Penultimate Road Trip: Brownington & Westmore

March 9th - 11th brought a string of days with really nice weather, so I committed to making a final push to complete my quest.  On the 9th I surveyed the last outlier, Huntington, which is over in the mountains on the west side of the state.  Since it's also the home of the Vermont chapter of Audubon, I made that my survey location.  Done.

On the 10th, Skylar joined me as we trekked north to Brownington and ten to Westmore.  I'd been told that actor Charles Bronson was buried in Brownington, but on the day we visited, the cemetery grounds were covered with knee-deep snow.  Sorry Charles.  It would've been a nice photo for this blog post, but it was not to be.  Instead, we found a nice sunny back road, and hiked it for roughly a half hour.  Nice views of low, rolling hills, no noises but the sounds of our boots on the soft earthen road.   A small white house with a small barn, named the Chick Inn Hotel.  Cute.  Nothing much of note... UNTIL THAT TURKEY CALLED OUT FROM JUST OVER MY SHOULDER!  A huge white tom turkey was the  watchdog for the hotel.  I've encountered many turkeys during my years of birding, but Geez!   I jumped a foot!  Holy cow, I was not expecting that.  

After Brownington, Sky and I had our lunch and made our way towards Westmore, home of the spectacular Lake Willoughby.  Purportedly Vermont's deepest lake, Willoughby is flanked by steep cliff faces on both sides... truly spectacular!  The photographs cannot fully capture the drama of those cliffs.  The lake was frozen thick, and anglers were still driving trucks out to their ice fishing shanties out on the lake.  I must admit, it is somewhat surreal to walk 100-200 feet out onto a frozen lake, to take pictures of the shoreline.  To survey Westmore, we drove to the South Trail parking area, just beyond all of the dramatic vistas.  Sky decided to nap in the sunshine while I hiked up towards Pulpit Rock, some 600 feet above the lakeshore.  The slope was surprisingly steep -- almost 45 degrees in some areas -- but the trail zigged and zagged its way up, making the slope more passable.  Turns out Pulpit Rock was 2 kilometers up the trail, and I was encountering nothing for birds.  So, when I reached a viewpoint at roughly the halfway point, I took some photos, cut my losses, and headed back down to the car.  It's quite eye-opening to lean out on a tree, to get a better view, and then look down to see that the ground just ends in front of your boot, and one step beyond that is a 200-300 foot drop.  Again, my photo just doesn't capture the full depth of view.