Passengers enjoy the sunny weather above deck on the Valcour. Below, During the early fall weeks, just one ferry runs between Port Kent and Burlington, Vt.

PORT KENT — The Lake Champlain Transportation Company has been crossing the wide, dark, blue-grey expanse that separates New York and Vermont — Lake Champlain — since 1826.

In 2008, it does so at three different ferry crossings — Cumberland Head, Port Kent and Essex — with a fleet of eight ferries. The dark outline of the rugged Adirondack Mountains, most noticeably Giant Mountain, can be seen from the ferry, as well as the rolling, green farmland of New York’s Champlain Valley. Aquatic birds such as sea gulls, cormorants and ducks can also be seen from the deck of the boat, bobbing on the surface of the sixth largest lake in the U.S.

In early September, after the peak summer tourism season and before the peak of fall foliage, the ferry makes five round trips a day, beginning from the Burlington, Vt. side. You can climb aboard this hour-long scenic crossing at one of the widest points of the 110-mile-long lake from the end of May until Columbus Day in Octobe