It's that time of year, where the air turns crisp.

The nights grow longer and the tree tapestry turns from green to a vibrant array of oranges, yellows and reds.

Yes, we're talking about autumn.

And is there any place more synonymous with autumn than New England?

I'm Lindsay Paris, and as a native New Englander, I'm telling you, this is the place to be to enjoy this most colorful time of year.

So come along.

We're hitting the road as we experience Autumn in New England.

Foliage is just one of the attractions of a New England autumn.

We'll be experiencing a cranberry harvest, seeing a unique apple cider press in action, racing alongside a fleet of giant pumpkins, and visiting a harvest festival that takes you back in time.

One of the more unusual seasonal pastimes is when the giant pumpkin grower chooses his finest compact car-sized specimen, hollows it out, and climbs in for a trip down river.

This guy might be a little small for that.

In Goffstown, New Hampshire, a whole fleet of these squashy schooners sets sail every October as the town celebrates its favorite fall fruit in style.

It's pumpkins, pumpkins, and more pumpkins at this weekend-long festival dedicated to the ubiquitous fall squash, ranging from pint-sized to, well, big enough to take up house inside.

The highlight of the festival is, of course, Sunday's big race.

But before you can set sail, there are a few housekeeping items to take care of.

Namely, hallowing it out, which is kind of like prepping your jack o'lantern at home if your jack o'lantern weighs half a ton.

So, Jim, it's a really unique idea.

A giant pumpkin regatta.

And I understand you are basically the architect of this whole event.

As a giant pumpkin grower We were always looking for one more use to get out of our pumpkins.

Right.

The season ended and it went in the compost pile.

Yeah.

My idea came at that point.

We could weigh pumpkins on Saturday and we could race them on Sunday.

And people will come out to see that.

And that first year we had 500 people on the bridge.

Wow.

And it just grew from there.

And now how many thousands of people do you have lining the bridge and the river when that race starts?

We estimate 3,000 to 5,000 people will come out to this event throughout the weekend.

This year's theme was pirates and ahoy, matey!

Seven fine teams of buccaneers armed with power drills and paintbrushes transformed their gourds into galleons worthy of Captain Kidd himself.

Are you guys going in the boat?

My husband is.

We're doing this for the Congregational Church.

Okay, so the back is supposed to be Noah's Ark.

My husband is going to dress as Captain Noah.

Sir Captain Noah.

Priming the next generation of growers is a very, very, very big job for the New Hampshire Giant Pumpkin Growers Association.

We just came from the giant pumpkin drop down the street.

We pulled a 1,000 pound pumpkin up on a crane and we dropped it into a swimming pool.

It shatters in a thousand pieces.

But more importantly, the seeds go everywhere.

And every little kid out there goes home with a seed, just about.

At this point, we were in the final few minutes leading up to race time.

All seven captains took control of their pumpkin pontoons, poised for victory.

So the race is we're actually going to come up river.

So we start down by the dam and we come up to the bridge.

When you're paddling a 1,000-pound pumpkin that wants to go in circles that's quite a little trip.

Three.

Two.

One.

Blastoff!

And they're off.

There's a few out there with their paddles.

And then there's three with motors.

But it's not as easy as you might think to successfully sail a squash.

Some had more success than others.

[audience cheers] Oh, down for the count.

The alligator jumped out of that boat.

Oh, he's going to spray her.

Look who's going up front.

Hello, Miss Emma in that boat.

She's paddling away.

I think we're going to have it right there, the blueberry pie.

Emma, from Mountain Base Yoga!

There she is.

Winner!

Look at her go!

Ha, ha!

And with a victor declared, this most unique of New England fall events held onto its legendary status in the Giant Gourd Hall of Fame.

[steam whistle] Apples of all shapes, sizes and varieties have been grown in New England since the first European settlers arrived.

And from those apples comes the traditional autumn beverage, my favorite, apple cider.

Here in Mystic, Connecticut, B.F.

Clyde's Cider Mill has been where cider aficionados have been coming for generations.

Family owned and operated since 1881, this one-of-a-kind treasure located in a converted grist mill in Mystic, Connecticut is the oldest steam-powered apple cider mill in the United States, and today, the fifth and sixth generations of Clyde descendants continue to churn out gallon after gallon of apple cider just like their great-great grandparents did.

So your great-great grandfather started the business in the 1880s.

How did he get into cider?

I'm not sure exactly what prompted him to get into the cider, but it became a passion of his, and he saved up enough money that in 1898, he was able to fulfill his dream of building a Victorian cider mill.

I think about steam powered things, think about like trains, don't necessarily think about cider mills.

So how does it work?

Well, the steam runs everything in there.

We have a boiler which makes the steam, which runs the steam engine, and the steam engine runs all the equipment.

Millions of apples have passed through B.F.

Clyde's cider press, built in 1898.

Amy's brother John, who operates this heirloom piece of Americana, walked us through the process.

So the apples come off our truck.

They go upstairs in the building outside.

Down in the basement, they get washed.

They come up through the elevator in between the two buildings.

And then right here, built into the floor, there's a grinder.

So the apples get ground up as they come down onto the table.

Each layer holds about 350 pounds.

Today we did three layers.

Sometimes we do four.

We do as many as ten on each side.

The table will spin around 180 degrees.

Then it comes under the press here.

This is a 100-ton screw press.

It puts 100 tons of pressure on the apples, and that's what squeezes all the juice out.

While that's going on we grind up more apples back on this side so we can continuously just keep operating.

The cider gets put into a refrigerated tank in this building, and then it goes underground over to our store, where it gets pumped upstairs, and we fill it to order as you buy it.

There's three generations actively working right now.

Myself, my brothers, and then my parents.

And then my daughter.

My niece.

What's it like working with all those family members?

It's actually fantastic.

You know, we were always here.

We lived right up the road.

My grandparents lived here.

Yeah.

I do love being here.

It's great.

I like meeting everybody.

I meet a lot of people.

I talk to a lot of people.

I like explaining how this all works.

You know, the same equipment that my great-great grandfather uses, I get to use every day.

Pretty much.

I think people love coming here because it never really changes.

I mean, we do little things here and there, but it's the same way that when they came with their grandparents or their parents and now they're bringing their kids and their grandkids.

That's why we do it.

You know, we do it because we love it.

We are not here because we have to be.

We're here because we want to be.

And this is truly what we love to do.

I've been here my whole life, and it's a pretty, pretty great job.

[steam whistle] Fall is an ideal time to visit the mountains with cooler temperatures, fewer crowds, and gorgeous colors lining the trails.

Here in New Hampshire, the Appalachian Mountain Club provides a creative solution for folks who want to get out into nature, but aren't quite ready to pitch a trailside tent.

That would include me.

The AMC operates eight high mountain huts here in the White Mountain National Forest.

And I'm going to Lonesome Lake Hut in Franconia Notch.

Appalachian Mountain Club, you guys do this not only here in the Whites, but all up and down the range.

So what is your mission?

We exist to promote joyful experiences of the outdoors and to help people further their love for these places.

The Franconia Ridge is just, it's glorious and it's one of the most hiked trails and trail loops in the state, if not the country.

I think it's also just being in the place and absorbing it is really fun.

There's a lot of just having a moment of stillness.

My job as education coordinator is basically a manager for the naturalists.

So at each facility there's a naturalist that gives evening programs about the natural ecosystem that the guests find themselves in.

My experience in the mountains was mostly out west, and so I wasn't really sure what to expect coming out to the East Coast, but like seeing people come in from the cities and like, come to these facilities is really amazing.

This short but challenging 1.5-mile climb leads to an unexpected slice of home comfort in the wilderness, a backcountry complex stocked with great food, warm bunks and the easy camaraderie shared by nature lovers enjoying the mountains.

The Whites are famed for their, let's call it unpredictable weather.

Our early October visit started with temperatures in the 50s, and our arrival at the hut was greeted with snow flurries.

But snow and clouds notwithstanding, Lonesome Lake was like nothing I had ever seen before.

Wow, Bethany, this view is incredible.

No, it's, It's great.

And I keep hoping that the clouds will lift.

Well, you know, it's in New England.

The weather changes.

Like Mark Twain said, if you don't like it, wait five minutes.

Yeah, I mean, the snow ten minutes ago was lovely.

We really enjoyed it.

Seeing the difference between Lonesome Lake versus above the alpine zone, like at the summit of Washington versus the valley of Pinkham Notch.

They all have their own little unique ecosystems and climates, and so being able to go to those different locations and walk through a completely different world that you're not going to see ten minutes down the road, has been really, really cool.

I came to Lonesome Lake when I was six months old, and then when I was 21, this is the first AMC facility I worked at.

It's really special to now be in the position I'm in.

And as a dedicated, lifelong New Hampshire native mountain lady, it is such a joy that my job is to help the guests coming through.

We're all here because we love it and we want to be here.

That's just a really special community to be part of.

New England has a rich agricultural history, particularly here in Vermont.

The region's top dairy producer.

Billings Farm and Museum in Woodstock has made it their mission to preserve rural traditions for future generations to enjoy.

And at today's Harvest Festival, I'm going to go find out about some of them for myself.

Billings Farm was founded over 150 years ago, in 1871, and it was founded by Frederick Billings.

He wanted it to be kind of a model farm where they could practice scientific farming and be a place where other farmers in Vermont could come and learn different farming methods that would help them in their farms and to be more profitable.

The Billings family owned and operated Billings Farm for over 100 years, and then in 1983, Laurance Rockefeller and his wife, Mary Billings Rockefeller, started the Woodstock Foundation and Billings Farm and Museum as a nonprofit so people could come and visit and learn about life on a working dairy farm.

I'm a visitor here at Billings Farm.

First time here.

What kind of stuff can I do here?

So today is our harvest celebration event and there's all sorts of things going on today.

We have a lot of programs where people can learn about husking and shelling corn.

We are doing cheese tastings and barn dances, everything that's coming out of the garden and the orchard and it's kind of our big last hurrah of the season.

With over 200 acres of farmland, there is plenty to experience and learn at Billings inside as well as out.

Step inside the farm manager's house and you'll find a meticulous recreation restored to reflect its 19th century charm and hands on demonstrations from staff who show you how life used to be.

So we're here in this really cozy farm kitchen.

It's so nice in here and the stove is going, so what are you making?

So we've got an orchard here on the farm.

Almost every farm in the mid to late 1800s had their own apple orchard because you use your apples for so many things.

So today I'm just making some applesauce.

As you can see.

Looks delicious.

I added some extras because it wasn't pink enough and that's the reason you leave the skins on is for the pinkness.

So tell me about your career here at the farm, because you're saying you've been here for a little while.

Yeah, yeah, I've been here for ten years, and it's an amazing place because there are a lot of different areas.

You've got, of course, this beautiful farm manager's house, which focuses a lot on the history.

You've also got the barns, which does bring in the history some, but it also is it's a modern dairy farm and also the different seasons.

So right now we've got a lot of busses coming through checking out the foliage.

We've got families coming through.

In the autumn what are your favorite seasonal activities here?

I mean, I certainly love the things that we cook in here.

And starting to cook more.

During the summer.

We don't get to cook as much.

But I love cooking.

But I also love the tourists and the people who come here because it could be very easy to look out my window and see the different colored trees every day and be like, oh yeah, it's another day.

But having so many people come who are just so in awe, it reminds me to also be so appreciative of where I live.

So if you find yourself in Woodstock, Vermont, on a beautiful fall day, be sure to visit the Billings Farm and Museum and experience farm life as it was.

It's sure to be a moo-ving experience.

[cow mooing] When you think about your Thanksgiving dinner, alongside the turkey and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie you've got to have the cranberry sauce.

Fresh cranberries show up on grocery store shelves every autumn to be cooked up for holiday tables.

And millions of those berries come from here in Massachusetts.

At Red Meadow Farm in Carver, we're just a stone's throw from Plymouth, site of the first Thanksgiving.

So what better place is there to come and learn about these beautiful berries?

So we're Red Meadow Farm.

We are about 17 acres.

We're a very typical Massachusetts cranberry farm, in that we are under 20 acres.

We're family owned and family operated all year round.

In this small farm, we only have three bogs, and our three bogs this year produced a whopping 83,000 pounds of cranberries.

Wow.

Really?

Just in this little area?

Just in this little area.

That's a lot of cranberries!

Absolutely.

And so you guys have not always been cranberry farmers.

That's right.

We are very new to the cranberry industry.

We started four years ago almost by accident.

We lived in Massachusetts, but we were looking for a home with more area for livestock.

And Equus said to me, hey, how about this home that has seven acres of cranberry bog?

And we looked at the home, we fell in love with it, and we decided that we wanted to be here and learn how to do cranberries.

Just what is it that makes cranberries so uniquely New England?

One visit to Red Meadow Farm and you'll know everything you ever wanted to know about this funny floating fruit.

So the way you harvest these cranberries is really unique, because I don't think there's any other berry where they flood a bog and it floats to the surface.

So do cranberries always float?

Yes, they have four chambers inside the berry that actually hold air, and that's what makes them buoyant.

So they actually float to the top because of that.

Those chambers.

So that's why you're able to harvest them in this unique way that I don't think any other plant I can think of that is harvested by flooding it.

It's the only berry we know that actually floats to the top.

And then you harvest it off the top of the water.

This part of Massachusetts in South Coast and Cape Cod are the only place in the world where cranberries grow wild.

We have these natural peat bogs, and that's what cranberries need to live in.

And they're really long-lived, right?

They are very long-lived.

There are a lot of cranberry bogs in this area that are more than 100 years old, with 100-year-old vines.

That is crazy.

And they still produce after 100 years?

They do.

Yeah.

And we're really proud to have this heirloom fruit here, because this is where cranberries are from.

At the start of harvest, we start to flood up the bog a little bit in order to use a picker, which is a device to articulate the berries off of the vine.

From there, we flood up the water more in order to do a corralling process.

Once we have all the cranberries gathered up close, we take our pump down to the bog and we use a giant vacuum hose actually underneath the water.

And when you see people in the commercials pushing cranberries with rakes, what we're actually doing is pushing them into that vacuum hose.

Okay, okay.

The vacuum takes the berries up out of the water, into the truck and off the farm.

The flooded bog of cranberries is such an iconic image, but this is what our bogs look like just about one day out of the year.

So the rest of time, it's just the plants and the berries.

That's right.

They grow on dry, sandy grounds and they are up to the sun like most plants are.

During Red Meadow's popular farm tours in October, guests can wade in the bogs and take in the farm at its most picturesque.

We came here on a beautiful day in October and what is more beautiful than a cranberry farm in October in Massachusetts?

As first generation growers ourselves, I can tell you that we've had a lot of support from the community.

It's a really, really nurturing community and it's a wonderful experience living here.

When it comes to autumn holidays, Halloween reigns supreme and the king of Halloween is that venerable Prince of Pumpkins, the jack o'lantern.

Here at Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, they don't just celebrate pumpkin carving, they take it to a whole new level.

Zoos and Halloween are a match kind of made in heaven.

It's just fun trick or treats.

It's costumes.

It's make believe.

The Passion for Pumpkins team is just ridiculously good at this.

Every time I think, oh yeah, they can't do something new, they do something new.

It's really exciting.

The zoo welcomes over 150,000 guests during the five weeks of the Spectacular, which more than lives up to its moniker with a dazzling display of pumpkin art illuminating the night.

This fully accessible and not too scary show came to the zoo when they partnered with John Reckner's Passion for Pumpkins.

John, how did you come up with the idea of doing a huge jack o'lantern festival?

The original idea I got visiting took my family up to northern Vermont to see a mountainside display.

I'm back home.

A light bulb goes off.

I'm thinking large intricate carvings, background lighting to highlight the landscape, and of course, some musical backgrounds.

Those three elements come together to create the magic.

This year the theme is trivia.

So you're walking down the path and you're seeing da Vinci paintings on pumpkins.

In addition to like 3,000 jack o'lanterns at every level up above you, beside you, some of them are making noise.

Some of them are blowing smoke.

I think there's a chimp in a spacesuit out there.

The gargantuan task of carving all these pumpkins takes a team of artists led by the Spectacular's Director of Special Projects George Nickolopoulos.

George, how do you even create something like this?

Each pumpkin starts with a with a theme, with a topic, and then the artist will approach the image from a variety of different perspectives.

The first is to create an image that is engaging, captivating, and interesting and also obvious to the viewing audience.

The artists that we generally employ are those that can engage with the subject matter in a way that, you know, they see the fantasy and the wonder and the magic that can come from it.

We use a variety of different methods to first paint an image onto a pumpkin using oil-based inks, and then use a variety of different carving tools to remove different layers, textures, and depths of the pumpkin's flesh.

Now, this masterpiece.

I wish it could last forever, but it actually doesn't really last that long.

It doesn't.

This pumpkin will last likely 5 to 7 days out on the pumpkin trail, weather dependent, and then it will have to be replaced.

So your carvers are constantly carving throughout the duration of the show.

That's right.

While one pumpkin is out on the trail, they are drawing and carving the next round or the next round even.

I have 18 artists.

Same people come back every year.

20, 25, 30 years.

And I think that's what I get out of it.

Seeing these people and how their artwork has grown over the years.

This is a labor of love for you.

You have a full time job not carving pumpkins.

That's right.

So why do you choose to do this?

I think it's important to be able to create art and show it to people.

And I'm a big fan of Roger Williams Park Zoo.

I met my wife here.

Oh, wow.

And so anything I can do to help the zoo is important to me.

Are you going to keep it going for another 36 years?

Oh my God, I'm pushing 80.

So whatever Mother Nature has got in store.

♪ During Native Heritage Weekend here at the Fort at No.

4 in Charlestown, New Hampshire, several tribes get together to share stories, break bread, and prepare for the long winter ahead.

[Abenaki language] Which means, Hello and welcome to the Abenaki homeland.

The rich history of this area goes back more than 12,000 years, to when the Abenaki people made their home on the Connecticut River in the present day states of Vermont and New Hampshire.

The Connecticut River Valley is the traditional homelands of the Abenaki people.

We look at ourselves as people who have been here long before anyone else has been here.

We'll be sleeping here, cooking, talking history.

The native people that are here are all members of different tribes.

I'm great friends with the Elnu Abenaki who are indigenous to the state of Vermont.

It's an event that allows us to talk about our history broadly, not just Abenaki history, but American history broadly, and American Indian history broadly within this state.

Fort at No.

4 was a fortified village from roughly 1740 to 1760.

People were living outside the village, and they would come in here during hostile times as a way of protection.

Even though this was an English fort, as native people, you know, we would come and we would trade and many of the items that we were trading for, we were becoming very accustomed to.

The native people would have brought furs to get knives, tomahawks, ax heads.

The Abenaki's autumn rituals centered around preparing for the harsh northern New England winter.

During the time of the fall.

Is the time of harvest.

You'd have to pull in all the pumpkins and the different squashes and collect your beans and shuck them.

The corn that would have been traditionally grown here was what they call a flint corn.

Sweet corn probably didn't come into New England until about 1780.

During the Revolutionary War, Washington sent troops into the Iroquois country.

The story is some New England farmers that were there had come upon this corn they had never seen before, and tasted it, and they realized how sweet it was.

So they brought back some of the seed.

This would be the time that we would be hunting bears, moose, big game animals.

Traditionally, we would be trying to put up as much food as we could because we did not know how long the winter would be.

How educational is it for the people coming here?

Do they realize that you have this tremendous history here?

Yeah, there are a lot of people that do show up and really don't know.

They come in for a visit and then, you know, they leave with an education.

This is the 18th century.

This is how we lived.

This is how we cooked.

This is how we traded.

Life was tough for both of us.

The English that were here as well as the indigenous people who were here.

I was born and I've lived in Charlestown my whole life.

And so I got involved with the Fort at No.

4 because it's a unique little gem.

Fort 4 is an amazing institution.

It's an amazing site.

Lots to learn here, lots to do.

This 20-acre property that we have, it's gorgeous.

We're right on the Connecticut River.

You just can't beat sitting out here and getting to experience the colors, the smells, the air, everything about it.

What do you love about autumn here in New England?

Well, I'm from Cincinnati originally, so I love the foliage.

We don't have anything like this back there and just the whole New England landscape.

It's just unlike anything.

I love pumpkins, I love the season.

I love picking apples and raking up a big pile of leaves for my daughter to jump in.

Oh, so much fun.

For me, it's the greatest season and it's augmented by this show.

I love New England in the fall because it's such a dynamic time of year.

You have beautiful sunny days where you can go hiking and on all sorts of outdoors adventures and then you have beautiful, gloomy days where Like this.

Like this, where nature looks beautiful from your window, and you can have a nice bowl of soup.

Nature is never static, but I feel like in autumn you see, you see that sped up.

And so there's more of an immediate appreciation.

Being up in the alpine zone and getting to see tiny foliage happening and changes with the alpine plants up there.

I'm a sucker for a cider donut and a hot cider.

I think that's hard to beat.

There is something that pangs in the heart to see mountains and hills and landscapes ablaze in autumn color.

But I think also, this is one of my childhood memories is the smell of wood fires at night.

For me, this is the time of the year that I just feel more alive.

Can't beat it, just can't beat it.

Me?

I love the crisp weather and visiting local farms for the delicious harvest.

I invite you to come experience autumn right here, where the beauty and richness of the year's most vibrant season beckons with a charm you will not find anywhere else but New England.

Happy fall to one and all.