The Bridges of Chittenden County

I hope Blogger resolves it's picture uploading issues once and for all and then I'll be able to complete the Tourist-Snatched post and this one.

On our way back to Montreal, my mother and I stopped at a Visitors Center to get a map of Vermont. I had mentioned Vermont's covered bridges in the car earlier and my mother asked the clerk if there were any nearby. We were on the highway next to Lake Champlain and he explained that we'd have to go further into the state.

At first, I thought we would have to miss the bridges, since getting away from the Lake meant getting away from our final destination. But looking closer at the map -the bridge locations are marked by little icons- I notices we could take only a small detour, up a country road, and quickly reconnect to the expressway. And there were TWO covered bridges on that route.

As Courtney's reaction to my account showed me, not everyone knows what a covered bridge is. This is where Blogger's picture uploading would come in handy but alas. So I'll explain (and try not to make it as confusing as the tourist-snatched thing). A covered bridge is a wooden span over a small river, and it's unique feature is that it has walls and a roof! You can drive through some of them, and you can walk through others, I think depending on their state (not THE state). I know there are lots of them in Vermont and I understand there are some in other parts of the US and Canada. *

The funny thing about our little detour to see these two bridges was that, of course, we didn't know *where* in each town the bridge would be. We assumed these towns would put up a sign to point out their only tourist attraction right? Wrong. No signs. At the first place (a road crossing more than a town) we stopped by a man pumping gas and asked him. "Ha! It's right there!" "Where?" "Right there." And there it was, around the bend, just sitting under some tall trees. There was no plaque or anything. It had been replaced by a newer bridge but was still sitting over the river. We parked the car and walked through it. A couple of teenaged girls followed us later. Just another day in rural Vermont.

At the second town the no-big-deal attitude was even more pronounced, possibly because we stopped to ask two prepubescent boys about the location of their town's covered bridge. It was more of a "duh, right over there" answer. "Where?" "Right there." This one you could drive through, which was fun too. And at the end of the bridge was a small fruits and vegetables stand with two men -one inside, one outside- talking. We asked for directions back to the Interstate and that was the end of our little sidetrip through cow country. My mother said there weren't enough cows.


*Canada has the longest covered bridge in the world, according to Wikipedia. It's in New Brunswick. And Quebec apparently has almost 100 covered bridges. Go Canada!