Today we are moving on to Woodstock, although I don’t think it was the one where the music festivals happened in the 60’s! Our first stop was at Montpelier which is the state Capitol of Vermont. When we arrived we went to tourist information who provided us with copies of walking tours for State Street, Main Street and around college town so we set off to do the one on State Street. Between 1778 and 1808, Vermont had no permanent seat of government, its legislature met 47 times in 13 different towns so in 1805 Montpelier was established as the permanent seat contingent on the town creating suitable buildings and conveying them and the land to the state by September 1808. Subscriptions and pledges were made and the land was donated and the first state house was built. It was replaced in the late 1830s with a granite building and in January 1857 fire destroyed the Capitol so reconstruction was necessary and the present building was created. From there we walked along State Street looking at various buildings, the majority of the buildings were in the Georgian style, further down the road was the County Courthouse, this was the third building which had been enlarged in 1879, behind the Courthouse was a brick jailhouse, this was expanded in 1911 and the previous 2 1/2 building was made into a four story building and it was also expanded to the sides, you can see the difference in the brickwork where the extension was added. As we went round the corner we started the walk along Main Street where the style of the houses changed, there were some wooden and others in the french style which to be honest just looked strange. This area also contains some of the earliest ‘malls’ which were built, the tallest example has proved to be a template for many downtowns across America. We had spent about an hour walking round the town and it was then time to head off to Woodstock. On the way we stopped at a number of covered bridges the first was in Waitsfield and was the Great Eddie Covered bridge originally built in 1833 it has been restored a few times, in 2011 Hurricane Irene caused the river to flood causing damage to the bridge and there is a mark on the wall where the water came up to. Our next stop was Warren covered bridge which was off the imaginatively named Covered Bridge Road! This was built in 1879 but there was very little information other than that. We then took a detour up to Lincoln gap which is closed in winter, it was an interesting drive but unfortunately you couldn’t really get a good view. We drove back down and continued into the Green Mountains and stopped at Warren Falls which is apparently one of the most impressive waterfalls in the area, unfortunately it either has very little competition or it is better during the spring melt! We stopped at a few places on the drive as in places the colours are quite spectacular and we did catch a glimpse of quite large areas that had changed colour. Our final stop before getting to the hotel was at Killington ski resort which is another one that doesn’t really seem to have a centre and from what we could make out there are at least two if not three different base areas but none of them seem to have much of a centre. We stood and watched a number of mountain bikers go up the gondola and a few came down but you couldn’t really see much, we didn’t bother going up the Gondola but may do so over the next couple of days. We arrived at the hotel about 5pm and after settling in we went for an early dinner as the town seems quite busy and it is Saturday night so hopefully we will get in ahead of the rush.
