Summer has arrived in Middlebury after a long snowy winter and a very wet spring … and so Bruce and I have resumed our Wednesday adventures. This week we completed our personal circuit of the Trail Around Middlebury (TAM). On snowshoes or on foot, we’ve now circumnavigated the village!
The TAM really is one of Middlebury’s greatest treasures. It’s a 16-mile trail that loops around the village through the woods, across farmers’ fields, over two footbridges that span Otter Creek, on a few village streets, and even around the Middlebury College golf course. The right-of-way was acquired by the Middlebury Area Land Trust (MALT) and the trail was completed in 1989, and it is a modern wonder. Here’s a link to MALT’s TAM website: www.maltvt.org/tam.html
This part of the TAM especially reminded us of our long distance walks in England and Ireland. The U.K. and Ireland both are laced with tens of thousands of miles of publicly-accessible walkways. Some of these walkways are thousands of years old and harken back to the days when peasants needed a right-of-way through the land of great landowners so that they could walk to neighboring villages without fearing arrest for trespassing. Now they form a highly-prized network of walkways for weekend ramblers out for a bit of outdoor activity. There are all sorts of ramblers clubs and all levels of support services for anyone who’d like to explore the routes. Here’s a great website if you’d like to investigate further: www.ramblers.org.uk/. Bruce and I walked all or part of four of the long distance routes over the course of 10 or 12 years: the Cotswold Way (west of London), the Dingle Way (in southwest Ireland), the Stour River Walk (near Canterbury, England), and the Dales Way (in Yorkshire and the Lake District of England). We’d be delighted to chat about those experiences. .. just stop by!
But back to the TAM. As I mentioned, our walk last Wednesday covered a three-mile stage. It’s been a time of weather extremes around here – lots of rain and some unseasonal heat and humidity, but Wednesday afternoon was dry, sunny, 70 degrees F, with a bit of breeze. The section of the TAM we completed that day extends from Weybridge Road to Belden Falls, and it’s really marvelous. We walked through thick woods, followed paths mown through tall hay fields, skirted ponds, and finally emerged by a vigorous waterfall …. all in about a 3-mile stretch!
In one section, we passed by an endless field of wild irises:
And we finally found our way to Belden Falls on Otter Creek:
While we did have a close encounter with a wild turkey, we didn’t see any people at all during our hike. (In fact, we’ve seldom encountered more than a very few other people on any part of the TAM we’ve explored.) It’s so completely quiet (except for the birds and the wind) that it’s easy to forget that you’re only a few hundred yards from country roads much of the time you’re on this part of the TAM.
The rainy spring has resulted in quite a bit of flooding in the area, especially around Lake Champlain, which has been at its historically highest level for weeks. We haven’t been affected so much in Middlebury except that the fly fishing opportunities have been somewhat curtailed, as Otter Creek is a roiling brown torrent right now. We did find that some parts of the stage we walked on Wednesday were a bit wet and/or muddy and were glad that we’d picked GoreTex-lined hiking shoes as our footwear of choice for the day.
We hope that if your travel adventures bring you to Middlebury, you’ll consider devoting some of your time to exploring the Trail Around Middlebury!
Tagged: hiking, TAM June 5, 2011
Early spring in Vermont is nothing short of awesome, especially after a long, tough winter. It tends to happen in a hurry. One day you’re all bundled up, struggling to walk through piles of snow and over icy sidewalks, and the next day you’re marveling at the buds on the trees and the fertile fragrance of newly-thawed earth.
On March 6 and 7 this year, close to two feet of snow fell in this area. It was the biggest March storm in Burlington history … following the fourth snowiest winter on record. Addison (our county here in Middlebury) and Chittenden (just north of us in Burlington) counties were substantially paralyzed for a day or so, which is unusual, no matter how heavy the snowfall. Bruce and I happened to be in Burlington the evening of March 8 to attend a performance at the Flynn Center, and here’s a look at the aftermath of a two-foot snowfall in the middle of the city.
After a long, snowy winter, there’s just nowhere to put two more feet of snow in March!
Fast forward now about two weeks. Unbelievably, in an area adjacent to the inn that had been covered by several feet of snow just a few days earlier, here’s what we saw:
Our first crocuses of the new year! We came close to doing a little happy dance in celebration!
On the same day, Otter Creek started running very fast, due to very substantial snow melt. The volume of water was incredible, and we saw huge sheets of ice and large tree trunks being swept over the falls in the middle of the village:
And here’s another sure sign of spring in Vermont:
That’s a sap collection bucket attached to a sugar maple tree … the starting point for making maple syrup. It’s sugaring time in Vermont, which occurs during the brief interval (usually about six weeks long) when the days are a little above freezing, while the nights remain below freezing. The sap that’s collected is essentially boiled until almost all the water evaporates, leaving behind the yummy maple syrup that Vermont is justly famous for. One weekend in mid-March is declared to be Sugaring Weekend, and many sugarhouses open to the public, offering opportunities to observe the process, help tap trees, try samples of maple syrup and maple sugar products, and otherwise participate in a treasured rite of spring in Vermont.
Tagged: maple sugar, March 2011 snowstorm, Otter Creek, spring March 27, 2011
After a longish hiatus, I’m turning my attention to updating the Inn on the Green blog this afternoon. It’s a lovely winter day in Middlebury. Currently it’s -1 degrees and predicted to go much colder overnight. I’ve seen some estimates that the temperature might hit -30 degrees overnight. Even if it doesn’t quite plunge as low as that, we will be colder than at any other time in the past two years.
Having said that … it’s lovely outside! We’ve got fresh fluffy snow, the skies are blue, the sun is shining, and it’s kind of magical. It’s a bit later in the afternoon (4:30) as I write this blog entry, and it’s only now starting to hint at evening coming on. It’s such a pleasure to have a slightly longer day than just a month ago, when it would have beeen nearly dark by now.
I took a brisk walk through the village just a few minutes ago and would love to share a few photos with you of Middlebury on a pretty but COLD winter afternoon. I think you’ll see that the light is just lovely.
Here’s the iconic view of Otter Creek Falls in the middle of the village:
And here’s the gazebo on the village green with the beautiful Congregational Church steeple just beyond:
You’ll notice that there aren’t many people around. On an afternoon like today, all the sensible folks are home sipping hot chocolate!
If you are a Facebook friend of The Inn on the Green, you might have noticed that our page is not currently available. Unfortunately, my account was hacked a week or so ago and I’m working on the process to get it restored. In the meantime, I’ve taken down the link to FB from the inn’s website. I’m hopeful that we’ll be back on Facebook soon … and in the meantime, look for more frequent blog updates!
January 23, 2011
Not surprisingly, October is the busiest month of the year for an inn in Vermont. The fall foliage is spectacular and draws visitors from all over the U.S. and from Europe, as well. October also marks the beginning of Middlebury College’s arts performance series for the academic year, and many other notable events and programs take place during the month. All of these factors recently combined in a whirlwind 24 hours that could only have happened in Middlebury!
First, we again hosted a wonderful classical pianist, Paul Lewis, who has performed at the college and stayed at the inn several times. Mr. Lewis is an amazing musician and a very nice man. In addition to hosting him at the inn, we had the great pleasure of attending his performance on Tuesday evening, hearing him play Mozart, Schumann, Liszt, and Beethoven.
Wednesday afternoon is typically our opportunity to do some hiking and exploring, and on Wednesday, we decided to hike the Abbey Pond Trail, which is just outside of Middlebury in the Green Mountains. It turned out to be a really nice hike of about 4 miles in total. The lower portion of the hike crosses a wooden bridge and then unfolds uphill along a beautiful babbling brook for some distance. 
You cross the brook several more times on strategically-located rocks and logs and walk steadily uphill. In a few places, it’s a bit steep … but of the “I-need-to-rest-half-way-up” variety, rather than something requiring any special technique to ascend. Eventually, you’re at the top of the hill and then it’s just a flat walk to the pond. A couple of places were very muddy, but after 15 minutes or so, you arrive at Abbey Pond. Bruce had just commented that it looked like a beaver pond, when we spied A BEAVER swimming back and forth, watching us closely as if to warn us not to touch his dam!
We decided NOT to challenge the beaver’s territory and hurried back on down the hill … because John Irving was giving a reading and talk at the college early that evening. Mr. Irving and his wife also were guests of the inn, so we had a very nice opportunity both to listen to him talk about his writing process and read a bit of the book he’s currently writing (In One Person), and to chat with him at breakfast the next morning. He’s a very interesting, charming, funny fellow, and his new book is going to be wonderful.
All in all, it was a pretty fabulous 24 hours in Middlebury!
Tagged: fall foliage, innkeeping, John Irving, Middlebury hiking, Paul Lewis October 20, 2010
On recent Wednesdays, we explored some points of interest just south of Middlebury: The Marble Museum and Wilson Castle in Proctor, VT (a bit north of Rutland), and Silver Lake in the Moosalamoo National Recreation Area, part of the Green Mountain National Forest.
Proctor, VT is quite fascinating. If you approach Proctor from Brandon, you have kind of a Brigadoon moment when, after driving through miles of fields and farms, you suddenly find yourself in a very pretty village apparently built almost entirely of marble! At one time, Proctor was THE global center for quarrying high-quality marble and finishing it into beautiful objects. In its day, Proctor was a true “company town” and many of the village’s structures, including the very beautiful Proctor Marble Arch Bridge, are made of marble. The marble industry has moved on, but the Vermont Marble Museum, housed in a wing of one of the old factories, is very interesting and well worth a visit. Here’s a photo from the Hall of Presidents, which features marble busts and a bit of info about many U.S. Presidents.
After finishing our self-guided tour of the Marble Museum, we drove to Wilson Castle, which is a bit further south toward Rutland. The “castle” was built in 1867 by Dr. John Johnson for his English wife and is a stately, 32-room manor home with turrets, arches, stained glass, and other fanciful features. The “Wilson” designation came along a bit later, as the grand home was acquired by the Wilson family in 1939. We didn’t actually take the tour, as we arrived just before closing time, but it’s quite an impressive sight from the outside.
On another recent Wednesday, we decided to hike the Silver Lake trail in the Moosalamoo National Recreation Area. The trailhead is on Rte. 53, just south of Branbury State Park on Lake Dunmore. From the parking lot, follow signs leading to the trail. We found the hike to be a moderate uphill walk on a well-marked logging road. Fairly soon after starting out, you’ll hear the sound of rushing water on the left. Take a slight detour to the Falls of Lana overlook and check it out. Seeing the series of cascades is well worth the extra steps!
After a total of about 1.5 miles (and a vertical rise of about 800′), you’ll arrive at Silver Lake, which is a very pretty mountain lake featuring a primitive campground and picnic area with convenient restroom facilities. 
As you stroll through the picnic area, some interesting history is revealed in posted information. A 50-60 room hotel and seminary was a feature of Silver Lake for several decades in the late 19th and early 20th century before burning to the ground around 1940. In addition, the lake area contains several manmade waterways that still harnass the flow of water diverted through a pipeline to produce hydroelectric power near Lake Dunmore at the foot of the hill. Warning: The flumes and chutes are kind of mesmerizing!
Tagged: hiking, Marble Museum, Proctor, Silver Lake, Wilson Castle September 20, 2010
It’s Addison County Fair & Field Days time! That’s our county’s annual festival celebrating agricultural accomplishments and pursuits, along with offering the usual fair midway rides and games, spectator events, and lots and lots of “fair food”. We took in the sites and sounds yesterday afternoon and evening, while eating our way through maple creamees, maple milk, Al’s famous frys, and many other tasty treats. Oh, and Otter Creek Brewery had a beer tent, which we might have visited several times. The highlight of the evening was the Demolition Derby, which in fact, we watched FROM the beer tent! It was a fun evening, reminiscent in many ways of every other county fair in every other part of the country, but spotlighting local folks, their products and talents in a manner that came together in a very satisfying way. We’ll be back to celebrate again next year!
Bruce has really gotten into fly fishing this season after a few tentative moves last summer. The Otter Creek is practically in our back yard, so he often heads down there when the mood strikes. I went down to watch him in action a couple of evenings ago and thought I’d share a bit of what it looks like down there.
Here’s Bruce in full regalia midstream in Otter Creek just below the falls.
And here’s what Otter Creek falls looks like from “the island” on a late summer evening.
Tagged: Addison County Fair & Field Days, fair, fly fishing August 12, 2010
This week, we decided to stay right in the heart of Middlebury for our “Wednesday adventure”. We’d read that the three museums in town (Vermont Folklife Center, Henry Sheldon Museum, and Middlebury College Museum of Art) were offering a Middlebury Culture Card challenge … visit all three museums, get your card punched, and receive a gift. Although we’ve enjoyed all of these institutions many times, we decided to take the challenge!
First up, the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, which is the oldest chartered community history museum in the United States, dating from 1882. The permanent collection at this museum is built on the collections of Henry Sheldon, a 19th century citizen who devoted thirty years of his life to collecting, documenting, and preserving objects, photographs and written records of Vermont, and more particularly of everyday life in Middlebury and Addison County. On this occasion, we focused our viewing on the current (temporary) exhibit in the Walter Cerf Gallery, “The Nature of Wood: Vermont Furniture and Woodware, 1790-Present”.
This is a very well-staged exhibit that informs about the industry and characteristics of early Vermont-made furniture, while displaying outstanding example pieces. I especially liked the display of Windsor chairs, which represent a much more varied style than I previously knew. The exhibit continues through October 23, 2010.
We next moved on to the Vermont Folklife Center. Founded in 1984, the Center is dedicated to preserving and presenting the folkarts and cultural traditions of Vermont.
The primary “vehicle” for carrying through the Center’s mission is preservation of oral histories of Vermonters of all sorts, covering all areas of the state. In addition to its archival work, the Center mounts exhibits that pair photographs with oral histories. The current exhibit (through September 6) is called “A Deep Look at a Small Town: Marlboro, Vermont” and is the work of photographer and oral historian Forrest Holtzapfel, who notes: “The town of Marlboro is both my hometown and a place I’m defining through my photographs. The sum of all my work will create a balance between documentation of our present time and an ‘imaginative history’ of this 230 year-old town. My objective is to create a rich and complex sense of place.”
We found the exhibit compelling … and we spent so much time viewing and listening that we never made it to our third stop, the Middlebury College Museum of Art. That one is now at the top of the queue for another day so that we can complete the challenge and collect our prize!
Tagged: art, history, museums, oral history, photography August 5, 2010
Hey, we did a little more exploring yesterday. We headed north towards Burlington, visiting Mt. Philo State Park in Charlotte and Magic Hat Brewery in South Burlington.
First stop was Mt. Philo. Its history is kind of fun — access to the mountaintop was originally developed by a nearby innkeeper who wanted to offer a signature outdoor experience to his guests by hauling them up the mountain for picnics, as well as opportunities to ooh and aah at the lovely views of Lake Champlain, the Adirondacks, and the Green Mountains. In 1924, Mt. Philo became Vermont’s very first state park. In the 1930s, the CCC was assigned to further develop the facilities. In fact, the developed area at the summit perfectly illustrates the CCC style that is so recognizable in parks all over the country, with rustic, painted log buildings and stonework. I find it kind of cozy and comfortable.
You can hike to the top of the mountain, but there’s also a perfectly nice road if you want to drive to the top. We went with that option and then hiked around a bit from the upper parking lot. It was a little hazy, which obscured the view to some degree, but it really is lovely and we’d like to return with a picnic lunch on one of those sparkly kind of sunny, dry days to get the full impact.
After our mini-hike, we pushed on towards Burlington and visited Magic Hat Brewery. As you might know, Bruce is a HUGE fan of beer, especially beer from small breweries. Did you know that Vermont ranks 1st nationally in craft breweries per capita? We’ve visited quite a number of them (including frequent visits to Otter Creek Brewery right in Middlebury), but had never made time to visit Magic Hat. It’s awesome! The visitor’s center is very cool and the staff offers recommendations and lots of samples. Even the brewing/bottling area is pretty cool — looks like a fun place to work!
You know, it’s pretty fun doing “Wednesday research” on interesting and fun local destinations.
Tagged: hiking, picnics, views July 29, 2010
On July 14th, Bruce and I once again set off on a “Wednesday expedition”, this time visiting Shelburne Museum (http://shelburnemuseum.org/), which is located about 27 miles north of us. It turned out to be yet another destination that more than lives up to its reputation as a really fascinating place to spend a day … or two. Your ticket is good for two consecutive days, which honestly would be barely enough time to really do it justice. We galloped through the place for 5 hours on Wednesday and still only managed to even skim past about 2/3 of the exhibits.
Where to begin in describing the Shelburne Museum!
First of all, the property is lovely. The museum’s collections are housed in dozens of buildings (39 buildings to be exact) spread over a huge park (45 acres) that also features beautifully-maintained gardens. The buildings are very interesting. Many were moved to the site as “collectible objects” in themselves. Some buildings house collections that are relevant to the building (e.g., the 1950 House houses artifacts of that era), while others contain objects that are unrelated to the structure containing them (e.g., the Dorset House — a lovely 1832 Greek Revival house moved to the site from East Dorset, Vermont — houses the country’s largest and finest collection of bird and fish decoys). Some buildings ARE the exhibit (e.g., the Schoolhouse). Here’s just a sample of one of the buildings and small gardens:
Other buildings were constructed on site, for example, the Webb house was built by the children of Electra Havemeyer Webb, the woman whose personal collections form the bulk of the museum’s diverse offerings. The house is modeled after a home that Mrs. Webb had long admired in Orwell, VT, but its main rooms were finished by moving all the furnishings (right down to the paneling on the walls) from the Webb’s Park Avenue triplex. In addition to offering the beauty of the house and furnishings, the Webb house also houses the museum’s Impressionist paintings collection, which includes works by Monet, Manet, Degas, and Cassatt.
The collections displayed throughout the museum are extremely diverse and represent Mrs. Webb’s passion for collecting on many fronts, from fine art, to folk art, to quilts and textiles, to wooden decoys, to circus memorabilia, to period carriages and sleighs, and much more! In addition, the museum mounts special exhibits each season. This season’s special exhibits include a fabulous collection of photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Burtynsky.
And then there’s the Ticonderoga … a 220-foot steamship that once plied the waters of nearby Lake Champlain! The HUGE boat (with a capacity of over 1000 passengers) was hauled 2 miles via rail lines to the museum grounds in 1955.
It sounds kind of crazy and it kind of is … but in a really good way. It’s a fabulous, eccentric place, and you really need to visit! Oh, and it is adjacent to, but completely separate from, Shelburne Farms, which is also fabulous and which will be the subject of another day’s blog!
Tagged: attractions, Shelburne museum July 15, 2010
Recently, Bruce and I took advantage of an absolutely fabulous afternoon to FINALLY hike up Snake Mountain. We’d been hearing about the gorgeous views from the top practically since the day we moved to Middlebury, and the hike has been at the top of our things-to-do-when-we-have-a-free-afternoon-and-the-weather’s-nice list forever. I’m happy to report that the experience really lived up to its billing!
The Snake Mountain trail is accessed from Mountain Rd. just south of Addison, VT, about a 15 minute drive from Middlebury. (We’ve got the directions in our “Hiking in and around Middlebury” binder at the inn.) The parking lot is clearly marked, and from the lot, it’s a walk of a couple of hundred feet further down the road to the trailhead, which is at this point:
The walk to the top is about 1.8 miles, almost entirely on a wide trail through the woods. It’s not a difficult walk, but you do climb fairly steadily. The elevation gain is about 900 feet. On the June day we hiked, there were some muddy places and it seems certain that in the spring, there would be LOTS of muddy places! You do a bit of scrambling over rocks at some points, but it really isn’t a demanding climb.
After about 45 minutes of hiking, you rather suddenly find yourself at the top of the mountain, and the view is absolutely spectacular, looking out to the west towards Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. Here’s a sample, but it’s one of those views that’s impossible to capture in a photo (that’s Bruce enjoying the views!):
It’s surprising to discover that the viewing spot is a manmade concrete slab. The slab dates from the 1940s and represents the dream of a local man to build a home on the site — a dream forever interrupted by WWII, as the young man left for war, never to return.
I hope you enjoy your Snake Mountain hike as much as Bruce and I did!
Tagged: Middlebury hiking, Snake Mountain July 3, 2010
Previous Posts
