Visiting Vermont Like Noah Kahan? Skip His Hometown and Do These 7 Things Instead
Noah Kahan has become synonymous with Vermont, his music steeped in the rhythms, landscapes and small-town texture of where he grew up. The 2023 album “Stick Season” turned the singer-songwriter into a household name, and his April 2026 release “The Great Divide” leans even further into the hometown roots fans cannot stop chasing.
The catch: Kahan grew up in Strafford, Vermont, a town of 1,094 residents as of the 2020 census. He attended school across the New Hampshire border — another state that turns up regularly in his lyrics — but it’s Strafford that has become the pilgrimage site. Since his rise, fans have started turning up at his family’s home. Kahan has publicly asked them to stop, and he wrestles with the cost of singing about home in songs like “Porchlight.”
“I come from this place that’s so special to me and I felt like I’d sullied that somehow by singing about it and by making merch with my town on it,” he told BBC. “I felt like I no longer had that place as a refuge… so the song is all of my biggest fears said back to me.”
You can still chase the Kahan Vermont vibe without crowding the man’s hometown. Here are seven very Vermont things to do that honor the spirit of the music — and keep you in the parts of the state fans should be exploring anyway.
1. Order a Creemee
If you stop for ice cream in Vermont and see “creemee” on the menu, don’t be confused. It’s what locals call soft serve.
“While some say it came from a regional adaptation of the French word ‘crème,’ others credit it to the higher butterfat content that makes Vermont soft serve so delightfully creamy,” per Hello Burlington VT.
In summer, a maple creemee is essential. Standout spots include Palmer Lane Maple in Jericho, The Sweet Spot’s lakeside window along the Burlington Bike Path and Offbeat Creemee at the Essex Experience, which offers plant-based options at its newer location.
2. Go Brewery-Hopping
Vermont is serious beer country, no matter the season. The state ranks first in the United States for breweries per capita, according to Travel US News.
Burlington alone serves up Foam Brewers, Zero Gravity, Burlington Beer Company, Switchback Brewing Co. and Four Quarters — a respectable afternoon’s worth of stops in a single walkable city.
3. Visit a Maple Syrup Farm
Vermont and maple syrup are inseparable, and a working sugarhouse delivers the kind of postcard moment Kahan’s music conjures. Try Sugartree Maple Farm in Williston, Sugarbush Farm in Woodstock or Baird Farm Maple Syrup in North Chittenden — all small operations where you can taste the difference between grades and watch the process up close.
4. Hike the Green Mountains
Kahan is fluent in the geography of the Green Mountain State, and the trails make it easy to hear why. A handful worth the effort:
- Bald Mountain in Westmore
- Stowe Pinnacle in Stowe
- Sterling Pond in Cambridge
- Camel’s Hump (west side) in Huntington
- Mount Tom and the Pogue in Woodstock
5. Get Out on the Water
Vermont in summer is a freshwater playground. Lake Champlain is so vast it can fool you into thinking you’ve found the coast, with beaches running its length and canoe and motorboat rentals easy to come by in Burlington, Charlotte and Vergennes. A sunset paddle on Champlain — with the Adirondacks rising across the water — is the kind of moment Kahan’s music plants in your head.
Lake Willoughby in the north and Spruce Lake in the south offer quieter alternatives, and the state is dotted with smaller lakes and ponds. For swimming holes — the tucked-away spots a short walk into the woods that reward you with a natural spring — check swimmingholes.org/vt.html.
6. Eat Farm-to-Table
Vermont’s farm-to-table scene is built on genuine support for local growers. Hen of the Wood in Burlington, Doc Ponds in Stowe and Starry Night Cafe in Ferrisburgh are good starting points, but almost any town worth visiting has a destination kitchen using ingredients grown a few miles away.
7. Ski
In winter, skiing is the move. Make a weekend of it at Stowe, Sugarbush, Jay Peak or Mount Snow — each with a different personality, all of them deeply, unmistakably Vermont. The terrain runs from family-friendly cruiser laps at Sugarbush to Jay Peak’s legendary tree skiing in the Northeast Kingdom, where lake-effect snow rolls in off Quebec.
The throughline of Kahan’s Vermont is reverence for a place that shaped him. The best way to honor that as a visitor isn’t to chase the man down a back road in Strafford. It’s to let the state itself do the talking.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
