Douglas at Shelburne Museum. More Shelburne pics.

Where has the summer gone? Tomorrow we pack up to go home after a month up here in Vermont. My husband has been going back and forth but Douglas and I have been here since August 2d with the dogs. I’ve been working all week while Douglas was in camp except for this last week when my mom came up, and I took a little time off.

We hit our usual haunts — VINS in Quechee and Shelburne Museum out near Burlington, and also checked out the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor.

I used my telephoto lens at VINS and was amazed at some of the pictures of the raptors — if the bird was toward the back of the cage, the bars of the cage literally dissolve in the picture.

More pictures from VINS.

On Friday afternoon, we drove over to the Hathaway Farm in Rutland to do the corn maze.

Douglas and Dave, about 3/4 through the maze. More here.

Saturday looked a bit threatening weather-wise, a promise that was mostly delivered in the evening as we were driving through Rutland and the skies opened up. But we decided to take a chance and drive over to Fort Ticonderoga NY to see the King’s Garden, which was not open when we went on Memorial Day weekend.

Then we drove down the western side of Lake George to the town of Lake George and took a one-hour cruise on the paddlewheeler Minnie-Ha-Ha. Lake George looks like the typical honky-tonk beach town — think Hyannis, York Maine or Center Harbor on Winnepesaukee, including more mini-golf than you would ever want to play, but the cruise on the lake is very pleasant with quite a lot to see.

The boathouse is a smaller copy of the house.

Quite a bit of Victorian architecture along the lakeshore.

And of course the Adirondacks.

More garden photos,Ticonderoga’s park and waterfall, and Lake George.

Today, we may go over to Billings Farm; they do special activities on Labor Day that Douglas enjoys. Or I may just read my book. I find that I read more when I’m here than I do at home for some reason. Maybe I’m more relaxed. Right now I am reading the new James Bond novel Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks, and I just finished two novels in Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie series, The Right Attitude to Rain and The Careful Use of Compliments. You may know his Africa-based series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency but I find I enjoy the Dalhousie tales set in Edinburgh even more. The new one The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday is due out later this month.

I’m also looking forward to Brisingr (Inheritance, Book 3) by Christopher Paolini. While the second book in his trilogy was a bit disappointing, and the movie based on the first book Eragon was AWFUL, I’m hopeful that the conclusion of the tale will be better.

Bye, bye summer.

[tags] Vermont, Lake George, King’s Garden, Fort Ticonderoga, VINS, Shelburne Museum [/tags]