Up and Down Vermont

First tonight, let me close off my travel diary; after staying at a charming bed & breakfast in southern Vermont on Monday night, my partner and I drove northward on Tuesday, several people having told us that Route 100 was the place to go for the best scenic views. And so Chester to Londonderry and then north, through Plymouth and then Killington, past hills — er, mountains — with ski resorts, alongside charming lakes, like the narrow ever-winding Echo Lake, lined with picturesque vacation homes and resorts. But alas, the further north we drove, the browner and barer the hillsides became. The fall colors were actually best further south. A few days or a week makes all the difference, but so does the latitude. We reached a charming town called Rochester, with a town square and shops with angled parking in front, had a light lunch, bought some maple syrup and other maple souvenirs, then crossed the mountains to US 7 along their western edge, and headed back south. Through Bennington with an amazing obelisk of some sort on a hill, across into New York State and to Albany, where Yeong was flying home; we circled downtown, which has some peculiar structure at its center, like a cross between a UFO and a football, then — as ever surrendering ourselves to the directions of the rental car’s ‘NeverLost’ GPS navigation system — headed out to the airport, where he had a 7 p.m. flight back to LA. From there I drove north 30 miles or so to Saratoga Springs, where my difficulties checking in and setting up were documented in the previous post…