Danville, VT

Sunday, June 9 to Friday, June 14

We enjoyed 5 nights camping at Sugar Ridge RV Village & Campground in Danville, VT. It’s in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont about 70 miles from the Canadian border. Charming area! Sparsely populated, hilly and very picturesque. Most of the sites in the campground were seasonal (meaning people park their RVs for 5 months at a clip) and for good reason. These sites would be a bear to get in and out of on a regular basis. Most are up some sort of a hill and RV’s are shoe horned into position. Based on the elaborate decks, screen houses, and gardens that surround the RVs, these folks have been here for several seasons. Their home-away-from homes are a thing of beauty! We had one of the few level sites in the campground that are meant for transients so our parking was a piece of cake. 

We enjoyed several days of picture perfect weather and a couple of days of spotty showers. We drove into quaint St. Johnsbury and enjoyed the town’s historic charm and visited the Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild. A large building housing the work of many local artists including woodworkers, jewelry makers, weavers, and painters. The featured artist was a local woman who painted colorful 3-D fish and other sea creatures. Seeing the work of local artists is one of our favorite things to do as we tour various areas. The town itself had some lovely older buildings dating back to the late 1800’s. The Visitor’s Center is located in an old train station. The library was built in 1871 and is actually called “The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum & Art Gallery.” Charming interior with an art gallery at the back. We didn’t visit the art gallery…. they charged a separate fee and it was traditional art, which isn’t our favorite. We did chat with a volunteer at the library who had moved up to St. Jay three years ago from Manchester, NH. She and her husband love it here. She was telling us the Athenaeum had been renovated several years ago to bring it back to it’s former glory, and it is a gorgeous building with high ceilings and huge windows. As with many small towns in the U.S., we also saw some empty store fronts. It’s a sad fact of life that it’s hard for local businesses to compete with the big box stores. 

We visited the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Jay, which we had previously visited many years ago and remembered. Talk about eclectic! Mr. Fairbanks gave a lot to the town… including this museum. He and his family invented many things, but what put them on the map was inventing the platform scale. They launched a very successful company because of that invention. Fairbanks was a collector in the Victorian era. The building itself is a Victorian treasure. There is an enormous collection of taxidermy dating back to the late 1800’s and early 1900’s… all kinds of stuffed birds, polar bear, moose, and an enormous snake…. truly a one-of-a-kind collection. (Perhaps because no one would want a second collection like this.) Then there’s the dead butterflies and bugs that are on display. Some of the bugs will give you nightmares. That’s the first floor. Climbing the narrow wooden spiral staircase to the second floor takes you to various collections of micro photography of snow flakes, zulu beading (I’ve got pictures for you, Ellen), more stuffed birds, taxidermy tools, clothing pieces, and “bug art.” I thought it was tapestry or needlepoint, but turns out that the artwork was created by an entomologist and each piece of art contains 6,000 to 13,000 insects. There’s a definite ick factor with it but a certain ghoulish fascination as well. Pictures are below.  One of us was interested in doing the planetarium (me) and one of us wasn’t soooo we let the planetarium go, plus there was an added fee for that. 

Cabot, Vermont was a stone’s throw away from Danville so we visited the Cabot Creamery. They are no longer doing tours of the plant but they had a new 10 minute video that talked about the company and they had 25 different cheeses that you could try. And, I loooove cheeeeeese!  We learned that Cabot Creamery is a cooperative. Basically 900 farm families own the company, and it’s run by a board of directors. The co-op is 100 years old. Pretty impressive! Cabot Cheddar is aged from 2 months up to 5 years…. depending on the type of cheese. We bought a 3-year old aged cheddar and a Tuscan Cheddar Cheese. Yum. 

With our good weather in VT we also had the opportunity to bike ride part of the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. One of the launching spots for the trail was from our campground. Unfortunately, it was down a steep rutted path to get to it. We walked the bikes down and enjoyed our first rail trail experience. Gorgeous ride. We went about 6 miles… three miles down grade and three miles up grade. Thankfully it was a fairly shallow grade, although I still had to stop and rest a few times. We were tempted to go further when we were doing the downward portion but figured we may get in trouble on the up slope if we pushed it. Plus we had two big hills to walk the bikes back to our campsite. We were content with our 6 miles and then enjoyed the pool for a few hours… with some screaming kids. But, that’s ok. We still enjoyed it. 

In addition we wandered around the campground and admired the fancy decks and gardens, played two rounds of mini golf at the campground, and relaxed outside our tiny home. That summed up our stay in Vermont!

We had one little hiccup as we were leaving the campground. As previously mentioned, this is very hilly terrain. We were coming down a hill to exit the campground and the rear exterior storage tube where we store our sewer hose caught on the pavement and broke. Oops. We had to stop and pull that off. Gary was a tad bummed. This is the second time we’ve had problems with this so it looks like a new storage design is in order for carrying the sewer hose. Gary’s already coming up with a new plan. 

That’s it for us and camping until September when we head to Bar Harbor, Maine. Enjoy the summer everyone and stay in touch! xoxo