Flatlanders in Vermont: Visiting the Batten Kill River

We woke up to another beautiful Vermont morning and Alicia, who loves rivers, announced that she'd like to go see one. After checking the map she decided on the Batten Kill River, which flows from the Green Mountain State into New York. "Kill" is a Dutch word that means "creek," in case you were wondering.

The Batten Kill is easy enough to find; north on the 7A and west on the 313. With brilliant timing Alicia told me to turn off down River Road ten seconds after we'd passed it, so we kept going until we saw another entrance to the road. It's a long gravel road with lots of beautiful houses that have stunning views over the river. We spotted somewhere to park and pulled over. The river was easy to get to, so yay.

Thanks to all the stones you can walk pretty much into the middle of the river, although I wouldn't want to do that in the rainy season. Alicia was blown away that you can just park your car and stroll to a river without having to pay for parking/access, and I was loving that it's an actual river and not a "river".

From there we headed further along River Road until Alicia spotted a house with a bunch of pumpkins for sale on its lawn.

In true Vermont fashion there's just a box to put your cash in. For $5 each they're cheaper and better than the ones you get in the supermarket, and the field they're grown in was across the road from the house.

The road had plenty of people walking it, and a little further along we found out why: the Rockwell Retreat, an inn that was the former home and studio of painter Norman Rockwell, is situated there. Just down from that, where River Road meets the 313, is the West Arlington Covered Bridge, so that was the next stop. It's almost embarrassing that we've been in New England for a month and this is the first covered bridge we've visited; Bennington, which we've been to umpteen times, has four, as well as the Covered Bridge Museum.