Day 17 Wednesday May 23

Stopped for repair of ac in Rutland. Everyone very nice and great conversations in the waiting room. Had lunch in a chain called 99 which was very good. We'll look for more of those.

Then on to the Marble Museum. Kind of sad in a way. Another boom industry kind of gone bust. Marble is not used to build buildings, monuments with like it used to be - primarily decorative now, and I wasn't too crazy about the modern carvings here. When you think of the old masters and visualize the Pieta or David - well what can I say. Supported thousands of European immigrants in its heyday however. Reminded me of silver lode in Virginia City Nevada.

Now what used to Vermont Marble in the heyday (owned all marble in Vermont, Colorado, and Alaska) is now OMYA and its business is calcium carbonate - the "mineral of life" which is the base mineral in marble. They only used crushed marble and we saw some yesterday along the way. Mined underground by the way not in open quarries any more. It's then used as food supplements, to make plastic, fertilizer, etc. etc. etc. Explains all of the big dump trucks on the roads. Also we kept trying to figure out where the fine white dust was coming from when we redid the rv floor. Now we know calcium carbonate is used in carpeting manufacturing too.

Many samples of marble from all over the world in the museum and the one from Peru was my favorite. Golden with fine brownish lines like I had never seen before.

And guess what? One of our old neighbors in Ft Lauderdale was Tony Olivo who was from Vermont and his family was in the quarry business. In this museum is a display of Olivo marble from Vermont. Coincidence?? I think not. Would love to know more. Also included picture of a beautiful sculpture with an interesting story. The owner left it off in 1976 for a repair of the rope and never came back. They have been trying ever since to identify the owner or the carver.

We drove on to Vergennes VT for the night. More little towns and mountains and farms along the way. Amazing how towns that are relatively small have so many as in 5-6 HUGE churches. May be part of the immigrant thing since they came from all over Europe and explains why there are many more Catholic churches than I expected. Playing it by ear to see Lake Champlain etc because of holiday weekend coming up. Very hot today. Record high of 90.