MIDDLEBURY — Downtown Middlebury was bustling midday on Monday. People congregated at a park with Adirondack chairs in the center of town, in shops and on the pedestrian bridge that connects downtown and the Marbleworks complex over the Otter Creek river. License plates named nearby states such as Massachusetts and New York along with far-flung states, including Alabama.
Middlebury is on the edge of the total solar eclipse’s path, with totality projected to last 45 seconds compared to more than 3 minutes in Burlington.
Annelise Batista, Kylie Caputi and Molly Harrington, all age 25 and from Holding, Massachusetts, said they heard traffic was expected to cause trouble farther north in the state, so they decided to stay near totality’s southern edge.
“We love Vermont. Any excuse to go to Vermont,” Caputi said about why the friends, who met in middle school, decided to make the trip.
Just across the pedestrian bridge from where the women sat, Khaim Vassar-Fontenot, who was working the counter in the Stone Mill, a boutique that sells home decor and other goods along with, coffee and wine, said the store had been steadily busy Sunday and Monday.
Vassar-Fontenot, 22, also works at Sabai Sabai, a Thai restaurant several blocks away, and said the restaurant had been so busy on Sunday that it had to turn people away.
A recent graduate of Middlebury College, Vassar-Fontenot said he started his college days in the town just before the pandemic, and had seen the town in an economic slump.
“Thinking about what Vermont was like three to four years ago, and how closed and restricted we had to be, it’s cool to see it be coming back like this,” he said.
Vassar-Fontenot planned to keep the store open a while longer, then duck out to see the eclipse himself.
