Granville Daily Photo

This is the largest and nicest house on my block, about sixes houses down the street from my house. I kind of wish they would paint the porch instead of keeping the natural wood look, but it's a nicely kept house with lovely details such as the scalloped siding.

  Two facing photos of the Mettawee River, the first from Main Street looking toward the footbridge behind the Slate Valley Museum, and the second from the footbridge to Main Street. The river is running very full right now after a snowy winter and a rainy spring, so far. (These are the first two photos I've published from my inexpensive Kodak PixPro camera instead of my iPhone. The jury is out on whether it is any improvement. I still have a long way to go through the 81-page manual (!) to figure out all the ways to use the camera.)

I had to drive up to Middlebury, Vermont, today. It's a straight shot from my house north on Route 30. The view to the east is of Vermont's Green Mountains ... ... and to the west, the Adirondack Mountains of New York State ... Not a bad view in either direction!

There are warning signs all along Route 22. In one one-mile stretch I counted eight. Sharp curves, school bus stops, tractor crossings, deer crossings (lots!), hidden intersections ... and two of these, between Cambridge and Granville.  That's because a significant population of Amish farmers live in the region. On a typical late-afternoon/early-evening commute, I pass one or two of these horse-drawn buggies, the men in their blue shirts and straw hats. I've never seen a woman in a carriage, but sometimes I've seen them in stores in Granville and elsewhere. You can see a few of their farms beside the highway, identified by the lack of any motorized vehicles on the property. I hope to share some photos of these neighbors at some point, but I would only do so if I got permission to take their picture first.

  There's not a lot going on in Granville on a Wednesday night, but trivia contests are popular throughout the region. I sat with a group who came all the way from Rutland to this game at the Slate Town Brewery, a popular Granville pub. They told me there are games in Castleton and another one in Rutland -- a different one from a Thursday night game I've played sometimes. Within an hour radius of Granville, there's no lack of big ticket entertainmnet -- in Vermont, the Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset and the Paramount Theater in Rutland; in New York, the Hyde Collection museum in Glens Falls, the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy; and plenty more. Tanglewood, the famous summer music festival ("summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra") is a two-hour drive, but I still make a point of visiting once or twice a year.