BRANDON — You can get there from here. It just takes time.
And for Bonnie and Doug Robinson, as for so many Vermonters during the pandemic, time was plentiful.
Bonnie wanted to give her husband, Doug, something for his retirement from GE in Rutland after 38 years. Having already visited every high point in every state except Alaska, climbed many 14,000-foot peaks in the Rockies and surmounted all of the Adirondack summits, Doug is a guy who collects outdoor experiences.
Bonnie thought visiting all 251 towns in Vermont would appeal to her husband and be something the Brandon couple could do together.
A learning curve
Dr. Arthur W. Peach, a writer, professor and historian, first suggested the 251 Club in a 1954 issue of Vermont Life. In his regular column, “At the Sign of the Quill,” Peach answered the common question, “How can I come to know the real Vermont?”
Peach invited “the native-born and those born elsewhere but with Vermont in them” to veer from the beaten path “to discover the secret and lovely places that main roads do not reveal,” according to the 251 Club website.
The response was so overwhelming that new maps of Vermont had to be printed to keep up with renewed demand.
Today, the 251 Club offers the Vermont Travel Journal, a logbook containing all of Vermont’s 255 “civic/geographic entities or “places”: 237 towns, nine cities, five unorganized towns, three gores and one grant. They are listed alphabetically with the charter, grant or patent date, along with a map of town boundaries and a list of travel resources.
Doug Robinson, 64, estimated that he and Bonnie, 63, had been to half of Vermont’s towns in their lifetimes, but they hit the reset button when they took on the 251 challenge. The couple got off to a conspicuous start on Sept. 3, 2019, by visiting close to home.
“We thought we’d do it on bikes,” Bonnie said. “Not the whole way from Brandon, but we’d drive to the town and ride our bikes around and then load them into the car and drive to the next town.”
They decided to start in Florence, then Proctor, then Doug’s hometown of Pittsford. There was only one problem.
“Florence isn’t a town,” Doug said. “We came home and told our neighbor we started in Florence and he said, ‘Florence isn’t a town.’”
Indeed, Florence is actually an unincorporated village considered part of Pittsford. In their quest, the Robinsons learned a few things about other purported towns in Vermont.
“Forestdale (next to Brandon) and White River Junction are not towns either,” Doug said. “White River Junction is an unincorporated village in the town of Hartford.”
“We went into the post office in White River Junction, and Bonnie couldn’t find it in her book,” Doug said. “We asked the postal worker inside and he didn’t know, so we called the 251 Club and said, ‘Do you know White River isn’t in your book?’ And she said ‘Google it.’”
Boots on the ground
So, call it a false start, but the Robinsons went on to visit Vermont towns as often as they could, which meant most weekends. They also set a few ground rules for themselves.
“There are really no ground rules in the 251 Club,” Bonnie said. “But we had a rule that we had to talk to at least one person, and we had to take a picture of ourselves. We’re not really good at selfies, so we’d ask someone to take our photo.”
One last rule: Be intentional.
“We couldn’t be on the way to someplace else,” Bonnie said. “It had to be a trip to see the towns. It was important in order to make connections.”
“We had to go there for this specific purpose,” Doug said. “We’d just look at a map and pick some places.”
The couple developed a routine once they landed in a new town. They would head to the post office. If the post office was closed, they would visit the town clerk’s office.
“The town clerks really liked to talk about their towns,” Bonnie said.
They would also just engage passersby in their travels.
“A lot of these little tiny towns, the post office is only open for a few hours a day. Same with the town clerk’s office. So, we’d just go up to somebody walking their dog or strolling by and talk to them,” Doug said. “The majority of people had heard of the 251 Club and knew what it was. Once they get over the ‘Who is this stranger?’ they get real chatty.”
Bonnie documented each town visit on Facebook as well. They also discovered that most Vermont towns have a picnic table, and they took to packing a picnic wherever they went.
Visiting pandemic-style
The picnic became a necessity when the pandemic hit in March 2020. At first, the Robinsons laid low like the rest of the state, but then began to venture out again.
“We didn’t stay home. Don’t tell the governor,” Bonnie said.
But the pandemic sparked the picnic idea, since going into any building was off limits.
“We didn’t go into the town clerk’s office or the post offices anymore,” Bonnie said.
“We didn’t go in anywhere,” Doug added. “In one town, early on, we talked to a guy across the street.”
But then things started to open up again, just as the Robinsons were discovering the Northeast Kingdom.
“We were the first people to stay in Highland Lodge in Greensboro when it opened again,” Bonnie said, adding that they had to bring their own bedding. They also brought their own disinfecting wipes, and their picnic basket.
“We knew we could keep visiting the towns; we just couldn’t go into places,” Bonnie said. “We didn’t eat indoors.”
Surprises
The Robinsons were asked what surprised them the most in their 251 Club travels.
“The class divide,” Bonnie said. “There is a lot of poverty in Vermont, more than people realize.”
They traveled during the contentious 2020 presidential election and saw firsthand the socio-political divide.
“There would be a Trump supporter on one side of the road, and a Biden supporter on the other.”
Another surprise: Robert Frost is buried in Bennington.
“And so is most of his family,” Doug said. “Like many people, we thought he was buried in Ripton somewhere.”
Ripton is where Frost worked and lived for many summers and fall semesters, a professor at Middlebury College Breadloaf School and a charter member of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
When traveling through North Hero on a cold, raw day in winter, the couple stopped and asked a woman what there was to see.
“Just drive right on through,” she answered bluntly.
In Readsboro, they asked a woman what there is to do in town.
“Drink,” she replied.
The couple was surprised by just how big their little state is — “and how hard it is to get to places,” Doug said.
“There are places where you can get there from here, but boy, it takes some doing,” he said. “You could be right down the road, but all of a sudden that dirt road you’re on turns into nothing and you’ve got to be careful. It would drive you nuts because you have one more town over here, but you can’t get there from here, and you’d have to go around.”
The Robinsons stayed at just five hotels, inns or bed-and-breakfasts in their 251 quest. The rest of the time they camped or did day trips.
The biggest excitement came while the Robinsons were staying at one of their new favorite places in the Northeast Kingdom, the Jackson Lodge in Canaan. Doug was up the first morning, enjoying his coffee on the cabin’s porch in his flannel pajamas.
“We’re the only ones at the lodge, and the Canadian border is like, right there,” he said. “There’s this little fence, and I find this surveillance camera on a post, so I look into it and polish the lens of the camera and look into it and kind of wave at it.”
Doug wandered back to the cabin where Bonnie was still sleeping and, within minutes, two Border Patrol trucks pulled up.
“I wandered out and said, ‘I guess you’re looking for me,’” Doug said. “They said, ‘Well, yeah.”
The officers had a good sense of humor about the whole thing.
“They said, ‘Well, if you’re sick of him, we can take him for the day,’” Bonnie said.
They even posed for a photo with Doug, still in his pajamas.
Small world
There is an understanding in Vermont that it’s really just one big small town and that inevitably you will run into someone who knows someone you know, no matter where you are in the state.
That was certainly true for the Robinsons.
“My father worked for AT&T, and he’s been dead a long time,” Doug said. “We ran into a guy in Bradford who knew my father from working at AT&T 35 years ago. It was just really interesting to make connections like that.”
In Reading, they met the man who used to own Watroba’s Store in Forestdale, which is now Junction Deli. The Robinsons saw a Watroba’s Store in Reading and “It was the same guy,” Doug said.
In Rutland, they went to City Hall and were able to visit with Mayor Dave Allaire. In Arlington, they met a woman whose mother was a model for Norman Rockwell’s painting “The Babysitter.” In Burlington, they spent a night at the Hilton and ate at Mirabelles and El Cortijo. They also met Billy Comstock from Vermont’s own Satin & Steel band.
Saving the best for last
As pandemic conditions improved, the Robinsons kept at it. Two years after they began their quest, Doug and Bonnie celebrated their final and favorite town, Brandon, as No. 251.
They gathered friends at Foley’s Taco and Bean and threw a little party, complete with a quiz of little-known facts about Vermont, such as:
- Where is the only clothing-optional campground in Vermont? (Greensboro)
- What town has the most covered bridges? (Montgomery, with five)
- What is the state vegetable? (The Gilfeather Turnip-Wardsboro)
The experience has the Robinsons planning their next Vermont quest: to visit all the state parks.
They recommend every Vermonter take the time to join the 251 Club.
“It’s for everybody,” Doug said, “and it’s a great way to learn about the state.”
“I loved the people we met and the conversations we had,” Bonnie said. “We missed a lot. We’ll go back.”
