Ticonderoga to silos, roadside attractions abound

Breathtaking foliage views make the perfect backdrop for these unique roadside attractions in Vermont.

Political puppetry museum

Bread and Puppet Theater’s work is still unapologetically political. Bread and Puppet, as it is more commonly known, is a politically radical puppet theater, active since the 1960s, and based in Glover.

The giant puppets have been a familiar presence at political demonstrations since the anti-war protests of the 1960s. The traveling puppet shows range from theater pieces, presented by members of the company, to extensive outdoor pageants that require countless volunteers.

The name Bread & Puppet comes from the theater’s tradition of sharing its own fresh baked bread with the audience at each performance.

Peter Schumann, who founded the theater company in the early 1960s on New York’s Lower East Side, once said, “We have two types of puppet shows: good ones and bad ones, but all of them are for good and against evil.”

Open daily 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

Info: breadandpuppet.org

Hope Cemetery

It seems strange to think that a trip to Vermont should include a visit to a cemetery but Hope Cemetery in Barre is not your average graveyard.

For well over 100 years, quarries in Barre — the self-proclaimed Granite Center of the World — have supplied the world with highly desired grey granite.

In Barre, however, granite is more than a rock.

It’s a canvas. Barre grey has been the artistic medium of choice for Italian and other European immigrants who have turned granite carving into an exquisite art form, and nowhere can that art be more appreciated than Hope Cemetery.

Opened in 1895, the cemetery’s 65 acres are filled with about 10,000 granite monuments, many of which memorialize the loves, dreams, hobbies and interests of those who worked in Vermont’s granite industry.

Consider the three-dimensional gravestone of Elia Corti, whose brother cut, from one huge block of granite, a life-sized figure of Elia, the tools of his trade surrounding him. At the Brusa grave, a large granite marker shows a dying man being held by his wife. At the stone for soldier Giuseppe Donati, a man smokes a cigarette, while a woman’s face floats above in a puff of smoke.

Info: 201 Maple Avenue, Barre

Flavor graveyard

When a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor flops, it gets buried.

Literally.

The flavor is put to rest in a tiny plot in a small cemetery on top of a hill that overlooks the ice-cream giant’s Waterbury Center factory.

The Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard is an add-on to the factory tour, and visitors gravitate to the site to pay their respects to gone-but-not forgotten flavors. The first four to kick the bucket had short lives and were ultimately laid to rest in a mass burial: Dastardly Mash (1979-1991); Economic Crunch (1987-1987); Ethan Almond (1988-1988); and Tuskegee Chunk (1989-1990).

End-of-life decisions are usually based on poor sales, the unavailability of ingredients, or less-than-ideal concepts, like Schweddy Balls — vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum and loaded with fudge-covered rum and malt balls, and based on a Saturday Night Live skit spoofing a fictitious NPR show, The Delicious Dish. How could you even lift a spoonful?

Info: Route 100, Colbyville

Ticonderoga

Electra Havemeyer Webb’s Shelburne Museum boasts 150,000-plus artifacts, none more impressive than the 220-foot steamboat Ticonderoga. The museum opened in 1952 and does require a ticket, but you can see the boat from the roadside. Heck, it and all the other displays, historic buildings and round barn are worth the price of admission.

Built in Shelburne in 1906, the Ticonderoga served ports along the shores of New York and Vermont until 1953.

The Ticonderoga portrays life on board in 1923. The ship’s carved and varnished woodwork, gilded ceilings, staterooms, grand staircase, and dining room evoke the elegance of steamboat travel.

Info: Route 7, Shelburne

Museum of Everyday Life

Sure, you can fly to Paris and stand in a long line at the Louvre to gawk at the “Mona Lisa” or visit Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum to join a crowd of harried museum goers bumping elbows with one another and craning their necks to get a clear view of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch.”

But why bother when you can save a bundle of money (and time, stress and frustration) by motoring up to Glover’s Museum of Everyday Life and checking out some of its masterpieces such as an exhibit of bellybutton dust, a dress made of safety pins, pornographic matches (adults only), or a well-chewed pencil full of bite marks from its owner’s first schoolgirl crush?

It’s free and open pretty much every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Now on display: “A Life in Lists and Notes.”

Info: 3482 Dry Pond Road, Glover, museumofeverydaylife.org

Silo art

A pair of eyesores in Jeffersonville no longer cause any visual pain.

Sarah Rutherford’s art now graces the two tall, bunker-like concrete silos in Jeffersonville across from the roundabout on Route 15.

The north silo represents past generations, with images of draft horses, a farmer, a covered bridge, the steeple of the Second Congregational Church in Cambridge, and logs, which tie into the silo’s location on a former lumberyard.

The second silo represents future generations and includes images of a child, hermit thrush, red clover, owl, deer and bee.

Info: Junction of routes 108 and 15, Jeffersonville

Whale Tails

The centerpiece of the walking trail at South Burlington’s Technology Park, “Reverence,” a pair of life-size granite whale tails, was created in 1989 by Vermont artist Jim Sardonis. The tails, however, are a true roadside attraction as you can see them while driving on Interstate 89 between exits 12 and 13.

Think the tails are too far-fetched for Vermont? Think again. The remains of a whale, believed to be a Beluga, were found in 1849 in Charlotte under 10 feet of clay.

Sardonis carved his sculpture from 36 tons of African black granite. The tails, carved in two pieces, stand about 13 feet tall.

Ironically, Sardonis’s “Reverance” sculpture spent its first 10 years near exit 4 on Interstate 89 in Randolph where a newer, and larger, one now resides. Called “Whale Dance,” this bronze work breached in 2019.

This story was updated Sept. 18.