The pumpkin chuck

  

 

What do you do after church in Vermont on a sunny Fall Sunday afternoon ? I had planned a nice sedate outing to the Shelburne orchards to pick apples, but  Bruce had other plans: we were visiting the  pumpkin chuck in Stowe, of course.


The pumpkin chuckers were a wide range of individuals who had clearly spent their whole summer vacation, if not the entire year, in their sheds, perfecting their catapults. There were the physics nerds:

There were dedicated families, and scouting troops:

There were engineers and retirees:

I really wanted to get a photo of the pumpkins smashing into smithereens as they hit the ground, but I'm not sufficiently skilled with a camera for that, so instead, I enjoyed myself, taking photos of the people working on their machines:

Afterwards, we headed back into Stowe to show Grandma and Grandad this delightful little town. The girls grabbed the opportunity to get back on the Alpine Slide, though nothing was getting Grandma on there!

 The good people of Stowe must have known the Emersons were coming to town....they changed some of the flags!

Quick! The Emersons are coming! Roll out the union jacks!

Grandma makes a new friend

And we visit the famous covered bridge at Stowe, called Emily's bridge.

(I didn't tell Em the bridge is supposed to be haunted....)

Then home in the dusk to watch the geese flying south, and the sun setting over the Adirondack mountains. .

ps for more about the pumpkin chuck, see http://vtpumpkinchuckin.blogspot.com/