Wilson Castle in Vermont

Vermont is one of the truly beautiful states.  Deep rolling hills absolutely packed with deciduous trees, meaning that the jujube colors in the fall should be amazing. It's not a populous state, probably because the winters here are brutal.  It is a well-educated state, its schools among the best in the country.  Our impression as we drove through the countryside was that the houses don't look particularly prosperous, and in fact the average home price in Vermont is $195,000 whereas the national average is $217,000.  Of course both those numbers seem ridiculously low to anyone from one of the nicer parts of California.

But some of the towns here are impressive.  We walked through Woodstock (no, not that Woodstock), which has a charming downtown.

Woodstock has one of the coolest libraries we've seen anywhere in America, the Norman Williams Public Library.

Plenty of restaurants and shops.  We even found a house for sale we liked in a street just off downtown (although listed at a price much higher than the state average).  But we must be realistic about it.  Regardless of how desirable a town is here, those winters make it unlikely that Vermont will be our first choice.

Our campground is just outside Randolph, Vermont, and one of the local attractions advertised at our RV park's office was Wilson Castle, near the town of Rutland.  Because of our fascination with castles - especially one with such a distinguished name - we drove over to check it out.

Wilson Castle was built around 1850, mostly by local craftsmen out of imported materials.  It was eventually acquired by someone named Wilson, and it's been in that family for five generations.  The brick exterior is impressive, with two turrets and interesting curves and angles.

The extensive interior woodworking is very well-done and well-preserved and much of it is in raised panel style with some similarities to what I did covering some of the walls of our house in Ben Lomond.

But this was nothing like visiting one of the grand mansions in Newport, Rhode Island and taking a well-organized tour.  Parking was haphazard and the grounds were a mess.  Inside, everything was untidy, and it was obvious that renovation was underway, not necessarily in an orderly fashion.  A very sweet young lady took our admission fees and led us around but unfortunately was lacking in knowledge.  Before we began exploring the place, we watched a DVD about the history of the building and some of its treasures on one of those old 32-inch TV sets that are a couple of feet deep.  None of those fancy flat screen models to detract from the past-century mood of the house.

Still, I love these old palaces and enjoy dreaming about what life was like for the upper classes in those days.  Lots of work before Wilson Castle is ready for prime time but I sure wish them the best.

Incidentally, I've almost recovered from the viral illness and possible allergic reaction I mentioned in the previous entry.  Thanks for asking.