Showing posts with label West Rutland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West Rutland. Show all posts

Friday, August 14, 2015

Ilovermont, Part 2…

My Grandpa Lambert worked for the Rutland Railroad in Alburgh, Vermont, about a five minute drive from the Canadian border.  That’s where my father was born and grew up.  So my ties to Vermont are actually blood ties.  I am not sure if that has anything to do with the fact that when I cross the border into Vermont, I tend to decompress and feel more peaceful internally.

This is a photo of my Grandpa's baseball team.  George is the adult sitting on the bottom step in the front on the right.
I come from a long line of baseball lovers, too.

Most likely, this has more to do with me feeling good about Vermont:  The largest city in Vermont is Burlington, which is located an hour due south of Alburgh.  It is a city of approximately 42, 000 people, which makes it about the same size as the city I grew up in – Middletown, Ohio – although Middletown does have a few more people.  Burlington is the most populous city in Vermont, while there are 17 cities larger than Middletown in Ohio.  That leaves room in Vermont for a lot of this:


...and this:


Of course, it doesn’t mean that these kind of scenes don’t exist in Ohio.  They do.  But in Vermont, it's that in between those rural scenes are just more of those rural scenes with picturesque little towns sprinkled around.  I love it!

  Now and then you see a sign that makes a human heart and a pug heart skip a beat.  It looks like this:



Our trip to Vermont this time was prompted by Greg finding a bed & breakfast in West Rutland, Vermont, called The Paw House Inn.  The Paw House caters to dogs and dog-people.  It’s a great place to stay if you love dogs and travel with a dog.



Olive the pug had a great time there as did we.  Unfortunately, I had a brain fart while there and neglected to take my camera down to breakfast so I have no photos of the Inn Dog, Stanley, a friendly, but serious little terrier mix who helped to greet us and make us feel right at home.  You can see a nice photo of Stanley sitting on a big yellow chair on the inn's website.  Click here.

  Stanley and Olive saw eye to eye and that was a good thing.  The seven other dogs who were there at the time were all bigger than pug-sized.  No matter.  They all got along fine.  Well, there were a few episodes of barking and showing off, but mostly there was a lot of face licking and butt sniffing going on. It was a peaceable kingdom of dogs.

I must have been in a haze each morning, because I got no pictures of the other dogs either.  My BAD!  What was I thinking?????  My only excuse is that I had to come downstairs and take Olive out before I had my coffee.  But I did manage a shot of the downstairs parlor with its doggie wallpaper.


Anyhow, it’s time to call it a day here.  Guess what?  I have a lot more photos of Vermont and hope to go through them more thoroughly soon.

 I hope you all have a great weekend!


Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Ilovermont…

Last week Greg, Olive the pug and I took a short break and drove up to Vermont.   When I say I love Vermont, it is a bit of an understatement.  Personally, I think Vermont might just be the most wonderful place on earth.  I’ve often fantasized about living up there, but I don’t suppose at this point in my life, it will ever happen.  Still, I feel lucky that we live only about three hours from one of the most beautiful places on earth – The Republic of Vermont.

What prompted our visit this time was that Greg heard about a bed and breakfast in West Rutland that caters to dogs and dog-people called The Paw House Inn.  We put the question to Olive and she decided that she wanted to check it out, too.  I’ll blog a little more about that later, but right now, I’m just going to post a few photos of our trip up north.

On our way, we stopped for lunch at a nice little roadside restaurant called Grandpa Joe's Fried Food somewhere in northern Massachusetts.  When we travel with Olive, we love finding places where we can eat outside.  At Grandpa Joe's, this little girl spied Olive and was pretty taken with her, but she wasn't allowed to come down and pet her.  Isn't she cute?


For the first time in my life, I had an Elvis Sandwich.  It consisted of grilled peanut butter and bananas.  It was pretty good, but I don't think I'll make a habit of it.


Once we were back on the road, we made it into Vermont pretty quickly.



And eventually, we ended up in West Rutland where Olive was royally greeted at The Paw House Inn.


One of the innkeeper Mitch's suggestions for dinner was a dog-friendly place on Lake Bomoseen called The Lake House Pub & Grill.  Olive was once again treated like royalty and was given many treats and pets.  I got myself a treat, too.


As the sun was setting over Lake Bomoseen, we headed for our temporary home.


And Olive enjoyed the bed that was put there just for her majesty.