The countryside here was swampy, and there were fir trees that looked like those on top of Mt. LeConte in the Great Smoky Mountains. We crossed the St. Lawrence and entered the US again without much ado. "Not much open back there, was there?" the American border guard said; it was Good Friday and much of Ontario is Catholic, many of the businesses closed. But what a difference! Suddenly there was litter again, and falling-down houses, trashed yards, mobile homes.
I have to say it made me a little ashamed of my country; I can understand the poverty we saw in much of the country, but not this negligence of property here in upstate New York; even the poorest farmer in Pennsylvania took pride in his property, took his trash to the landfill instead of throwing it out the window of his car.
But Vermont was a different matter. As soon as we crossed Lake Champlain, we encountered neat little farms, beautiful Towns, and those iconic red barns, like this one spotted on the way into Stowe.
Martha said she has learned that these barns are actually red because that was the least expensive kind of paint in those days. This was beautiful, rolling country, much like that in our part of western North Carolina, but there was still snow on the slopes of some of the mountains above Stowe and lingering in the shade of birch trees along the road.
We were staying at the Innsbruck Inn, which was a rambling, quaint old place, with a covered bridge out back across a bold stream tumbling over smooth rounded rocks.
The white birches for which Vermont is also famous were everywhere - my family used to drive into western Massachusetts and Vermont when I was a boy and marvel at them - but this specimen in the hotel parking lot was one of the tallest I had ever seen.
After check-in, we drove into Town and wandered down Main Street for the afternoon. The town was established in 1763 and contains many well-preserved historic buildings. The Community Church was prominent, where we planned to attend worship services on Easter Sunday. We talked to a young man had been skiing earlier in a T-shirt; "Not the skiing there used to be," he said, "Too much money these days." But he seemed pleased enough with his morning bout of downhill exhilaration.
It was a beautiful and tranquil city, which seemed to be in the midst of a transition from a venerable old ski destination to a more trendy kind of place, but still remained very conscious of its history and committed to preserving its unique natural environment
We had dinner at Harrison's downtown, concealed in the basement of an old brick building, and then drove up past our inn to the historic Trapp Family Lodge, where Martha's aunt Anne had a condo until recently, It is a remarkable place, founded in the 1940s by the von Trapp Family (of Sound of Music fame) on 2500 mountaintop acres. It made you want to sing, "The hills are alive with the sound of music!"
We watched the sun set from the top of the mountain and then drove back down through snowy woods to sleep soundly; that great New Englander Robert Frost was on my mind.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
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