Monday, October 3, 2011

The Solace of Peaceful Places

We have landed at Papelousu once again, the final time of 2011. It is truly amazing to now be watching the ferns we saw incipient in May now browning and crumbling to the ground. A brief summer season here in the NEK, to be sure.

On our way north, we stopped on Long Island to visit with the whole family, including representation from the European branch, Jean Felicien and Claude. We had a memorable dinner on Friday night with three generations of Cattiers all together, young and old. Then, over the weekend there were individual get togethers with sub-branches of the family. Memories new and old were shared and rejuvenated and it was truly a joyous, special opportunity to spend time together. I got to add some new things to Ancestry.com (anyone out there an expert) and need to do more. Always, there is more to do.

Sunday morning, we were up at 5am to head to JFK. The roads were empty and time to the airport quick. Once there, they have put into place a transit system that seamlessly takes you from the rental car to the terminals and then on into the city. All in all, our travel to BTV was easy and by a little after 10am we were in our rental Escape headed down the road feeling....tired. :-)

The clouds were low, promising a cold and -- maybe? -- snow. Yikes. We were happy, nonetheless, as cold never scared us and the scenery was so beautiful -- reds and golds and greens muted by the high humidity into a lovely maelstrom of color. Yay, back in Vermont!

And then we were on to favorite fall activities like stopping in Waterbury at Cold Hollow to pick up cider (OMG), cider doughnuts, and cider pumpkin pie. Oh yea, baby. Later on up the road, we hit up a favorite farm stand in Newport for the last Vermont corn, local brussel sprouts, wax beans, and lettuce. What with is up in the freezer at camp, we should be good to go!

We arrived at Camp in the rain -- but who cares, we were here. Ready to relax....Well, not quite. Sunday night was quite the comedy of...something.... After relaxing quite a bit in the afternoon in front of the fire (first of the season) and starting a puzzle, we went into the kitchen to enjoy some re-heated chicken soup Suzy had gotten at Cosco -- YUM. Really, really good and hearty, perfect for an evening meal. While we were eating, we got a phone call from home from our pet sitter who reported that she had smelled gas near our new gas dryer....Oh no. Long story short, we called the gas company, they came, confirmed it was the dryer and turned off that supply. In the meantime, however, while we were having those back and forth phone calls, we discovered that the fireplace in the living room was now sending serious amounts of smoke not up the chimney but into the rest of the house. Hmmm, first fire of the season revealing some problems.....

Dealt with that and then clearly, bed and a good long sleep were in order. And that's just what we did!

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