Last updated on 2/14/2023
Here’s how my vacation went…
We returned to our favorite Vermont hideaway after an absence of two years. The tiny lake hidden away in the teeny town of Wallingford hasn’t changed a bit in the interim. This is one of the great charms of the place: you always know what you’re going to get. The Adirondack-style cottages with the screened-in porches and crazy slanting floors will still be there, the winding mountain goat trails to the beach, the ant-hill of a beach itself and the green mountain views will all be just as they were in your memory.
The only problem with this New England Eden is getting there. It’s 540 miles away, which means early depart and a full day of dueling it out with the lunatics on the NY State Thruway. Though we’ve travelled this route many times, we still manage to take a wrong turn somewhere. This takes us on a detour through upstate cornfields and the tourist bear-trap of Lake George. The last thing you want when you’re 500 miles out is to sit in a traffic jam admiring putt-putt courses and tacky theme motels. I sometimes think there must be a place like this much closer to home, but then I realize the remoteness of it is a big part of the attraction.
No matter. After a tension-filled summit conference between driver and navigator, we recover and enter the Green Mountain paradise. I have a little fun bouncing the rented SUV up the rocky driveway and then we land. The place seems to attract a certain type of laid-back roll-with-the-punches visitor, and we enjoy seeing people we’ve met here before. Wow, their kids are bigger, our kids are bigger (we’re not any older!), how’s life in Manhattan or Wisconsin. For some weird reason, the camp often seems to be filled with other Buckeyes — there is apparently a mystical Ohio-Vermont connection. Asking about the few locals we know, we’re told they’re vacationing in Ohio. Go figure.
Main activities on this type of vacation: swimming, reading, sightseeing and planning the next meal. Elfin Lake is small enough that even a so-so swimmer can backstroke all the way across. Sometimes we’re too lazy even for that and just float around on rafts watching the cows until we’re the color of lobsters, which reminds us what to order for dinner. Books read: ‘The Case for Mars’ (new concept: making rocket fuel from thin air) and ‘Confederates in the Attic’ (new concept: Farb vs. hard-core). Highly recommend both. Also read local newspapers cover-to-cover. I LOVE doing this when I’m in another place, it’s part of getting to know all about it.
Limited sight-seeing, since we only had a week, but we’re able to cover Middlebury, a college/bookstore/gallery/boutique type of place. Vermont is a junk-store shopper’s paradise, or if your wallet can handle it, up-scale antiquing is big also. I think those old farmers just bring grandma’s cobweb-covered cast-offs down from their barns and hee-haw all the way to the bank. We take a steep scenic transmission-wrecking mountain view drive. Check out regional craft/art fairs, obligatory over-priced souvenir shopping, compare notes with other campers on where we’ve been. Hang out in local corner store just to try and feel local. But always end up back on the beach with brewski in hand — now THAT’S living! Luck is with us this year, no ear infections or other injuries requiring doc-in-the-box.
Too soon, Friday comes and we have to start packing for re-entry, the saddest part of any vacation. Somehow, we always make MUCH better time on the trip home. Supposedly, if you are living your ideal lifestyle, you don’t NEED vacation because you are already satisfied and complete. This does not make any sense to me — even smug satisfied self-actualized types need a change of pace. That’s my vacation philosophy — tune out, drop out, turn off. Next year — TWO weeks. Already looking forward to it.
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