Saturday evening Sep 13

W: We started out this morning to make a shopping trip to the Costco in Burlington, but didn’t get there. Instead we revisited the farmer’s market in Montpelier. Afterward we walked around Montpelier. The weather cooperated with lots of sunshine and warmth – in fact we were overdressed and decided to call it a day.

Maybe it was the weather; maybe it was my week of photography immersion; or maybe it was just the right time, but I found lots of photo ops in Montpelier. In less than two hours, I had over 100 shots; many of which were very interesting. I can’t do justice to the processing process without PHOTOSHOP which is on my home computer (plus a large, calibrated monitor) -- things to look forward to when we get back to Florida.

Although there was supposed to be rain today and this evening, as of 9:00 p.m., we haven’t seen any yet. Tomorrow and Monday are supposed to be rainy, with the remnants of IKE arriving. So we have extended our stay here until Tuesday when we’ll head south.

The first two photos are veggies from the farmer’s market. All the vegetables and other displays were very colorful. I will probably use many of these in my Dec show.

After leaving Montpelier, it was our intention to return to the RV, but we decided to follow our noses on a back-road. Fortunately we had a local map of the roads and were able to find our way back. What was amazing was, here we were in the middle of the woods, miles from “civilization” and around every turn there was another house / farm, a lake or pond, and stores, churches, and vistas. We actually passed a number of cars. I don’t know how many of those folks live there year-round, but it seemed that a number do, based on the piles of wood stacked up to provide heat from wood-burning stoves.

The red brick building is the Kent Tavern. It was built in 1837 and served as both a home and a stage-coach stop between Montpelier and Canada. The family made shoes and boots, ran a brickyard and a sawmill. Louise Andres Kent, author of “Mrs. Appleyard” book series convinced her uncle, A. Atwater Kent (radio inventor), to purchase the family home and restore it to a museum in 1930. And here is stands – in the middle of “nowhere” – bypassed by modern civilization and population.

The white church popped up in front of us as we rounded a bend in the road. Most of the roads in this back-country area were unpaved. Unpaved in Vermont would be a pretty good paved road in a lot of the country. I don’t know if it’s the hard / rocky soil underneath the surface or if they used pulverized granite like we would use oyster shells or gravel. In any even, the road surface was pretty good and not very rough.

M. The RV campground owners hung Christmas lights this afternoon. They are quite cheerful in the dark.