Darryl and his other brother, Darryl

I’m not sure what makes Vermont so fascinating to me. Perhaps it is the memories of laughter and fuzzy sweaters from “Newhart”. Maybe it’s the many photos I’ve seen of red barns, red leaves and black and white cows. Whatever it is - I was excited to actually arrive there.

Actually, I wasn’t that excited when we arrived – because I was so tired. We had driven all day after we left our ‘beautiful Bayport Pad’ (Nova Scotia) at 1.30am to catch a ferry. I was excited when I woke up the first day in Vermont. We decided to tour around a little.

Jim humoured me – I wanted to go to a cheese factory outlet (can you visualise the excitement on his face at this prospect). Vermont is famous for its cheeses and I can see why. We left with pepper jack, pesto, garden onion and then treats beside. Then he agreed to stop at ‘Ben & Jerry’s’(for you foreigners – it is a very well known upscale ice-cream manufacturer).

We followed route 100 south down the middle of the state. The road wound up, down and around wide, rotund hills - all thickly covered with deciduous trees. These trees all seemed to be thinking about starting to change colors. Every so often we’d turn a corner and find one fully enflamed in red. The valley bottoms were scattered with farmhouses, chequered with cornfields and dotted with cows.

And then there were the towns. The main streets were lined with colourful old buildings with big patios. Flowers hung from balconies, window boxes and even bridges. In one town, the streets were populated with strangely painted mooses – my favourite being the one painted like a zebra (including the antlers).

One is reminded at every turn that you are in the U. S. of A. Bunting and flags adorned all available buildings and posts – one gas station displayed 16 full sized American Flags.

Vermont is famous for its “country stores”. We visited one and actually bought ourselves a flagpole (to be shared by the Canadian and Australian Flags when we get to Canmore). This store had much more than flagpoles. It took three interconnected buildings to house all the paraphernalia. They had everything you could think of – old-fashioned candy in those big jars, hand cut cheese, cookware, clothes, soaps, linens, books – and on and on. Over the top of the toy section, a foot-tall monkey on a bike pedalled the high wire to-&-fro while on a shelf below,s a group of three puppets danced continually.

We chose to stay in the Vermont State Park site of Jamaica. Our campsite was wonderful. We were cosy under the cover of trees – some hundreds of feet tall. The West River burbled by us and just a minute’s walk upstream was ‘Salmon Hole’. We’ve been swimming there twice. Wide, deep and warm, it’s like our own exercise pool – pick a spot and swim against the current and stay in the same spot.

The park is situated on an old railway bed that made for great mountain biking. Pedalling was easy on the wide smooth path. At the end of the trail, we climbed to a vantage point from which you could see for miles in either direction. It was a great view – but no shade from the hot sun. It was a quick trip back down the trail and straight into the water at Salmon Hole for one last swim.

We just got a taste of Vermont. It’s the kind of place I’d like to come back to again and explore some more.

Moo

Grafton