Vermont.
I’ve been pretty privileged in my life to travel as much as I have. And Vermont became the 43rd state in the long list of places I’ve visited.
After two months in western New York at the Chautauqua Institution, I spent almost a week camping in Vermont and the Finger Lakes. The scenery was lovely. The people I met along the way fantastic. The beer… it was… well, to be honest, less than I expected.
Halfway through the drive to Vermont, we stayed at the Cayuga Lake Campground, part of the NY State Parks. It was perfect. Reasonably priced, and on a Tuesday night, totally deserted (well, the non-electric sites were deserted. The big rigs filled the electric site, but there’s nothing in my teardrop I need to plug in!) Pristine bathrooms, a private, wooded site, and about 7 minutes drive off the I-90 thruway made it a perfect overnight stop.
On Wednesday, we spend most of the day on the road, and finally heading north through Glen Falls before reaching a ferry that would take us across Lake Champlain to Vermont. Louise enjoyed her first water crossing, and I can now say my camper has been on a boat. It cost an extra $12, but the ferry was quick and convenient, so I’m a fan!
Vermont was beautiful. I made the mistake of not reserving a campground in advance (I love to stay in state and federal campgrounds) but the helpful staff at Little River State Park directed us to a close by public campground in Stowe, VT.
I can’t say I’d recommend the Gold Brook Campground, but it served it’s purpose, and I should have made a reservation so I could have avoided the privately owned campground. The owner (who I checked in with) was grumpy and bordering on rude. The office reeked of cigarette smoke with huge NO REFUNDS signs and lots of references to the campground rules (all common sense, but fiercely guarded it seems). The other employee at the campground was a huge stickler for CLOSED bathroom time while he “cleaned” the outdated and worn out facilities, making us turn around and walk to the other bathrooms when we needed them in the morning. For an old and worn out facility, the sites were nice, the grass was lush, and the bathrooms were clean-ish, but bug filled and lacking adequate light to shower by (though, maybe that’s for the best since there were so many critters in the bathrooms, and I wouldn’t have wanted to see any more!)
As for Vermont beyond the campground – it was lovely. They had a heat wave going on, and it was in the 80’s all three days we were there. We visited Burlington, which reminded me a lot of Asheville, Waterbury, Stowe and Greensboro, mostly for the breweries they had to offer. A visit to the Cabot Cheese factory annex and Ben & Jerry’s factories were well worth a trip, and the lush, green mountains reminded me of my own in western North Carolina.
One of the highlights of the trip was sitting atop the mountain where the Von Trapp Family Lodge sits. They’ve opened a brewery, and outside in their small biergarten we enjoyed a beautiful view of the Vermont Green Mountains, but it was easy to pretend they were the Austrian Alps, and for days I couldn’t get “High on a hill was a lonely goatherd…” out of my head.
Other than a brief rainstorm that drenched our campsite for a few minutes, I couldn’t have enjoyed my time in Vermont any more. The weather was a bit on the warm side, but the sky was (usually) blue and the fluffy clouds were plentiful. State 43, you were a good one!
Stay tuned for more about border crossing, my drive home, and of course the beer.
Teardrops & Ales 