About Towns …
Posted by Sarah - 06/11/05 at 02:11:36 pm
Though we haven’t been writing about it much, we’ve continued to explore Vermont. Inspired by the 251 Club (some members of which we got to meet in-person at a recent VT blogger meetup), Rick made a 251 page where we can track our progress.
When The Steelers aren’t playing a 1:00pm Sunday game, these afternoons are the perfect time for us to hop in the car and check out a new town for a couple of hours. Several weeks ago we drove over to Northfield. We enjoyed the quiet setting and historic “New England” feel, and had a blast spending too much time and money in the used book store on the green. The town also had some great views. For us, the major detractor was that Northfield is the home of Norwich University: while we admire the institution we are a little too hippiefied to feel at home in a town that is mostly populated by a military academy. It was a great town to spend a couple of hours in though.
Last Sunday, we headed over to Bristol, about an hour’s drive west-south of Montpelier. Bristol lies just a bit off of the major north-south corridor of the Lake Champlain valley, Route 7, and the proximity to Burlington and Montpelier drew us to the area. We tried taking a short-cut across the mountains via the Lincoln Gap Road but had to back track a couple of miles onto the more conventional (and paved) Route 17 when we discovered Lincoln Gap was closed due to fire. (It also looked like some trees had not been cleared off the road from the wind storm a week earlier, and that had us wondering what the people who live on Lincoln Gap Road do in the winter. Stay home I guess.)
At any rate, we eventually got into Bristol, parked next to the large town green (no meters!), and immediately snapped off a few pictures. It was sunny and beautiful so we strolled around a bit before checking out an eclectic Asian imports and weird do-dads store, an art gallery featuring the works of Vermont craftsmen (painting, sculpture, hand-carved spoons, ceramics, and jewelry), and then the Bristol Bakery & Cafe which had great soup and organic green-tea soda. We loved the area and felt comfortable in the town. It seemed large enough to be a town one could go to for errands, but small enough that the surrounding countryside would have the rural feel we are looking for. The one detractor of Bristol is that we are not the only ones who are enamored with it, and the property values are skyrocketing. We’ll keep an eye on it but wonder if we’ll be able to afford land and/or a house in the area.
On the way to and from Bristol along Route 100 (before the turn to Route 17) we were also reminded how much we like the areas around Moretown and Waitsfield. The towns are smallish and the surrounding fields and farms reminded us of England. The proximity to highway 89 is an added bonus. Again, the question of affordability came up, but for now we’ll add these areas to our list of “places we could live” and continue our search.
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