Letter from Vermont

Every September, one of the highlights for our family is spending a couple of days at the Vermont State Fair in Rutland.  There are two very distinct sides to the fair, and a little brooklet runs through the middle of the fairgrounds, separating the two.  The fairway side has the amusement rides, the food concessions, the grandstand for the ticketed entertainers, the games of chance, and generally a little bit more rough-and-tumble atmosphere.  Cross the brook, though, and you feel like you’ve found a completely separate event, with the agricultural contests including a thousand pound pumpkin this year, the fiddling, the maple sugar shack with all its delights, the Grange exhibits, the barns to walk through and meet dairy cows, draft horses, a mother pig and her piglets, and hutch after hutch of rabbits.  You can probably tell which side of the river tends to hold our attention as a family with young children.

The Fair runs for several days at the beginning of September, often when the weather is still pretty mild.  About mid-month, though, things turn quickly to autumn.  The early-turning swamp maples begin to exchange their shades of green for brighter hues of orange, gold, and scarlet.  Foliage starts in earnest the last week of September and classically holds through the first half of October in our part of Vermont.

These are the days of frost on the pumpkin outside the door, of woodfires burning in the hearths, and of the innkeepers’ bellweather, the capacity crowd in the dining room each morning (and many evenings!).  This season, as in past seasons, we have been hosting guided group biking tours operated by Bike Vermont as well as guided group hiking tours operated by REI Adventures and Country Inns Along the Trail.  At this point, foliage has a little under two more weeks to run.  What happens then?  Some other time, perhaps.