Eclectic Echoes

A view over the valleys to Pico and Killington from near the top of Okemo.

One of the smaller falls that make up Buttermilk Falls.

This male white admiral was determined to get all the minerals he could from a boulder just below one of the falls.

A beautiful set of falls not too far into the trail.

Petite in white.

Thanks to the generosity of Aunt Sharlene and Jane, our friend at the bookstore, we just came back from our first family vacation to Ludlow, Vermont! Jane has a place in Ludlow that she let us use and Aunt Sharlene gave Eric a graduation gift that helped us pay for the rest of the trip. Thank goodness we didn’t have to cancel it.

The day before we planned to leave we had a terrible storm. Four inches of rain fell in two hours. I was out driving in it. I was on my way to pick up Eric from work and then continue on to meet our friends at the bowling alley, so that the kids could still have their play date. The car got hit by a river of water coming down the hill, which washed away the patches on the side of the road. They had to repave that section of road afterward. Somehow the torrent of water caused the serpentine fan belt to slip off without breaking.

I managed to get to Avery Point with failing steering and fewer and fewer things on the car functioning. The car died right in front of Eric’s building. Once they found the problem, Eric and a friend at Avery Point muscled the fan belt back on. We left the car running to re-charge the battery, so the car would start the next day. Then the battery on Eric’s iphone died and he had to reinstall everything on it. That delayed our departure by 3 hours, but finally we made it up there.

I didn’t realize how much we needed a family vacation until we had one. It’s taken us a week to readjust to life back in Connecticut. It was so wonderful for the three of us to get away, even if it was only for a week. We had such a good time we wish we were still there!

We toodled around Ludlow, went to the Farmer’s Market and the Fletcher Farm School for the Arts and Crafts craft show, found the Green Mountain Sugar House with their maple creemees and other goodies, swam in the pool, and just generally relaxed. Someone asked us what we planned to do on our vacation and we all answered in unison, “Relax!”

We went window shopping in an antique store, found a great book, The Earth is My Mother by Bev Doolittle and Elise Maclay, at the independent bookstore Misty Valley Books, and saw the Hugging Bear Inn and Shoppe in Chester. Every room in the inn has teddy bears in it. I think we spent an hour in the teddy bear shop playing with all the stuffed animals and hand puppets. We got Johann the Folkmanis Shark puppet.

We went hiking on the trails near and on Okemo Mountain. The car brakes were smoking on the descent from Okemo Mountain, so we went to a less steep parking lot to access the hiking trails on our second trip to the mountain! Johann and Eric took some wonderful photographs during our treks. We all refueled our spirits in the beauty of the forest.

Before we left Vermont we made one last stop at Green Mountain Sugar House so Eric and Johann could get one more maple creeme ice cream cone and then we drove up to the Montshire Museum of Science. We spent two hours playing with all the wonderful hands-on exhibits and we still didn’t see everything. The please touch displays covered liquid viscosity, air pressure, zoetropes, cams, gears, pulleys, and circuits found in toys, changing ecology, water current patterns, and more. We want to go back to do the outdoor activities and walk the paths they have mapped out around the museum building. Rain kept us inside the day that we went.

We found a wonderful yarn shop called Six Loose Ladies. They are a non-profit organization that is the retail arm of Fiber Arts in Vermont, Inc. They have classes on all different fiber arts and promote the products of local artists, including pottery, jewelry, needle felting, and hand-knitted items. All the ladies we met were so welcoming and accepting, which is in stark contrast to our daily existence in Mystic. One woman is an Air Force brat like me and Eric. We instantly connected with her and we all shared where we’d been. We talked about the itchy-feet syndrome.

She said renting was better because it was easy to move if you didn’t like the people you are living near. I look at her and wish we had a house where we could to put down roots. She takes trips to get rid of her itch. I dream about where we’ll be next. We mentioned how we’d love Vermont, even if it wasn’t by the ocean. She said we’d get tired of Vermont too. Maybe she’s right. Eventually we always want to move on. But I got tired of Connecticut in less than two years. People in Vermont care so much more about the environment, the mountains are so beautiful, the people are generally friendlier, and they are much better and more polite about hiding their surprise that Eric is my husband and not my father. Even if we did tire of Vermont, I think it would take much longer for that to happen!