Vermont

2022-10-09
VT

Today we had planned head north a ways to tackle Mount Abraham, one of the higher peaks in Vermont. The hike is about 2000 feet of climb to summit above 4000 feet. However, the weather forecast was for rain in the afternoon (spoiler alert: it rained) and we were afraid that it would start while we here high on the mountain. There are a lot of rocks on these hikes, and, as the sign says, they are slippery when wet. Plus the top of the hike is a rock scramble which can be challenging when dry and treacherous when wet. Thus we opted for a hike at Texas Falls as an alternative. Waterfalls work well on cloudy days. This one had hollowed out sections of the rock in an interesting manner.

We hiked the 1.25 mile loop at Texas Falls. Despite being only 40 or so miles north of Killington, it seems like Fall fell here. The paths were covered with dry leaves and there was little if any green remaining on the deciduous trees. We also figured out that the falls were at the beginning, and the rest of the trail was just a nice walk on a mountain.

We tried for a local lake hike, but someplace between Alltrails and google maps it led us astray. So we headed down to Killington for another waterfall hike, this one a very easy half a mile on a board walk to Thundering Brook Falls. It was a great hike for kids, and there were a lot of them. The falls were lovely.

With rain expected we headed southeast a ways to the American Precision Museum. This is in the heart of "Precision Valley", the area of Vermont that gave rise to precise, repeatable machining and replaceable parts. The original contract was to make 10,000 rifles for the US Government that had interchangeable parts. All the work to make this happen was in designing the tools and manufacturing machines that could consistently, precisely, and accurately generate the parts. This was a new concept at the time, but the implications for modern society are huge. Anyway, as a mechanical engineer I was fascinated and spent several hours in a relatively small museum.

After that we stopped at Farmhouse Pottery to browse before they closed, and then at the Long Trail brewery for dinner. You may have had their beer as it is available in PA, but I think most brews are better at the brewery. We sat out by the river (wearing jackets) and had a nice meal with our beer.