Hi Fiatpwr - Thanks for the invite - Unfortunately I saw it too late. We did make it to Vermont (in fact over the 2 weeks and 2000 miles we saw 7 states in total). I would have loved to meet up and check out your cool 131.
We spent 2 nights in lovely
Stowe, Vermont, in the
Green Mountain Inn which dates from mid 19th century. The floor of the room had a delightful slant which you had to walk at a significant angle to counteract!
We walked 5 miles on the
Recreation walk - A well designed and maintained public walkway which puts many of our public walkways here to shame. We saw
Inglorious Basterds in the tiny local picture house (well recommended if you are a Tarantino fan) and successfully avoided getting ripped off afterwards in one of the far eastern restaurants. In fact the whole visit to Vermont was very enjoyable including a little incident with one of the "locals".
If you know the centre of Stowe, three roads come together (in the shape of a T junction)and all traffic is faced with a firm Stop sign and no indication of priority.
Hence there is a lot of "After you, no after you, no I insist, please, after you" nonsense (American drivers are generally polite, tolerant, forgiving, non-aggressive, etc...at least in our experience). Anyway, having arrived at this junction which gives no help to "out of towners" (a local later explained that you negotiate the junction with a good sense of timing!!) I bided my time and seized my opportunity to cross the junction and enter the Inn car park. Suddenly a small Jeep driving local drove across my bows from my right and demonstrated that he could raise a single finger whilst keeping the remaining ones bent.
Embarrassingly for him (and his wife) he was going to the same car park as I was (following him) and after parking deliberatley next to him and then seeking clarification of what I had done to offend him, he spluttered that I had been preventing him from negotiating the junction. He started to walk away but I wasn't really satisfied with this so he lamely went on to say that he was also offended by the fact that I was from New York (the hire car was registered there). Not a very pleasant or logical welcome from a local yob which rather annoyed me for a few hours as it felt like it could have developed into one of those school yard encounters!
Needless to say he received some (verbal) Irish advice on manners.
Anyway, Vermont was lovely as was the whole two weeks and maybe we will catch up on our next visit.
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