Townshend, Belmont, Grafton, Newfane, etc

[minnesotaman]

I headed south from my Woodstock headquarters this morning.

Jenne Farm is about at peak. Leaves are fragile here, the rain today I am sure took its toll.

The Andover East Hill area is good, a bit past peak. Some red still hanging on, but not a lot.

Townshend: the Scott covered bridge is being rebuilt, with new wood and a metal roof. It is going to take ten or fifteen years for it to return to picturesque. Too bad. The Townshend dam area is also undergoing some kind of work. The water behind the dam was low, Dam Road was closed and a lot of trucks were in evidence. The colors around the dam pond have a few days to go.

Newfane, Grafton and Weston are two or three days past peak. Some completely bare trees in each town.

Belmont/Star Lake. CT, I did not really check out the town. I went directly to the lake. There is a good spot for photos on the berm. The lake is surrounded by low hills. The lake itself is weedy, which seems to have made it quite attractive to ducks. The color was very good.

Roads around Ludlow looked good, but it was starting to rain so I could not get a good look. The Site # 1 road off 100 south of Ludlow was very colorful.

From there I headed down to Wilmington. Color is at peak in the Snow Mt. area, a lot of red. Route 9 is at peak, very colorful. Even in moderate rain with low clouds the colors were visible. The next few days will probably be very good along 9, unless this afternoon's rain was destructive. However, the trees in that area looked like they were in good enough shape to withstand the weather.

With a little sunshine all of these areas will still look good for a few days, and the Route 9 areas will look great.

[ctyanky]

Great report Minn! You sure do cover a lot of territory. I am glad to see you got to Star Lake in Belmont. Next year I may stay in Mt. Holly for a couple of days. I already found my B&B! I want to see the town of Belmont and explore around Mt. Holly. Did you do any roads in that area?

So route 9, that's where to go this weekend! I'm off to Townshend at 8 a.m. on Saturday but now my other friend wants to go back to VT on Sunday! I think I can muster up the strength for two straight days! If we do go, we'll head to Mt. Snow and Dover and take route 9 east to west and come back down to CT through Williamstown.

I don't think we will go to the Scott Bridge then, I have too much area to cover Saturday after a festival and horse show!

Thanks again for the report, I hope route 9 holds up for Sunday. What's next on your agenda!!!!

[minnesotaman]

CT
I still cant recall how to post a crisp image here, but perhaps this will give you an idea how Star Lake looks.

[ctyanky]

Hey Minn: looks like nice color and very weedy as you previously noted. Is that due to low water levels or invasive species do you think?

There's a hard freeze comin' tonight. I'm looking forward to your daily posts and sounds like you are enjoying yourself tooling about!

[minnesotaman]

looked like milfoil to me.

i did ride the length of 9 today. a lot of leaf drop after yesterday's weather, esp in the higher elevations.

but 7 and 7A from bennington up to rutland were good, relatively little leaf drop and a fair amount of red.

[ctyanky]

Thanks for the route 9 report. Looks like I'll be doing the NW hills of CT Sunday, Williamstown, Mt. Greylock and the Mohawk Trail! Saturday may be my last time up in VT for foliage season. I may be up for holiday craft fairs and the Wassail Weekend in Woodstock which came highly recommended.

I had a feeling route 7 from Benn to Rutland would still be holding its own.

Are you going to take Kelly Stand Road?

[minnesotaman]

I was on the road to somerset up from 9, and it was stripped, so I decided that the Kelly Stand Road was probably not going to be worth the time since it usually goes pretty early. If you hear that it is still any good let me know, I might go back down there in that case.

[ctyanky]

Minn: we are not going to Kelly Stand Sunday but are sticking to the Berkshires and NW CT, so today will be my last day in VT for foliage until the holiday craft fairs begin. We hope to hike Haystack Mountain in Norfolk as well. Long day!

I'm up early as we are leaving by 8 for our trip to SE VT. I am hoping to get to Peaked Mountain Road after the Deer Valley Loop in Townshend.

Let me know how your weekend goes!

[ctyanky]

Minn: have you thought of going to Poultney, Wells, Middletown Spring, Pawlet areas? They should be really nice now. Also, the Champlain Valley? Not sure these are on your agenda already.....

[Andy]

CT
I still cant recall how to post a crisp image here, but perhaps this will give you an idea how Star Lake looks. Star Lake Oct 2016.jpg

Minnesota: I have found the best way is to link from another site. I have linked from my smugmug site, from google images and I also have a blog site (free) from wordpress.com that I use just to post to sites like this. I have never published the blog, but it still stores images and posts.

I usually upload them at 72p and high quality. Seems to work well here.