Vermont - Day 11 - Bellows Falls & Coolidge

Caton Place Camping, Cavendish
Monday, 11 June 2018

today's route

Everywhere's pretty close to everything else in this state, so it doesn't take very long to get from one place to another - even off the interstate, which I so far haven't been on.

Bellows Falls

petroglyphs

I went first to Bellow Falls, hoping to find the petroglyphs I understand are there.  Unfortunately, the only directions I had were that they were just below a bridge across the river to New Hampshire and that bridge was being repaired and all traffic was being detoured.

They're oddball looking things, aren't they?  The archaeologists say they were done by early Native Americans.  Of course, there are non-archaeologists who say they're clear evidence of alien contact.  Take your pick.  I didn't get to see them.

I did get to see Bellows Falls, though, and that was good.  I only got a few photos, and they don't show the character of the town much at all, but I'll put them here anyway.

Bellows Falls canal

post office

The backs of the buildings that front the canal aren't exactly inspiring, other than showing that they used a lot of red brick to build with.  This sign that explains the canal reads a little like Ikea instructions, but you can get the gist.

Bellows Falls itself is very small and has a lot of charm.  I'm sorry I can't do justice to it.

Vermont Country Store in Rockingham
Walking into this store was a lot like walking into one of their catalogs.  I imagine you've gotten them before - although maybe we got ours because Momma used to subscribe to "Yankee" magazine.

Anyway, a sort of old-fashioned general store with some old stuff (because some of the old stuff is still the best) and quite a lot of new stuff.  It's the sort of place that's really hard to get out of without buying something.  So I bought some smoked herring and some Red Pepper and Onion salsa - a little sweet but pretty good.

Calvin Coolidge's Birthplace

President Calvin Coolidge

Finally, we drove up to Plymouth Notch, which was a tiny community back in 1872 when he was born, and it's still a tiny community.  But people do actually still live there - just not in the buildings he and his family lived in.  I forgot to take my camera so I'm cribbing these photos (as you'll note by the snow in one of them).

He's the only president born on July 4th.  Plymouth Notch was a farming community, and Coolidge's dad owned the local general store.

the general store

As they often did in this part of the country, once there was one building, the family added on to that same building - including adding on a barn to their original house.  In this case, the family home was added to the rear of the store, far back on the right of this photo.

the home added to the store

When Calvin was 4 years old, his dad bought the house across the street, and that's where he grew up.

the family home

Just out of sight on the right of this photo of the 2nd home is the barn that is part of the house.

Calvin was elected vice president to President Warren Harding in 1920.  When Harding took ill and died unexpectedly, Coolidge was visiting his father, who didn't permit a telephone in his house.  Eventually, somebody sent a telegraph to a nearby town, and the telegraph operator came up to the house and woke them up (it was the middle of the night) to pass on the news.  Coolidge's father was a notary public and decided that was enough authority for him to administer the oath of office, which he did in the front parlor.  Then everybody went back to bed.  The next day, Coolidge went back to Washington and had the oath administered by somebody else, for public consumption.

When somebody asked the father how he knew he could administer the oath he said, "Nobody told me I couldn't."  Those laconic Coolidges.  Calvin was called Silent Cal by my mom and apparently everybody else.  There was a story I heard about a woman who sat next to him at a dinner party and told him she'd made a bet she could get him to say more than 2 words.  He said, "You lose," and that's the last she got out of him.

It was an interesting place to visit and I'm sorry I didn't have more time to spend.  But the afternoon was moving on and I wanted to get to the campground.  That turned out to be more complicated than I'd thought because construction crews had traffic down to 1 lane for several miles and because the street signs were illegible in several places.  I had to stop at a post office for directions, but they were good ones.

As you can see, the campground is up on a hillside.  These are some of the green mountains of Vermont.  My campsite is directly under the power lines and I didn't even realize it until I went to take this photo.  The lines run right through the middle of the campground.  Lots of heavy trees on both sides, very pretty area.