Beyond Vermont’s Route 100
You must have read my article about Vermont’s Route 100. Still in Vermont, that morning I woke up in our lovely room in our inn. I saw that the Kozy World KWN321 wall heater is still on. At that time I noticed, that’s why we almost didn’t feel the cold of the winter which is quite bone biting. I walked to the window where the bright morning sky glitters in a sunlight so cold it chills the eyes and makes the nose tingle. Even sound is muffled in the -8°F air. A good day to see Vermont at its new-minted winter best.
We have to packed again a little, put everything into our Samsonite Xspace. Of course we did not forget to put the Motorola MBP36 Baby Monitor into our baby’s bag. The preparation took about 20 minutes and after having a very simple breakfast, we were all set to go.
The well-plowed road passes cliffs cloated in the thick, incandescent blue of frozen springwater. Farmhouse eaves wear long icicle beards. Cutting through the stillness, Route 100 weaves up Terrible Mountain, then tumbles downhill into the old mill town of Ludlow. Now a ski town, Ludlow still has streets lined with fine Victorian homes, gingerbreaded monuments to earlier industrial affluence.
Continue driving on the road, past the hamlet of Tyson, echo Lake makes a hard, white blur beside the road. Fishing shanties huddle on it with the temporariness of a nomad camp. A blue jay dives through the white-skinned birches around the lake like a piece of frozen sky falling to the frozen earth.
Only a few miles beyond the lake, a state road sign points right, toward Calvin Coolidge’s birthplace in Plymouth. The hilltop cluster of houses, now a state historic district, is closed for the winter, but nearby is the cemetery –impervious to the seasons. The wind has scooped hollows in the snow around the gravestones, but Coolidge’s grave, though simple, is easy to pick out: Two child-size versions of Old Glory are stuck in the snow on either side of it.
Approximately only a dozen miles past this peaceful scene of Americana, Route 100 will arrive at Sherburne Center, the crossroads that serves the East’s largest ski resort: Killington.