816. Newfane, Windham County (VT01)

Oh, Vermont!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: what is it about small towns and great courthouses?  Vermont didn’t start out with counties; it had shires.  The first general assembly established counties in 1778, but older terminology remains to an extent.  Consequently, Newfane isn’t technically a county seat; it’s a shire town.  That said, the term has fallen so far out of use that neither I nor pretty much anyone else uses it.  There’s a marketing push to differentiate Vermont by calling them shires again, but it’s just that: marketing.

The downside to Newfane was that it was out of the way from our primary target for the county, so our car shot up to it while the other vehicle grabbed some challenges and headed to the primary.  The upside to Newfane was that we got to have a fun little detour on the way.  I noticed on the map that a covered bridge was on the way, so we altered our route slightly to get some hot, sweet, covered-bridge action.  That’s how we found ourselves crossing the West Dummerston Covered Bridge, the longest covered bridge still in use in Vermont. 

Even better, it had a cache inside!  Razorbackgirl, Godot, and I slipped down the super narrow walkway as cars rumbled past and found an ammo can awaiting us!  Awesome sauce (as they say in the parlance of our times)!  Once we put ink on the log, we shot over to the courthouse and then back to the primary target, Brattleboro.

Brattleboro is the biggest town in the county, with a sizable population and caches galore.  We all grabbed a few here and there and then stopped for lunch and a little touristy (mostly maple syrup–based) crap.  Some of the other restaurant patrons were kind enough to snap some photos of us.  We who had gone to Newfane mentioned our stop at the bridge, and that’s when Kittydcota spoke up.  One of her raisons d’etre for this trip was to see covered bridges.  How could we go get one without her?  We all wanted everyone to be happy, so all it took was a little bit of route shifting.  We finished our lunches, bought our final touristy (mostly maple syrup–based) crap, and headed back to the West Dummerston Covered Bridge. 

When we arrived back at the bridge, we had some company. We happened upon a large group of women who share the love of motorcycling, the Moving Violations Motorcycle Club out of Boston. We also quickly found out, thanks to a T-shirt, that one of them was from Waco, of all places! We all chewed the fat and got on like a house on fire. They were out on a ride, and we told them we were up from Texas to geocache. A few of them had heard of it or had done it, but most of them had not, so we told them all about it and took them to find the one on the bridge.

We chatted.  We laughed.  We had a good time.  So much so that I was almost sad to leave.  But we all had our goals and drives (or rides, as the case may be).  There was much left to see and do, so we got moving, passing through Newfane once again, bound for…