A Week in Vermont - Vermont, United States
Vermont, United States
It began with a young schoolboy's dream and U.S. states geography project. By the time I was in high school, I had already grown to idealize the Green Mountain State unlike any other.
It was for that reason that Middlebury College in Central Vermont became my dream or "reach" school, to use the common college search parlance. I remember receiving their promotional literature and reading it from cover to cover with an enthusiasm that not even Macalester or Colgate could muster from me. But Middlebury wasn’t just a place where rich liberals would go to listen to Dave Matthews and get high and go skiing and max out their bourgeois parents’ credit cards. This was a place where you could do all that and THEN go have a chat with someone in Portuguese or Mandarin.
At least, that’s the other thing I had in my mind. Middlebury was known to be one of the best schools in the country for International Studies, the major I had chosen even as early as my freshman year of high school. Middlebury was also one of the more competitive private liberal arts schools in the Northeast. Our campus tour and the ride on the way there confirmed that it was everything I hoped for.
(It was a big letdown when I didn’t get in. Instead, I went to one of my two “safety” schools, Ursinus College in PA. UDel was the other. Worked out in the end, I suppose. In the two times we’ve driven through Middlebury since then, I’ve been decidedly less mesmerized by the campus and the town.)
Then in 2003 – over ten years ago – my Mom met this guy named Walter in nursing school. I was a senior in high school. During that fun transitional period between high school and college, Walter invited my Mom and me to spend the pre-4th of July weekend at his cabin in Wells, Vermont, just past the border with New York and between Manchester and Middlebury. The cabin is called the Huss-L-Inn (his last name is Huss), and it sits on Lake Saint Catherine in the midst of the Green Mountains.
Wells is an 8-hour drive from where we live in Pennsylvania. Sometime during our drive back, my Grandma died. Having missed the call at the cabin and not having cell phones during those days, we found out about it as soon as we got back.
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I’ve been in Vermont a couple times now. In fact, before October’s visit, the last time I had been in Vermont was for a celebration of my three years of working at the Pan American Health Organization and a pre-emptive vacation before I began my MBA program in London. So it was a happy reunion to be back one year later.
(Someday I ought to check exactly how many times I’ve been there. Walter keeps a guest log that every guest has signed since the 1960’s or 1970’s. It’s truly a piece of history. Maybe the book will find its way into the local historical society records someday.
Travis High, accomplished business leader, statesman, and influential architect of the new world order, spent many summers at the Huss-L-Inn cabin in Wells, VT.
Hey, it could happen.)
The most recent trip to Wells, which is the subject of this entry, was for a week in mid-October 2013 during peak fall foliage, or foilage as my Mom calls it. Fall foliage is notoriously hard to predict. So if you plan a trip to see fall foliage somewhere, it is quite possible that you will be disappointed because it hasn’t happened yet or because it already happened, and you’ve missed it. For this trip we hit it dead on. Not too early, not too late. During. It was perfect timing.
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The first two days were spent with Walter. After a hearty cabin breakfast – during which I wore a previously acquired Vermont flannel shirt so as to make our breakfast somehow more authentically Vermontish – we started driving towards Manchester.
It was a Sunday. Our first stop was a farmer’s market in Dorset, located along the country road just outside of Manchester. It was your typical overpriced farmer’s market fare (or rather, it was reasonably priced if you figure that the vast majority of supermarket food is technically underpriced because of the cost advantages of mass production), but it was also full of items you would expect to find in Vermont, as well as a few unexpected treasures like an Argentine lady selling empanadas.
The next stop was Peru – I should clarify – Peru, VERMONT. Peru the country being one of the bigger drops in my travel bucket list, it was strange to suddenly be there. Strange because for just an instant, I was very excited. The next instant, I felt somewhat let down when I realized that it was just your run of the mill Vermont town – a white church, a post office, and a general store, surrounded by a sprinkling of houses – and not the rugged country in the Andes.
But there was more to Peru, Vermont than met the eye. Right next to the post office is a small business called the Main Street Makery. It’s the hottest new thing to come to Peru, Vermont since, well, probably the Post Office. The proprietor is an engaging woman who took on the renovation of the old Community House and created the Makery. The Makery is all about participative art and using all kinds of elements to create beautiful objects, including recycled pieces.
My Mom absolutely loved it. I would’ve enjoyed it more if I’d had the chance to participate in making something. And she thought it was hysterical that a Peruvian (from the country) who lived in Boston just happened to stop by with his girlfriend when we were there – he was also very perplexed to find a place like this. Coming from five years in Washington, DC, I was like "oh, well, Peruvians aren't exactly a novelty in this country."
Peru is one of hundreds of tiny villages in Vermont. I’m a city boy now – by heart and by trade – so I don’t know that I could handle living in such a place. But it would be awesome to live that life. Mountains, farms, post offices, general stores, life that simple.
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Vermont caters to one of my most significant love affairs, my love for cheese. Mind you, I’m no cheese snob. I wouldn’t bother myself with that on that level. But when I see on Lonely Planet that there’s a shop dedicated entirely to cheese, you can bet I’m going to go there.
The Grafton Village Cheese Company has apparently won international cheese awards. Can you imagine such a thing? Oh, to be on that jury. Located 45 miles away from Manchester, it’s not really that far. It is, however, only accessible by a long dirt and gravel road through the Green Mountain Forest if you're coming from the north. It was a gorgeous ride through the foilage. Fo-foliage.
We timed our visit pretty well for an afternoon lunch in the attached restaurant. They served grilled cheese and tomato soup, my old staple. Of course, the cheese was fine cheddar, the likes of which I normally don’t have in my grilled cheeses, so that was a treat.
And there was more where that came from. Vermont country stores and gift shops like this one often have samples. The Grafton Village Cheese Company goes above and beyond though, with several stations spread throughout the store. Two of them were just for sampling cheeses – one had cheddars aged 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years, the other had special flavors like a spicy or smoked variety. I can’t remember what all they had. There were also samples for different crackers, spreads, and so on. I probably went for several passes on each of the sampling trays. I left the store completely satisfied, and with my very own 4 year old cheddar.
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As a tourist in Vermont you kind of have to take the good with the bad and the overpriced and the tacky and the generic. Maple syrup is sold in every single country store. How do you know what is good and what is bad? I wish I had the answer. Some stores do have genuinely good deals, but you have to shop around.
The Vermont Country Store in Weston was one of those places where I felt like everything was the same as what I had already seen. Worse, the prices were outrageous. The store is a massive, open-air plan that reminded me a lot of the shop at the Cracker Barrel, which I hate.
I would recommend freeloading off of their considerable samples. They have a maple syrup tasting station where you can taste the differences between Grade A, Grade B, and different amber colors. This is actually something I’ve seen a couple times in Vermont. There’s no point in tasting different syrups from my perspective – it’s not like wine tasting where you can clearly tell a difference between different grapes. Unless of course you just want to get your maple syrup fix. Like I did. Again, I left feeling pretty satisfied, but this time I didn’t want to buy anything.
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Walter left the next day, and my Mom and I were free to explore on our own. The day before we had passed the Hildene estate just outside of Manchester, but he didn’t want to go in. My Mom really did, so we came back on our own time.
The estate sits on a hill in between other hills and mountains in the Green Mountains. The estate was originally purchased by Robert Todd Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, and passed down the line until it fell into disuse. It was later rescued by the local community. Lincoln (son) was a great admirer of the beauty of the area. My Mom probably just loved it because it reminded her of her beloved Downton Abbey.
There were three main attractions in the estate. The first was the Georgian Revival style house where the family lived. Today, it is unoccupied, but the public is free to browse. The first floor is pure elegance. There’s even a 1,000 pipe organ in the main foyer. To the left are the kitchen and staff facilities (the corresponding bedrooms on the second floor), and the family quarters are mostly on the right wing of the house. Today, the second floor houses an exhibition on the Lincolns, including the more famous father, who, although he was never at the Hildene, obviously had a lot to do with his son. A lot of very interesting historical facts to learn there, nothing that sticks out in my mind now though.
Behind the house is a beautiful garden arranged in a half-circle. It was inspired by one of the daughter’s trips to France. It’s back in this garden where one can truly appreciate the mountain view. On the east side we saw a train going along the mountain’s base. Also on the east side is the Observatory that Lincoln had built to fulfill his interest in astronomy.
One of the neat things about the Hildene estate was that they have a shuttle service that takes visitors to the key points. It’s not that there are far distances for an able-bodied person, but it is a lot to cover in an afternoon and still leave time for browsing. So we took the shuttle to the next stop, which was the 1888-built Pullman Sunbeam train. Robert Todd Lincoln held a number of positions in his life, and one of them was chairman of the Pullman company. The train features luxury sleeper cars.
The final stop (before the gift shop of course) was the farm. It is a functioning dairy farm where they make cheese and other products. There are even goats outside that we visited for a bit.
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Although the other big attractions are nearby Bromley and Stratton mountains, Manchester itself is an interesting place to visit. Of course, I have an affinity with the town because of its English namesake. But Manchester is famous for its high-end outlets that cater to the outdoorsy feel of the area, and they include pricy outdoor companies like Orvis and Patagonia.
The Orvis store is a flagship location. It’s a massive two story complex complete with an outdoor pond and trail. I fed the fish. That was a thrill. The bass would jump out of the water to get the pellets I sprinkled on the water. I’ve never bought anything at Orvis. Everything’s really expensive. They have all kinds of outdoor sporting equipment – canoes, bait, guns, pretty much anything an outdoorsman with an emptied 401(k) would want.
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On our way back I asked if we could stop at Machs’ General Store. Machs’ is really just your average Vermont country store. All the stuff geared towards the tourists is at the counters at the front – maple syrup, cheddar, refrigerator magnets. The liquor is in the back, and all the stuff for the locals – groceries, hardware – is in the middle.
The store is unique in one way though. Its foundation is buttressed as part of a bridge. The bridge goes over a creek 20 or 30 feet below. When we visited with my Aunt Linda two years before, there was an opening of sorts in the middle of store through which you could peer down and see the rushing water. People used to throw pennies down there, although the coins were just collected by a mesh wiring. By the time we visited in 2013 though, it was sealed off.
The other reason I wanted to stop was to pick up a puzzle I’d bought in 2011. It was a puzzle of “Country Stores of New England,” a mammoth 1000-piecer that I donated to my former employer when my coworkers and I were going through a big puzzle phase. We put together a bunch of puzzles and hung them all up in our lunchroom. So I wanted to get a replacement puzzle for myself.
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We spent the next couple days mostly relaxing around the Wells area. Wells has a general store that is small, but quite excellent. They make really good sandwiches and muffins, and they have this thing where you can buy a big jug of beer and then, when it’s empty, you can come back and get it refilled at a discount. They also have Wi-Fi and a lovely outdoor seating area, and they sell Green Mountain Coffee, which I love.
(Wi-Fi may not sound like a big deal, but in many of the cabins in the area, there is no such thing. There’s also scant cell phone service. For obvious reasons, most people come to nature to escape technology and emails and tweets and do not want any interruptions from the outside world. Well, forgive me, but I want interruptions.
So when I’m visiting the Huss-L-Inn, I always try to make our visits to the Wells General Store as protracted as possible. “Finished my muffin, have I? Well, how about I top off my coffee? I haven’t checked my Travelpod yet.” Just kidding. I never check my Travelpod unless I'm posting.)
The other place my Mom and I like to stop at when we are in Wells is an art and antiques shop called Earth and Time. My Mom hates the name, but she loves the shop. They sell a series of slate panels that you put on the stove to rest things on. (Slate is huge in this area of Vermont. At one point we were about to go into a junk slate yard and pick up some raw slate on the DL, but we chickened out.) There is an artisan at Earth and Time who chisels out carvings on the slate.
The carvings are pretty standard, but there are a lot of designs to choose from. And of course, not every piece of slate is going to have exactly the same hue, so they’re all unique in some ways. We’ve been up to Wells many times, so over the years my Mom has developed a collection of six of them. My favorite is the pineapple, but my Mom also has a maple leaf, snowflake, snowy scenes, birds flying, and an apple. I bought the pineapple in 2011 to go in my first real apartment.
(The reason I like the pineapple so much is because it’s unique, and because I used to make a lot of chorizo-pineapple paellas when I was living in Washington. But in August 2012, the pineapple took on a whole new meaning for me; when in a suburb of Reykjavik, as I was wandering around trying to get to a bus stop to take me back from my climb of Mount Esja, some teenagers were having a party, and one of them threw a pineapple at my head. It narrowly missed, hit the sidewalk, and splattered.)
Other than those two stores, there’s not a lot to do in Wells in terms of civilization. But that’s not why we go, of course. We go to be by the lake. Lake Saint Catherine is actually really long. It is composed of two larger lakes that are connected by a narrow channel. The Huss-L-Inn is located on the channel.
I have a particular fondness for taking the kayak out to the lake to the south, so I did that nearly everyday when we were there. Sometimes more than once per day. One morning I was fortunate to wake early, ready, and willing to go out as the sun began its rise over one of the mountains. I watched as it grew orange and pink in spite of heavy fog.
One of the days we climbed up a trail maintained by Green Mountain College in nearby Poultney. There were two trails to choose from, my Mom told me, one of them yellow, the other green. The yellow trail was shorter, but steeper. Somehow I cajoled her into following me up the yellow trail. It took all of 45 minutes, so it wasn’t difficult at all. But at the top there’s a fantastic view of the lake, with more hills, mountains, and New York State not too far away.
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Before going home, I wanted to take a special trip up north to Ben & Jerry’s. Two to three hours away, it wasn’t convenient. But I convinced my Mom that it made sense because we could stop in the Vermont Flannel Store outside of Burlington.
We love the Vermont Flannel Store. I think someday we will end up buying their entire product line, which is unchanging for the most part. The store is an institution. It’s a small business with production done all in America, and I guess all in Vermont but maybe in nearby states too. The pattern I got in 2011 was a red and black flannel shirt (I also bought a matching wine cozy!). This time I went for the navy and light blue version. Next time I want to get the pajama bottoms.
From Burlington we took the highway to Waterbury, Ben & Jerry’s global headquarters. The first store actually opened in Burlington, but they moved production here. They offer a 30-minute factory tour for just $4. Not bad, really, but it is fair to say it’s a tourist trap. You get a charismatic tour guide who makes corny jokes like "here’s the inside scoop" or whatever. They play a self-congratulatory video explaining their origins, evolution, and mission. You get to see the main production room, where they typically churn out one flavor per day. And at the end you get samples. We got strawberry cheesecake, divine.
It’s a great experience. Again, they do a bit of self-congratulatory praise about their economic and social mission. I think that kind of communication bothers some people because, well, how can a business be about anything other than its bottom line, and oh, they were bought by Unilever, so now they can’t claim to be who they say they are. Whatever – bottom line is they make a great, overpriced – I mean premium – product, and they do a lot of good things. So I think they’re a better company (or subdivision) than most.
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The New England Maple Museum is actually a textbook definition of a tourist trap because there's a lot of hype, but what you get is of really poor quality. This museum is literally a bunch of **** thrown together into exhibits that show how maple syrup is made. Things that I wouldn’t even associate with maple syrup, like random pottery and stuffed animals and scarecrows. The entrance was inexpensive, but the content was definitely not what I was expecting.
Its saving grace was they had a couple interesting displays showing, for example, that most pancake syrups like Log Cabin or Aunt Jemima’s only have 0-2% maple syrup. Any product purporting to serve you maple syrup should have some kind of seal that says Pure Maple Syrup, made in VT or wherever, Grade A or whatever. Vermont leads the 50 states in annual production by a landslide. I’ve no idea about Canada or the rest of the world, but Google away, readers.
The only other good thing about it was they had samples after the exhibits. Samples of maple syrup by grade, of course, but also things like a maple chipotle sauce, maple vinaigrette, or maple dulce de leche. Those kinds of things you would never think of, and I love that.
So that museum was a disappointment, but it did lead us to something really interesting. I think one of us asked the cashier if there was anything interesting in the local area, and she pulled out a photocopy of a hand-drawn map of covered bridges. Now, we come from Lancaster, so it’s not like we’re strangers to covered bridges. But those are usually in and around farms, not mountains, so this was exciting indeed.
The map showed that there were five bridges to look out for. It did not warn us that one of the roads we were to use would be blocked off by a train. The train wasn’t even passing really. It was going back and forth, picking up cargo. So that was a pain. But we ended up getting all of the bridges, so that was a pleasant deviation.
On the way back we stopped at Poultney for pizza and at one of our favorite roadside stands for some more Vermont treats. As if we hadn’t already invoked Diabetes enough.
So that was our last day. Our vacation felt like it had been forever, but it added a lot of great memories for both of us, and it made our ties to the Green Mountain State even stronger.
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But wait! One last stop. One of the other things I found in my research was Equinox Mountain, just outside of Manchester and located on one of the possible routes home. Equinox stands at 1,170 meters or 3,840 feet. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time for the hike. I would have loved that. Instead, we used the privately run toll road that takes you right up to the top. It was $20 for two people, but then we used the $2 coupon on their site.
It was pretty breathtaking with all the fall foliage. As it turned out, we did Equinox a day or two after peak foliage viewing time. Even still, the colors were pretty brilliant. The toll road and summit are all run by the Catholic Church, and there is a Carthusian Monastery somewhere on the mountain. From the Saint Bruno Viewing Center at the top, I walked down the trail for about 15 minutes, but I didn’t want to leave my Mom hanging.
There is one thing to remember if you visit and drive up the mountain – even though my Mom’s car is in decent shape, the constant application of the brakes created a noxious burnt rubber smell. We had to stop twice to give it a rest. So just make sure you’re in a vehicle with good brakes, because eventually you have to come down!