Attention, Motorists! New England is closed.

Magnet #337 - Vermont State Capitol

So even though I just got back from London last month, I'm finding myself living vicariously through Goldengait's London blogposts. Yesterday, she started out with a plan, and was thwarted at every turn.

Ya'll know that I like to travel. With an itinerary. A fully packed, fully researched itinerary. And maps. Lots of maps.

Sometimes, even those don't help. But, always, when the wind takes you down the road, that's when the fun begins.

Take, for example, the New England weekender my roadtrip buddies and I did. That's how we found out that Montpelier, VT, is quite possibly the cutest state capital in the country. Seriously. We fell in love with this town. From the Corner Café with the old timers out front, to the used bookstore down the street, and the family maple syrup farm up the mountain to the sweetest capitol building ever.

It's seriously as cute as Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls. And I've been there, so I know from cute. It was one of the highlights of our trip.

Of course, it didn't hurt that every other attraction we drove to...was CLOSED.

No joke. It became the running theme of the trip - everywhere we went, places were closed for the winter season. Dudes. We went in April!

And it wasn't just the attractions. We were navigating secondary roads, until we made the wrong turn, and the road ran out. The bridge was out - frozen over. Freaky.

A recap list of our trip. Of course, you'll be revisiting some of these sites in magnet form. Well, not the ones that were CLOSED.

Thursday (NY)

• New York State Capitol: Missed Tour
  
• Empire State Plaza
• New York State Museum
• Adirondacks
• Martin Van Buren Historic Site: Missed Tour

Friday (NY/VT)

• Lake Placid
• Where’d You Get That Hat? hat shop
• Winter Olympic Museum
• Verizon Sports Complex
• John Brown Historic Site: CLOSED
• Ferry over Lake Champlain
• Lake Champlain Chocolates
• Shelburne Museum: CLOSED
• Vermont Teddy Bear Company
• Ethan Allan Homestead: CLOSED
• Church Street Marketplace

Saturday (VT)

• Montpelier
• Corner Café
• Vermont State House: Missed Tour
• Vermont Historical Society
• Walking Tours
• Ben & Jerry’s
• Rock of Ages Quarry
• Floating Bridge: CLOSED
• Maple Trees
• Joseph Smith Memorial
• Calvin Coolidge Historical Site: CLOSED
• Bennington Monument

Sunday (MA)

• Edith Wharton Estate: CLOSED
• Norman Rockwell Museum
• Holstein Gallery
• Olana: Missed Tour

If men were angels...

Magnet #208 - James Madison's Montpelier

...no government would be necessary.

- James Madison,
4th president,
"Father of the Constitution"*

Happy Constitution Day! This day in 1787, our founding fathers signed the Constitution, forever cementing the foundation of U.S. history.

And, at James Madison's Montpelier today, they're celebrating another foundation - that of wrapping up their five-year campaign to restore the presidential mansion back to its former glory.

Interesting, but slightly freaky fact: James Madison died on a July 4...the same date that Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Adams died. But, when Madison died, he was pretty much broke, leaving Dolley to have to sell off Montpelier. Each subsequent owner renovated, and in the end, the house was almost unrecognizable. Indeed, the last owners - the duPonts - had a 55-room house, versus James and Dolley's 22. Whoa. But, if I remember correctly, the last duPont owner left her entire estate to restore Montpelier.

That's where the fun begins. When they began the restoration, the house began to talk. We had a terrific tour guide, and based on her passionate lecture, it truly must have been supercool to work at Montpelier these last several years, discovering all the secrets of the house, not really knowing what was under that floor, in that wall, or over that door.

They found out that there were like 51 doorways in the original house...and by the time we visited, had only found 38 of the missing doors...only they weren't missing, they were just in different locations.

They found out that the windows beside the grand entrance? Didn't open outward: they slid right into the walls - something unheard of back in the day.

Dudes, they even found a rats' nest with bits of a Madison letter (!), and wallpaper, which let them figure out what wallpaper to use!

Ok, ok, suffice to say that the Montpelier tour was one of the coolest live exhibits that I've ever been to, and I'm totally looking forward to going back.

*Source: I rarely ever need to source things, usually because I can link to them, but I find it incredibly funny that a lot of this tour that we did back in 2006 was repeated in the Madison article in American History magazine (Oct 08) that a friend saved for me.