Our canoe trip on the Connecticut River started at Ryegate Dam. We were met by the nice folks at Fairlee Marine and, after a little juggling of cars, headed down river. We had seven miles to go to reach our first campsite at…Read More

Our canoe trip on the Connecticut River started at Ryegate Dam. We were met by the nice folks at Fairlee Marine and, after a little juggling of cars, headed down river. We had seven miles to go to reach our first campsite at mile 260, Howard Island. A little before noon, we hit some white water -- it was only a light class 2 rapids, but it was great fun and the kids loved it. No one turned over and we continued our trip. The campsite at Howard Island is a huge field, basically unlimited space for camping. We had a nice meal and went to sleep just as the rain started.

We woke at Howard Island and during breakfast, we saw a herd of deer on the island. We packed our canoes and headed downriver. Our second night was at Vaughn Meadow. The day was uneventful -- we saw wildlife and enjoyed beautiful weather; the river otters were quite playful along the banks.

Our third day, we canoed to the Underhill campsite, which was also a very nice campsite, with a nice beach. We were lucky enough to see a bald eagle flying along the river while we paddled.

Our fourth day took us to Birch Meadow.

On our last night, we stayed at Gilmans Island. We passed by Dartmouth College during the day and the river was a little crowded with other boats. This is also an unlimited site. We encountered some other groups on the island for the first time. It was a nice wooded site. We enjoyed steak for our last night on the river.

On the morning of our final day, we pulled out at Wilder Dam.

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First check the website of Smugglers Notch Resort to see what is open when you will be there. Places to Eat at Smugglers: Hearth and Candle is an intimate, romantic restaurant great for a grownup night. Reservations are recommended. Also on site is Riga Bello's Pizzeria, Bootleggers'…Read More

First check the website of Smugglers Notch Resort to see what is open when you will be there.

Places to Eat at Smugglers:
Hearth and Candle is an intimate, romantic restaurant great for a grownup night. Reservations are recommended.
Also on site is Riga Bello's Pizzeria, Bootleggers' Lounge, Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shop, Green Mountain Deli, and, of course, the Village Store with quick snacks.
In the area, there are lots of restaurants both in Stowe (20 minutes through the Pass) and towards Jeffersonville, Johnsonville, and Morrisville in the other direction.

Swimming at Smugglers:
Bring your own towels. There are a number of pools and two main pool areas that are guaranteed to entertain the kids. There’s Notchville Park, Little Smuggler's Lagoon, Rumrunner's Hideaway, waterslides, and even a giant rapid river ride.

Children's Programs
These are offered primarily offered in the summer and the winter months, which are prime times for the resort. The programs are divided by age group. Treasurers, the daycare on site, is amazing, with some of the largest fish tanks I have ever seen in each of the rooms.

Tennis:
Various surfaces are available. In the summer, an indoor tennis court is also available. In the winter, the indoor tennis court area becomes the Fun Zone. Petting Zoo:
According to the note, the petting zoo animals went to Florida for the winter but would be back in Mid June for the season. By the pictures it looked like they had half a dozen animals for the kids to enjoy.

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Walking through the buildings of the Shelburne Museum, you can't help but be overwhelmed by the magnetite of the collection. Its artistic merit aside, there is a tremendous amount of stuff here, particularly when you keep in mind that most of it was bought…Read More

Walking through the buildings of the Shelburne Museum, you can't help but be overwhelmed by the magnetite of the collection. Its artistic merit aside, there is a tremendous amount of stuff here, particularly when you keep in mind that most of it was bought by one individual. What kind of person? Well, a very wealthy person, for starters.

Electra Havemeyer Webb was born in 1888 in Babylon, Long Island, New York, the youngest daughter of Henry Osborne Havemeyer and Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer. Henry was the founder and president of American Sugar Refining Company. He had made a fortune; at his death in 1907, the company controlled half the sugar production in the country. Electra was raised in an atmosphere of immense wealth, attending Miss Spence's elite school, enjoying the New York social scene, traveling the world with her parents.

One can only imagine the look on Louisine Havemeyer's face on that day in 1908 when her 18-year old daughter came in one day to announce: "I've bought a work of art!" -- and showed her a cigar-store Indian she had just purchased for $25.

Electra knew what art was. She had grown up surrounded by the works of European masters, purchased by her parents with the guidance of Louisine's close friend, Mary Cassatt. Her father had amassed a tremendously valuable collection of Japanese porcelain and Chinese textiles. Electra's first art purchase had been a Goya. Coming from that environment, to call a life-sized wood carving of an Indian -- something made to stand outside a tobacconist shop on the gritty, common streets of New York -- was an act of artistic blasphemy.

But the more she saw, the more she bought, the more she became convinced that the things that most of her peers though of as junk were actually art: a uniquely American form of art.

In 1910, she married James Watson Webb, a New York insurance executive who was a great-grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. Over the next 20 years, Mrs. J. Watson Webb lived the life of a wealthy society matron, bearing 5 children and overseeing households in New York City, Long Island, and Shelburne, Vermont, as well as a 50,000-acre Adirondack summer "camp." She was active in public affairs, especially during the World Wars, becoming assistant director of the Red Cross Motor Corps during WWI and assistant director of the Red Cross Blood Bank in New York during WWII.

Meanwhile, her collections only grew. "The rooms were over-filled," she later wrote. "Then the closets and the attics were filled. I just couldn't let good pieces go by -- china, porcelain, pottery, pewter, glass, dolls, quilts, cigar-store Indians, eagles, folk art. They all seemed to appeal to me."

After the end of WWII, she and her husband retired to their Vermont estate, and Electra began to focus on a plan to make her vast collections available to the public. In this goal, she was not unique. Her mother had donated her father's Asian collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art at her death in 1929. Her distant relative, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, had created the Whitney Museum of American Art out of her collection of the works of new American artists...a collection even more controversial than Electra's among the collectors and critics of the time.

The Shelburne Museum was founded on a parcel of land not far from their home on Lake Champlain in 1947, and opened to the public in 1952. By its opening, the project had taken on grander proportions. Electra now began to collect entire buildings, purchasing whole structures that she felt represented unique American architecture. These structures were then dismantled, and painstakingly reassembled on her museum property, all laid out in the form of a stylized New England village. Each building then became a unique gallery space for her collections.

Among the buildings she saved from destruction were an one-room brick schoolhouse, a jail, a lighthouse, and an apothecary. She also salvaged a rare two-lane covered bridge, and, in the mid-1950s, the last paddle-wheel steamer to ply the waters of Lake Champlain. She had to install a temporary railroad track to get the S.S. Ticonderoga the two miles from the lake to her property.

Before her death in November 1960, Electra Webb had overseen the installation of the vast majority of her 53 years worth of collecting, spanning Impressionist artwork to duck decoys, carriages to figurines. But not her $25 cigar store Indian. That item she bequeathed not to her museum, but to her children.

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We used the Marshfield Inn and Motel as our base for touring this area. This was a good choice, firstly because of the scenery right on your doorstep, and secondly because of all the great places you can get to in under 45 minutes…Read More

We used the Marshfield Inn and Motel as our base for touring this area. This was a good choice, firstly because of the scenery right on your doorstep, and secondly because of all the great places you can get to in under 45 minutes by car. These were Stowe (incl. Ben & Jerry's), Burlington (incl. Lake Champlain), Smallest State Capital Montpelier, St. Johnsbury, and pretty Peacham.

The weather wasn't great all the time, so you need to be prepared. You also need to think about the things that a bit of rain will and won't spoil. Stowe is OK on a rainy day, for example. You've got the indoor attraction of Ben & Jerry's with its humorous $2 tour of the factory, and the quaint and interesting craft and coffee shops in Stowe itself. Stowe is also smack bang in the middle of some lovely scenic drives. Drive north from Stowe in the fall and you'll find the foliage more advanced due to the higher altitude.

Burlington and Lake Champlain is a great visit, but needs better weather. It was cold and wet when we visited, which made taking in the sights quite difficult as the wind roared in off the lake. It does have a good indoor mall and good bookshops and coffee shops where you can dive in for sanctuary.

Montpelier is small and its State House is worth a photo stop. But it has few other remarkable sights that would make it a must-see. It is a good place to eat if you're staying nearby, though. Being so small, you can drive in and out and park up easily enough. It's the only state capital without a McDonalds (bonus point). See my dining entries for a couple of decent places to eat. One is cheap (House of Tang), the other is more expensive (Sarduccis), but still good value for its quality. We also ate in a pizza/American diner place, directly opposite Sarduccis over the river, which was OK, but I can't remember its name.

St. Johnsbury is a small, un-commercial but well-presented town with lots of churches and a few bookshops. Again, it's on a good scenic driving route and offers a good place to stop and have coffee. It's a nice enough place, but we visited on a Sunday morning and there was not much going on save for lots of people going in and out of the many churches. There's a filling station on the way out of St. Johnsbury towards Montpelier that also acts as a free book exchange. You'll find a big cardboard box on the forecourt full of books that you can browse through and take away for free. Presumably people, also drop in used books to replenish the stock (we didn't -- sorry!).

Peacham is a real chocolate-box affair. On a junction between a few small, almost dirt-track roads, it has a pristine white church as its centrepiece, and is surrounded by impeccably well-kept houses, farmsteads, and craft shops. Good foliage spot during the fall, cameras at the ready. . .

If you're thinking about taking in the sights of this area, you could do worse than try the Marshfield as a place to stay, but for a wider choice of B&B's, go to www.central-vt.com for over 100 direct links to a wide range of privately owned accommodations.

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As we live in Albany, NY -- most of our travels to Vermont are from the Southwest corner of Vermont. If you are coming from North (Canada) or from the East (Boston, Maine) these notes won't apply, you might want to check out Interstates…Read More

As we live in Albany, NY -- most of our travels to Vermont are from the Southwest corner of Vermont. If you are coming from North (Canada) or from the East (Boston, Maine) these notes won't apply, you might want to check out Interstates 89 which goes from Boston to Montreal, and interstate 91 which goes North/South on the Eastern border of Vermont.

If you are planning on flying, your best bet may be to fly into Albany or Boston. Albany is closer, but you may get cheaper rates from Boston. You might want to check out Southwest Airlines, they fly into Albany, NY and Manchester, NH.

If you are going to Southern Vermont the choice is clear, just head East on State Routh 7. If you are travelling to Middle or Northern Vermont you have two choices. The fastest way is to travel North on Interstate 87 and then cutover into Vermont near your destination. For middle Vermont cutover around Glens Falls, NY. For Northern VT, cutover further north on Route 87 around Exit 31 and take the ferry across Lake Champlain. During the Winter and if you don''t want to take a ferry, you can go around the Southern tip of the lake. It should take you about 2 3/4 hours to go from Albany to Burlington.

If you are looking for a more scenic route. Head to Southern Vermont on NY Route 7, once in VT take Vermont Route 7 to wherever you want to go to in Vermont. Rt 7 is the major North-South road on the Western part of Vermont. Rt 7 contains many attractions and points of interest. To go from Albany to Burlington via Rt 7 will take you about 3 3/4 hours. If you take Historic Rt 7 it will take longer.

Amtrack also offers train service, but I can't speak on that.

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My favorite time to visit Lake St. Catherine is in the summer when you want to be outdoors all the time. The Lake encompasses about 800 acres and sections of it have specific names e.g. the Cove. Though on any given day…Read More

My favorite time to visit Lake St. Catherine is in the summer when you want to be outdoors all the time. The Lake encompasses about 800 acres and sections of it have specific names e.g. the Cove. Though on any given day there are many different types of water vehicles on the lake, it is so large that there is plenty of space for all of them to share.

I informally learned to canoe, rowboat, sail, windsurf, jet-ski, water-ski and drive a motor boat on this lake. I'll share 3 personal stories of the good, the bad and the ugly water experiences I had on Lake St. Catherine in my childhood.

The Good: Waterskiing is a thrill and the only thing as enjoyable as "getting up" for the first time is witnessing someone else who has fallen time and again successfully "get up" for the first time. Watching the different levels of expertise of experienced water skiers is a sport in itself as you hold your breath waiting to see if they will remain on their skis after jumping a wake or performing some trick. The first time I slalom skied was terrorizing but gratifying. I started on 2 skis, practiced lifting one out of the water, making sure I could keep my balance and then eventually dropping a ski, I slid my bare foot into the waiting slot of the remaining ski. I started to fishtail at first, but kept my balance and eventually reached the comfort level to venture outside the wake. I realized I was creating a very different spray with only one ski and also that my arms had become fatigued quicker than usual. Eventually I gave the signal to head back to shore and as I approached it, I let go of the toe line just in time to glide graciously into land greeted by a round of applause.

The Bad: Although it is typically calm on the lake, winds can cause some swells and I will not forget as a child of about 10, how difficult it was one time to paddle my canoe ALONE back to our cottage on the shore. I remembering paddling until my arms ached but getting nowhere fast. The swells of the lake were going against the direction I wanted to go and I just couldn't make any headway. Since I had my life preserver on, I decided to get out of the canoe and try to swim back to shore pulling the canoe along with me, but this didn't get me anywhere fast either. Well I finally got to shore but not to where I needed to be. No worries, people are friendly on the lake, and a sympathetic neighbor graciously allowed me to call my parents so I could admit that I was stuck. I wasn't going to be able to bring the canoe back via the water, and they needed to come get me with a vehicle large enough to also transport the canoe.

The Ugly: A few years later, I felt confident to take a friend out in a 2 person Sunfish. I knew how to hoist the sail, push down the rudder when the water was deep enough and man the tiller. As we sailed along and began to maneuver outside of the protective cove, the wind picked up and so did our speed. Since we had good wind, I tightened the sail, putting us in a high keel position where both of us needed to lean far back on our highly slanted, out of the water, side of the sailboat. As we started approaching the shore, it was time to come about, but the wind shifted suddenly and the sail which had been let out to even the keel, suddenly started quivering and then without any other warning the boom came flying across. We both ducked as it swung across, but the power of the swinging boom caused the boat to capsize and we both feel out into the water. As we resurfaced above the water, we laughed to find that the Sunfish was now completely inverted with the rudder sticking straight up in the air. Being a light craft it was easy enough to pull on the rudder and right size it, but I had lost my credibility as a sailor and learned another lesson from the elements of nature.

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Everyone has seen pictures of how beautiful autumn can be in Vermont, but no one has ever said that the colors in the forest can be so bright orange, it appears that the whole forest is on fire! The colors can be so…Read More

Everyone has seen pictures of how beautiful autumn can be in Vermont, but no one has ever said that the colors in the forest can be so bright orange, it appears that the whole forest is on fire! The colors can be so brilliant that they actually hurt you to look at them. Then some areas are so yellow that the air and light all around you becomes golden and the leaves are luminescent and appear to glow. I expected beautiful red, gold and orange coloring on the trees, but not the areas of single color that were so awesome, the stole your breathe away. The air was crisp and clean and cool which made leaf-peeping in Vermont an experience worth writing about and definitely an experience that needs repeating!Close

Absolutely the greatest feature of this resort is its heated outdoor pool. There is a unisex change room on one side of the pool where you can leave your outdoor clothing. It has a bathroom, a large common area with hooks to hang your clothes…Read More

Absolutely the greatest feature of this resort is its heated outdoor pool. There is a unisex change room on one side of the pool where you can leave your outdoor clothing. It has a bathroom, a large common area with hooks to hang your clothes and a few chairs. Three curtained cubicles with benches can be used to change into your bathing suit.

On the other side of the pool is a small lounge area with a vending machine, a few chairs and a fireplace.

It is a bit daunting to think of being outdoors in your bathing suit when there is snow on the ground, but that is what makes it so much fun. Just make a quick dash on your tiptoes to the ladder—you won’t have any regrets when you drop into the heated water. The pool is large enough to swim in, but once you are in the water for a few minutes, you just want to float lazily, looking up at the trees and the mountain and luxuriating in the knowledge that you are swimming outdoors in the winter.

Some smart people brought their flip-flops--it never occurred to me to bring beach sandals to a winter resort! On our second visit to the pool, we changed in our room, then dashed out to the pool with our barefeet in our running shoes.
Open from 3pm to 9pm in the winter, it is the supreme way to relax tired muscles after a day of skiing. There is a sign indicating summer hours are from 9am to 9pm.

Another thing I enjoyed about Cedarbrook were the blue jays. We got up our first morning to find a flock of them looking for something on the ground behind our unit. Someone had obviously thrown out some bread. All I had were granola bars. I placed them on the balcony rail and left the balcony door open and my camera on the ready. Those blue jays are smart—they quickly swooped down and grabbed the treats while I went to the kitchen for a second to get something.Close

Bennington, Vermont, is about 20 miles west of Wilmington along Route 9. It's a small town with Bennington College. The Battle of Bennington Monument is still the tallest structure in Vermont, and it is said that on a clear day, you can see several states.…Read More

Bennington, Vermont, is about 20 miles west of Wilmington along Route 9. It's a small town with Bennington College. The Battle of Bennington Monument is still the tallest structure in Vermont, and it is said that on a clear day, you can see several states. There are plenty of shops and restaurants for a nice day trip from wherever you're staying.

The week we were in the area, they were having Moosefest. This seems to be a pretty popular theme, since many cities are now having their own animal fest. New York had a bull fest last year. It was fun walking around and enjoying the various creations of local artists. They were very imaginative and showed the local spirit, since many of them had some aspect of Vermont as a theme.

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Driving around Burlington shows you one of the reasons why you should live on the east coast. Autumn is my absolute favorite season--it's sunny but a li'l chilly, a perfect time to wear a light sweater without worrying about the snow that comes a few…Read More

Driving around Burlington shows you one of the reasons why you should live on the east coast. Autumn is my absolute favorite season--it's sunny but a li'l chilly, a perfect time to wear a light sweater without worrying about the snow that comes a few weeks later. Drive around Shelburne Road or I-89 and you won't be able to resist stopping just to take some photos of the view and the rich colors of orange, brown, and red. Watch out for the raccoons and the skunks crossing the roads!Close