Damned Road Trip

My family and I recently went on a trip to Stowe, Vermont, and we made sure to check out a “damned” spot or two.

Our first stop, of course, was along the way to Stowe in Waterbury, home of the world-renowned ice cream factory Ben & Jerry’s, a place where waistlines are cursed to expand . . . forever!

All right, we stopped there because the ice cream is freakin’ awesome. Mmm … Chocolate fudge brownie … [*insert Homer Simpson-inspired drooling noise*]

Actually, we are big fans of letterboxing (which is a perfect activity if you have kids — and even if you don’t), and as such, we went after a pair of boxes just outside of Stowe, both near a reputedly haunted covered bridge!

From the letterboxing site (“Beware of Vermonsters”):

Legend tells of a young woman from Stowe, Vermont, who hanged herself on the Gold Brook covered bridge about 150 years ago. The most popular story of her death starts with her angry parents forbidding her from marrying the man of her dreams. Angered, she planned to run away with her lover and elope. The night that they were to meet, Emily arrived at the bridge early, but her fiancee never came. Emily gave up hope, and in her sadness, she took her own life. She hanged herself from a beam within the bridge, in the dead of night. Since that day, the bridge is rumored to be haunted.

Ghosts and “Vermonsters”? Try to keep us away!

We visited “Emily’s Bridge” as the Gold Brook bridge is also called, and found both letterboxes. We also took a few photos but didn’t see anything unusual — no ghosts, no mists, not even an orb! It seemed a lot like your everyday, normal 165-year-old Vermont covered bridge, which apparently, it is.

The second “damned” spot we visited was Burlington, a nice little town on the shores of Lake Champlain, home of a “real” “Vermonster” — Champ!

If you don’t know the story of “America’s Most Famous Lake Monster,” Champ has been spotted in the waters of Lake Champlain repeatedly over the past few centuries, starting with Native Americans who had legends about a large creature that dwelled in the lake. The first real account of something unusually big in the lake came in 1883 when a local sheriff reported seeing a “gigantic water serpent” just off-shore. Since then, there have been numerous eyewitness accounts of Champ, as well as blurry pictures (like above) and questionable video.

A very good friend of mine who is an expert sportsman, has won multiple state fishing championships and has spent countless hours on the water — and is not one to even remotely indulge in “damned” things like ghosts or lake monsters — thinks he may have seen it while fishing at Lake Champlain a few years ago. He didn’t get a good clean look at it, but he saw it and says it was something unusually large alongside the boat that was not a normal fish, was very dark in color, and was gone very quickly.

Of course, I had to snap a few pics of the lake —

Unfortunately, nothing but clear water, boats and fish. No “Vermonsters”!

Maybe next time.