo on shelves next to bottles of pure maple syrup and fridges full of Cabot cheese. We happened upon this crazy stuff yesterday at Morse Farm while taking a road trip through Montpelier, VT to observe some fall foliage at its peak.

Although seriously tempted to buy the $6 scratchpad made of cow poo, we wouldn't have wanted it for ourselves, but to use as a gift for a friend. Then remembering that none of our friends would want cow poo when they could have maple candies, we slowly backed away from the display. But that doesn't mean that it won't appeal to those travelers who revel in farm tourism, or even green travel. It totally belongs on our next list of Top 5 Travel Notebooks. ]]> JetSetCD 2010-10-04T16:56:42-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/