Eli and I went for a ride on Saturday. Rides up here in Vermont tend to last 4 or 5 hours, cover 150 or so miles, include innumerable stops, lunch and a fair amount of serendipity. We started well north of Burlington on the map then we drove east through Fairfax and Cambridge, south through Smugglers' Notch, then down Rt. 100 from Stowe all the way to Hancock, west through Middlebury until we finally headed north through Vergennes and home.
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| West Central Vermont in an afternoon |
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| Route 100 through the Mad River Valley |
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| A very special iced coffee |
There is a coffee roaster at Fairfax. He Priority Mails his roasts all over the country. He also has a nice way of making iced coffee: He puts about half an inch of brewed coffee in a plastic cup and stores the cups in the freezer. The customer takes a cup from the freezer and fills it with cold coffee from a container in the fridge. This way the coffee never gets watered down by melting ice.
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| Boyden Valley Winery |
Our rather loose objective was to find waterfalls. Actually, we didn't do too badly.
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| Fairfax Falls on the Lamoille River |
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| A lot of Vermont still gets electric from small hydro |
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| Rock massif at the top of Smugglers Notch |
At the very bottom of Rt 108, the steep, windy route through Smugglers' Notch and past the ski areas and condos, you come to Stowe Village and Rt. 100. Route 100 is one of Vermont's and Americas
scenic byways. Twenty-six years ago in 1988, when Eli was 9 and his sister, Milli, was 11 we took a summer long camping trip in a 1979 VW Camper the kids named Earnest.
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| Renovated VW identical to Earnest |
We went up through Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Maine, New Brunswick and finally Nova Scotia where we camped the Cabot Trail. On an infernally hot Sunday afternoon we entered Vermont through Glens Falls, NY and Rutland in the southwest of the state headed for St. Johnsbury in the Northeast Kingdom. We stopped to swim in Lake Bomoseen and then, for reasons that still aren't clear, we made a left on Rt.100. It turned out to be an afternoon we all remember affectionately almost 30 years later.
We stopped several times to swim in ponds along Route 100 then we came to our very first real swimming hole. It was just a wide place in the river where the river ran close to the road. Water had pooled in a hole just below what Eli remembered as a huge boulder. We pulled off onto the shoulder which is all there was at the time.
My kids watched from across the stream as the local kids climbed the boulder and then dove or jumped off. My kids were screwing up their courage. Finally, they literally took the plunge, Milli first then Eli. We stayed for several hours as Milli and Eli took turns with the local kids jumping off the rock. I watched from the far bank.
As Eli and I drove down Route 100 almost 30 years later I very much hoped we would find the place again. As we left Waitsfield I began to despair. Then, at the far end of an earth berm on our left we spotted some heads sticking up. Eli turned around and found an opening in the berm. There, behind the berm, all gussied up, was our old swimming hole.
It has an official name now, Lareau Swimming Hole, and pages of references on Google. In the mid-nineties the town of Waitsfield got the state to remove a salt shed. They built the berm to shield the hole and the parking lot probably so it would not be so inviting to passers-through. They posted signs. Ecoli bacteria test results and warnings are posted next to the outhouse.
My kids watched from across the stream as the local kids climbed the boulder and then dove or jumped off. My kids were screwing up their courage. Finally, they literally took the plunge, Milli first then Eli. We stayed for several hours as Milli and Eli took turns with the local kids jumping off the rock. I watched from the far bank.
As Eli and I drove down Route 100 almost 30 years later I very much hoped we would find the place again. As we left Waitsfield I began to despair. Then, at the far end of an earth berm on our left we spotted some heads sticking up. Eli turned around and found an opening in the berm. There, behind the berm, all gussied up, was our old swimming hole.
It has an official name now, Lareau Swimming Hole, and pages of references on Google. In the mid-nineties the town of Waitsfield got the state to remove a salt shed. They built the berm to shield the hole and the parking lot probably so it would not be so inviting to passers-through. They posted signs. Ecoli bacteria test results and warnings are posted next to the outhouse.
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| First there were three |
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| Then there was 1 and she wasn't sure |
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| Finally.... |
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| You got to learn to swim first |
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| The Rock. Eli said he remembered it as twice as high.
But in all the essential ways it was just as we both remembered it from decades ago. Eli and I carried on with our ride savoring the renewed memory.
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Another Moss Glen Falls at Hancock
Otter Creek, Vergennes, VT
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