MOOSEVILLE

We continue to work on the lean-tos. The finished ones are a great improvement. Hope the campers appreciate all that hard work.

We went to Brandon for a corn festival and street dance. Of course, all the food was made from corn so I could not eat it due to allergy, but I had eaten before I went being prepared for that. We walked the streets looking at the neat houses in the town. Most are so big and they all had carriage houses (garages now) in back. We did not bring our camera but will go back and get some pictures next time. They had a pretty good band. Some of us old folks got out on the street and did some dancing. Allan and I had not really danced in about a year. It was steamy hot. We met Mike and Rosie while dancing. He is a dance instructor. We left as soon as the mosquitoes started biting.

Today was a rainy day but we had planned to drive to southern Vermont to visit the Vermont Country Store. This is a huge store with everything you could think of, lots of old things you used to buy including soaps and shampoos. There was lots of free samples of cheese, dips, sausage, jams and jellies. It was pricey. We had lunch there which was tasty. The room we ate in was apparently an old bar. The bar was dark, heavy wood and had big mirrors. Quite interesting.

From there we traveled to the Southern Natural History Museum. A lot of their specimens were from back in the 30's and still in excellent shape. We spent about 2 hours there. They had all kinds of birds and mammals stuffed. There were two live owls, 2 hawks and a keister in their raptor center. They had been injured and were not able to be released back into the wild. There was a storm going on while we were there. We were able to watch the clouds with lightning in the distance. This museum is perched on Hogback Mountain overlook. You can see 100 miles and Massachusetts and New Hampshire on a clear day. Since it was raining we are not sure how far we could see. It was a beautiful overlook. We did not have to pay since we are volunteers at a state park.

As we were heading back home we drove through Bennington, Vt. and were surprised to see so many moose. They were having Moose Fest 2009. All the moose were statues located in front of different businesses. We got pictures of a few of them. Still no picture of a real moose.