Killington, Vermont

The Mrs. and I headed north on Sunday 9/7 to camp at Gifford Woods State Park off Rt. 100 in Killington, Vermont. We really like Vermont State Parks for their lean-to sites, decent bathhouses, and vigilance in maintaining quiet hours. As for the lean-to, we find we can set up the tent inside keeping us up off the ground and dry during a rain event. We found out just how nice being off the ground was on this trip as we had thunderstorms the 9th in the morning and ended our trip with rain from about 3:30 am until after we left at 9am on the 14th.

This is our 4th stay at a Vermont State Park. This one has a small - 7 acres - old growth forest which is rare in New England and there is no real explanation as to why this small bit of forest survived the logging of earlier days. Below is one of the smaller, old maples. (And before you west coast whiners chime in... We know your trees are bigger, blah blah blah.... The point is it's an EASTERN old growth forest.)


Another cool attribute here is that the Appalachian Trail runs through this park and we did see a few apparent AT through hikers wandering through.

Tuesday September 9th, as I mentioned earlier, we had thunderstorms and rain. So, we took a ride down to Norwich, VT to check out the Montshire Museum of Science. This was a pretty good place for kids and I assume the hiking trails would have been nice.

We drove Rt 5 to Rt 4 and stopped at Scotland By The Yard.

Mrs. had wanted to stop here for some years and we're glad we went in. Fantastic stuff. We purchased a Claddah ring for her.
We also played a little as you can see from this fool.....

Later, we stopped in at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock to borrow their WiFi.
This is a beautiful little library and we were glad to see the inside. A really nice building.

One of the best stops for me during the week was a visit to Long Trail Brewing Company on WEdnesday 9/10. They have a self-guided tour of the brewery which we took, then we sat down for some nachos and fries. I had a Harvest brew and bought a T-shirt. Nice to finally get in there.

We stopped in at Woodstock again to walk around. There happened to be a farmers' market set up on the town green which was really great to see.


One of the great things to see in Woodstock is this wonderful covered bridge.














One more stop on the way back to Gifford Woods at the Woodstock Farmers' Market on Rt 4. This time we purchased a couple pumpkins to have at the campsite. Lots of great locally grown goods here.


Cattle are a common site in Vermont, but we especially liked this particular herd and the single paint horse among them. It was a neat spot along Rt 100.




On Saturday the 13th we went to Woodstock in a round about kind of way. We decided to take a look at Billings Farm and Museum. What a neat place and I am very happy that we went.




On the way back to the campground we stopped at The Hillbilly Flea Market. It's just that. I really only wanted a photo of the front of the building as I thought the signs on the building were cool. We looked around at the junk and Mrs got the shot I wanted.






I've put more images from the trip on the Flickr site. I'll add descriptions soon.