Andy Rudin sent this link to a history of the rail trail in an LVRT magazine.  Click here.  I had a little trouble getting the pages to turn, stay put, etc., but that's just me. Once I got the hang of it, I found the magazine interesting.  

I learned from Dot Larrabee that there will be someone at the West Danville church on Friday from 9:00 to 9:45 and then from 10:30 on for a few hours if you have items to drop off for Saturday's yard sale. 

We went out for lunch with middle son, Bob and daughter-in-law Theresa today and decided to try the Village Restaurant that sort of hangs out over the river.  I hadn't been there in years, and it hadn't changed much, but it was brighter than I remembered, and the food was pretty darned good.  We had sandwiches - except for Fred, who had pancakes; he likes places that serve breakfast all day.  Everything was good, it was clean and service was excellent.  Next time I think I'd try to be there a little early to get a table overlooking the river, but as it was, the booth was comfortable and even though the street is somewhat above you when you're seated, it was quite pleasant.  Here's a postscript:  I went looking for a picture on line and here's what I found - the place has just recently been put up for sale.  Take a look - Village Restaurant.

From there we took off for Nichol's Pond.  The road from the Hardwick side was under construction, so we went in from the Cabot side - a bit longer, but still an interesting trip.  We were in Bob's pickup and that was really fortunate.  The road after we got to the Nichol's Ledge parking area was washed out in spots and it would have been hard gigging for our car.  Passable, but we would have bottomed out in a few places.  This picture was taken a few years back of the road to a sugar woods - thus the fence across the road.  But it is in the same vicinity and the road we were on today was no wider and in much worse condition.  We found our way to the dam, but now there are cottages along the shore so we couldn't find a spot to see the ledge from, which is what Bob wanted to do.  We have all been up to the ledge and seen the pond from there - a really beautiful sight - but Bob had never seen the ledge from the water.  Fred and I went in a small inflatable boat one fall many years ago, so we had seen the ledge from that vantage point.  Bob will go back with his mountain bike another time and follow some of the trails leading to the opposite side of the pond and will have a good vantage point from there, I expect.  

We had all forgotten to take our cameras, so the pictures here are from some previous trip.  Today was fun, and I was able to impress everyone by pointing out Coit's Pond which is the headwaters for the Winooski River.  I know, it's hard to believe a swampy little pond (see picture taken one spring a few years ago) like this with just a small brook running out of it turns into the sizeable Winooski, but it really does.  There are small brooks feeding into it all along the route through Cabot and Marshfield so by the time it gets to Montpelier, it's a river.

Here's something some of you may be interested in.  I recently learned that the old Maynard Farm on Cabot Plain (this photo was taken when it was a well kept, productive little farm) has been purchased by someone in Texas.  Over the years the picturesque farm has been admired by lots of people and offers to buy it have been turned down perhaps dozens of times.  The owner, a daughter of Fred and Julia Maynard who owned it for many years when I was growing up, always hoped to go back to live there, but it didn't happen and the place slowly fell into total disrepair.  The shed roof caved in one winter, the porch detached during a heavy snowfall the next, and so on. Finally she decided to sell it rather than continue to pay taxes.  It's beyond fixing at this point and the new owner approached the Cabot Fire Department about razing it - using it for training for local fire departments.  After looking it over, the chief turned down the proposal saying it was too dangerous to go inside, so it wouldn't be useful for training.  I expect it will be bulldozed instead.  It will be very sad to see the old house go, but absolutely necessary as it's truly hazardous now if anyone should venture into it.  We'll be interested to see what the new owners will do with the property.  There is certainly a great deal of potential there - it's a beautiful setting. The above photo was taken in August, 2010.