Fall in Vermont

As most of you know, Ariane and I took a trip out to Wyoming and Montana this summer to pick up Chandre and bring her back to Vermont. Chandre is so big now and took swimming lessons while in Wyoming this summer. Here she is taking a jump off my dad's party boat in Whitefish.


While in Wyoming, Chandre got to ride horses, play with pigs and have a lot of fun. Here's Chandre and her grandpa Greg riding horses together. After not seeing her for two months, I was absolutely amazed at how well she did with the horses. She would lead them around the arena and wasn’t scared at all.

This shot was taken by the banks of the Connecticut River, which passes through downtown Brattleboro and separates Vermont from New Hampshire. It’s a really big river and gets pretty industrial down in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is on this river, about five miles south of Brattleboro. I didn’t know this town was so close to a nuclear power plant when I moved here. On the first Saturday of each month, the nuclear plant tests its sirens and that can be pretty creepy. The state of Vermont just mailed us some potassium iodide pills, just in case there’s a meltdown!

This picture is also taken from the banks of the Connecticut River. We’re looking northwest here, towards downtown Brattleboro.

Here’s Chandre posing next a small creek in Jamaica State Park, Vt. Jamaica is about 30 minutes northwest of Brattleboro, and has several miles of old railroad tracks that were turned into hiking trails. We had a good time looking at the informational displays along the trail. The area has vicious “Fisher Cats” that can take down almost any animal. This area used to have lots of trains going through until the winters became too much. One train was stuck on the tracks here for several days after an avalanche.

I took a tour of the Searsburg Wind Power Generation Plant a few weeks ago, and it was really cool! Here’s a shot of one of the 11 wind towers on a ridgeline about 3,000 feet above sea level. The site is about 30 minutes west of Brattleboro, about halfway to Bennington. The 11 generators create about 6 Megawatts of power – enough for about 2,000 homes.

Here’s a shot of an array of windmills. Each one is about 200 feet tall, has a blade radius of 132 feet and weighs almost 120,000 pounds! The average wind speeds on the ridge is about 18 mph and over the course of a year, the renewable energy facility offsets an estimated 60 tons of sulfur dioxide, 36 tons of nitrous oxide and 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide that would have otherwise been produced. Pretty cool, eh?

Vermont is known for its dairy products - which are absolutely to die for – and maple syrup. There’s also quite a few organic farms and apple orchards around here. When Chandre was here in September, we all went to an apple orchard to pick a few. I got this picture of Chandre when she wasn’t looking. I think it’s very cute.

It didn’t take very long to fill a huge bag full of apples. It was a lot of fun and Ariane made a yummy apple crisp afterwards. Mmm… They also had a llama, some sheep and other animals at the farm. We were kind of bummed out because we all wanted to climb one of those tapered ladders all the way to the tops of the trees. Unfortunately, there were no ladders at this orchard – a safety issue or something.

When we were leaving the orchard, Chandre found this big-ole’ worm, and she made friends with it. She’s such an animal-lover, which is wonderful in my opinion. We found the worm a nice place to live in the bushes off the beaten path – we didn’t want it to get stepped on.
One great thing about moving to Vermont is the excitement of finding something new. This is the Paper Mill Village Covered Bridge, in Bennington, Vt. This one is really hidden and if you didn’t know it was there, you’d pass it in a second. And it’s really cool how the water cascades off the damn here. Brattleboro has three or four covered bridges around the area, and Bennington has five. There are many more scattered around the region.

Autumn in Vermont has been really amazing - the town is surrounded by mountains covered with deciduous trees! While Wantastiquet Mountain, just east of town, turns shades of yellow and brown, other hills have vibrant reds, oranges and yellows. This picture was taken at the Brattleboro Common, just north of downtown. While the west coast is littered with public lands, the east coast isn’t. So each town/village has several “common” areas that are for public use. This is my favorite spot to throw the Frisbee around!

This picture is at the “common” in Townshend, Vt. Townshend is pretty close to Jamica (30 minutes northwest of Brattleboro. I don’t remember if it’s Townshend or Newfane, but the Chevy Chase movie “Funny Farm” was filmed at one of those two towns.

This is a shot of a downtown tower and Wantastiquet Mountain. This was taken before the foliage went crazy in the past two weeks. The mountain is now covered with yellows, browns and some reds. People are saying this year’s colors are much better than the past few years, but nothing compared to “back in the day.” From Montana to Vermont, people are saying the weather is changing and things aren’t what they used to be. I think there’s something to be said for that – Drive Less! Recycle! Reduce Consumption! Eat Locally! Love the Planet!