Craftsbury Bound

July 3, 2008
Here we go again! I’m off to research and update the 12th edition of Vermont, An Explorer’s Guide. I can’t believe it’s been 25 years since July, 1983 when I set out to write the first edition of this first complete guide to the Green Mountain State.

My mom landed in the hospital that month and so Peter Jennison, Countryman Press founder and 7th generation Vermonter extraordinaire, stepped into help me cover the state. We rented cottages everywhere and my three sons –Topher, age 6, Tim, age 9 and Liam, age 11—helped research ice cream stands and swimming holes. Over the years my long-suffering travel writer-husband Bill Davis or one son came along for a few days at a time but largely it’s a fairly intense and lonely, although rewarding job.

This summer we’re beginning in Craftsbury, deep in Vermont’s northeast kingdom, and this time around I’m quaking in my sneakers because my current co-author,Diane Foulds, writer and Vermonter extraordinaire, can only cover her home town of Burlington, which leaves 250 towns with more than 350 inns & B&Bs and hundreds of places to eat, all of which I religiously check out, along with updating attractions and, as Peter used to say, “every form of legal activity.” That all has to be done midweek, before foliage season.

Luckily I have Liam, Topher,Tim and his two children --Aki, ages 8 and Taiga, age 4, to help with the swimming holes and ice cream next week but then they go back to Brooklyn, Liam goes back to Hawaii and Topher to Michigan. Hopefully Bill will be along a good deal of the time but as of this morning he is in the hospital with diverticulitis and the children arrive tonight with a big family barbecue on our unfinished deck set for tomorrow. Stay tuned!