I remember Trish telling us the story in the basement (not the kitchen) and she told us the building had once been a place to hold prisoners and she showed us some iron rings cemented in the wall. I remembering then having to take a shower down in the basement after that story. But in trying to research this hostel I found absolutely nothing but the names of the people who once ran it. Kind of sad as I'm interested in it now more so than back then.
We left the hostel the next day and drove back to Armenia, NY to the Kildonan School to visit my friend Peter. He was severely dyslexic and this boarding school is one of the best in the country. Pete told us that Tom Cruise once attended there, but that he was now the most famous person. Pete thought a lot of himself back then. I remember picking him up in an area and driving around the school while he told us stories. He showed us the town and then took us to a place for dinner. We dropped him back at his dorm and went...to New Palz I believe as that is where we have marked our mileage at 74026.
The next day we were in Schenectady to drop off Maya at a classmate's house. This family was to get her back to Syracuse so that we could continue on with our adventures. We were sad to leave Maya, but promised to write to her of all the adventures she would be missing out on to get a school room/book education. Pfft.
Our next stop was in Rochester, Vermont at the Schoolhouse Hostel, which no longer exists as well. I have no memory about this place except that when we arrived the group from Seattle, the milk thieves, was also there. We arrived there on Tuesday, October 10, 1989 and our mileage was 74274. I do have a photo!
The thing about the hostels is that they were very cheap to stay in. The first hostel was $7.00 for each of us a night. This one too was $7.00. You had use of the kitchen, but you had to bring your own food and had to clean up after yourself. In the morning after breakfast the house manager assigned each person a cleaning chore as a way of giving back to the hostel. I want to say that in this hostel we had to wipe down the mattresses. A lot of it was cleaning and mopping of floors and kitchens.
Kim and I were traveling on the cheap and so most nights our dinner consisted of Kraft Marconi & Cheese and Kielbasa sausage that we fried up with butter in a pan. Al K. and the ladies were horrified at our cuisine, and once they found out that our next hostel stop was in Stowe at the same place the group invited us to their table. We looked forward to seeing familiar faces and enjoying a decent meal.
The next day was a very adventurous one. We first went into Montpelier and toured the Capitol building. My little information in the book I made after the trip says that Montpelier is "a center for the insurance and granite-quarrying industries". The State Capitol was built of "Barre granite in an impressive Doric style." Which, of course, you can see from the photo below:
From there we traveled to Stowe to visit the Trapp Family Lodge. Stowe is the city that the von Trapp family settled in after escaping the Nazi's in Austria. They settled on this piece of property, built a 27 room house, and eventually started taking in guests. The place burned down in 1980 and was replaced with the 96 room lodge that we visited.
We went inside and wandered around, but I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't the original home. There is a lot of memorabilia from their life as well as their story. Maria never cared much for the film and the truth was much different than the movie. An illusion shattered.
The weather was cold as we headed to our next hostel, which was actually a ski dorm. Because it wasn't quite skiing weather yet there weren't as many people there as they usually have. It was a bigger place than our last two. We got there before the group from Seattle. Our cost was $6.00 for the night. There were a few bikers, but the place was quiet until the group from Seattle arrived. They too had been to the places we had visited that day and we were all surprised that we hadn't run into each other.
The Mountaineer Hiking Group from Seattle did not disappoint us in the meal area. We all were given tasks in preparing this huge turkey dinner, and the women were trying to give us lessons in cooking. In the end Kim learned how to carve a turkey from Al (or did she?).
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We weren't the only invited guests that night. A young, cute French biker named Gregoire was also at our table. He spoke English, but with a heavy accent and was hard to understand at times. Later after the dishes and the kitchen had been cleaned up, Al, Kim, Gregoire and I played cards and talked. We taught Gregoire several card games and he taught us some French words. I forget why he was here in the first place, but we enjoyed getting to know him.
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