 of the 251 Club of Vermont and I want to officially call our 67th annual meeting to order. Thank you for being here with us today and also welcome to those members who are watching the live stream of the meeting via ORCA. We are glad that so many members have an opportunity today to join us either in person or online. As we gather today we are all getting ready for another beautiful Vermont fall. As you have traveled throughout the state these past few weeks visiting towns you might have already seen leaves changing turning to bright oranges yellows and reds. You may have checked off a town by visiting an apple orchard picking pumpkins getting lost in a corn maze or finding that perfect Vermont cider donut. In Vermont there are ample opportunities to enjoy the fall season be it driving on one of our scenic routes which probably includes a dirt road or two hiking biking or even riding a gondola up one of our mountains. However you decide to go out and explore Vermont this fall we hope you have a chance to discover a new town or city or rediscover some of your favorite Vermont places. During 2022 we continued to hear from many of you about your 251 adventures. We were able to share those stories through the newsletter and on social media and we also had a chance to meet in person this spring. In May 2022 we held our first spring to get together at the Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village in Brownington Vermont. Despite the rain and those who were there know sometimes it was a downpour we had close to 90 members gather to share 251 stories over lunch and explore the museum. We heard from members after the event about new friendships they made and many walked away with new recommendations of where to go in Vermont. I personally enjoyed meeting so many of you at the spring get together hearing your stories and learning more about your travels throughout our state. We also heard from many in attendance that day that they hope we continue to hold spring get together. With that in mind we have already started to plan our 2023 spring get together and I am happy to announce that this year we will be holding it at Hildine. We hope to continue to make this a new yearly tradition offering our members another opportunity to discover or rediscover a Vermont location and connect with 251 club members. We also welcomed a new city in 2022. In July the city of Essex Junction became our 10th city in Vermont. Although we will be keeping the 251 club name we have updated our electronic town list and map and checklist that we send to new members. We know members will enjoy visiting the city of Essex Junction during their travels. We have also continued to provide 251 club members of opportunities for discounts relevant to their club experience including at the Wilmington Inn, the Old Stone House, Museum and Historic Village and with Vermont Magazine which also generously donated copies of their latest issue to members today. At this meeting we also report on the club's accomplishments and important developments. In 2022 the club continued to have a strong membership base with new members joining and other members renewing. Thanks to your support through memberships and the purchase of merchandise and at your attendance at today's event which is our biggest fundraising event of the year the club is in a strong financial position to continue to grow and provide value to our members. With all that being said we would like to thank all of you again for being here with us today. I would also like to recognize and thank our board of directors who if they don't mind standing right now our board of directors for the 251 club. Thank you. We'd like to thank the board and appreciate their hard work on behalf of the club so thank you. So I think we have Congressman Peter Welch who is going to join us to say a few words and I don't think I see him quite yet so we're going to change the agenda up just slightly and we're going to jump ahead a little bit if that's okay with everybody to sharing 251 club of Vermont stories. So traditionally at our meeting we ask any member who has completed their quest in 2022 or has a story to share if they would like to take the microphone and just say a few words about their 251 journey you know maybe a place that they want to recommend or a memory that they would like to share. So any members who would like to share a story with us today. Oh great perfect and I will bring you the mic back there so that the live stream can hear it. Actually do you mind coming up this way if you can I'm not sure if the mic will disconnect. Are you okay coming up here to say a few words? Oh he was waving. I thought you wanted to say something. I know Matt you were interested. Do you mind coming up here? Thank you so much. You were just waving. Oh great thank you please come on up. I'm Ned Daley this is my wife Kitty. We did complete our 251 this year with a couple of memorable hikes into the two goers up in the northeast kingdom. We have to wait till the snow melted and we hiked hiked in. That was probably on the crowning touch. Had a nice day up there going to Newport have lunch and all. We kind of amped up our 251 quest during COVID. You know I mean there are a lot of days where no place to go you can't we're staying away and we were just we'd pack a lunch and and go and drive. And I'd have to say at this point I really owe a lot to my co-pilot. We for a long time used to talk about backseat drivers and all and we had developed a name for them and instead of a navigator they are a navigator. She does not fit that way but it's a it's a good side light and she took us down all kinds of places that not just in the town but all the byways and everything and she might just give you a couple of words of how we did it and sorry. Okay he doesn't get dinner tonight. We started in 2014 we moved permanently to Vermont in 2012 and in 2014 we started our quest and it happened that very early on there was an art exhibit down at Middlebury College that was photographs of historic buildings in Vermont and we loved any museum so we headed down there and as part of that exhibit this book was published and it's called Buildings of Vermont and it has all the historic buildings in the entire state and since we both come from an architecture and engineering background we felt this would fit a good way to see the state. So it was really going through this book and navigating how to get to all these buildings but again getting to these buildings took us off of just the main road through the town and so we saw things we never would have known existed if we had simply driven through the towns and checked them off the list so if you are interested in architecture and buildings pick up this book. So thank you we have really enjoyed it we'll probably start all over again. The name of the book is Buildings of Vermont by Glenn Andrews and Curtis Johnson. I will I'll send this to you and you can put it on the website. Thank you so much so Ned and Kitty's story we're actually be in the winter 2022 newsletter so not this one that you're going to get in the mailbox this is coming week but in the winter and we have the name of the book because I wanted to make sure of members but you know by our means to reach out to me if you want the name sooner than winter because you won't be getting that to probably February but thank you to the both of you two for sharing your story. So I think we would just pause on stories for a second and I saw that congressman Peter Welch just arrived so we are now pleased to introduce a longtime 251 club of Vermont member congressman Peter Welch congressman so congressman Welch he has been a member of the club since 2003 so close to 20 years and I'm going to turn it over to you congressman Welch if you would like to say a few words and thank you for being here with us again. So we all have one thing in common we love Vermont and we all have one other thing in common we've seen Vermont oh my goodness it's so it's so good to be here and I mean I know this is not political but you know what I got in the 251 club and it was when I was running for congress and I realized this was so exciting for me because I had really wanted to be doing this and what it was about was my campaign manager just wanted me out of the office so we went around and I have such fond memories because you know how it is you check it off and you try to organize a trip where you can get several towns but then on some of those special days where you can't quite figure it out and you spend a lot of time in a single town in in a way feel like you get to know it and it's just kind of a special grounding experience is what my emotional memory was of this the other thing that was so much fun is that I was seeking to get into the 251 club but I'd have one of my kids or one of my friends be with me for a day and they would be exposed to places they'd never been West Charleston which you know is the Metropolitan Center of Vermont for everybody who lives in West Charleston and what is it Warner's grant grant where's the one you have to walk into and sign the and sign the book I think isn't it you know that one we were it was up by victory and we had to we had to walk into the into the woods and there is a little book there that you got to sign so I just got to say this club the two things number one you know it's amazing to have all these Vermonters from all kinds of different places all kinds of different points of view all kinds of different professions but really bound in together by this love of Vermont and when I say Vermont it's like going to each and every local part of Vermont and getting connected to what is the essence of the rural values that I think all of us so admire and appreciate and feel are somewhat under threat and that reconnection that we each have when we go all around to make that effort to really see everywhere and experience that I think is very very special so I just want to say one of my proudest achievements in life was one that I never realized I'd love so much and that is to have taken that time to go to every nook and cranny in this beautiful state and meet people across the state in each of these towns this is another thing that was really powerful for me I met people who didn't really want to go anywhere they wanted to be where they were and they love being where they were and there's life and intimacy and joy in being where you are and owning it and making it better so thank you and long live the 251 club thank you thank you congressman welch I think you captured it perfectly what we feel about with the 251 club of Vermont and our love of Vermont um and the challenge and the adventure of going out and exploring as as congressman welch said the nooks and crannies um of the state I think we can all relate to that I think we can go back to sharing some stories if um there's another member who wants to come up to the mic and take it for a few few moments I know Matt I think you wanted to thank you Matt how's everybody doing today what a day to travel to Montpelier uh beautiful I don't know where everybody came from but what a beautiful day to uh travel here um thanks to everybody who put it on uh I don't know if I can compete with the congressman there but uh thank you for that pep talk that was really beautiful um this story really starts um back in the 60s and I'm more familiar with the story than I am actually being a part of it although I was I was only probably two or three years old but uh this was before the interstate came in probably and this was around six 1967 68 maybe I was probably two or three years old and I have a brother that's uh uh death and we lived in Burlington at the time and my mom used to take him to the austin school for the death death in um in Browderboro so he'd have to take route five and uh we got all the way down to heartland and our car broke down and it was a credit cross from a general store my mom went into the general store as you would do back in those days because we didn't have cell phones uh told the told the owner what was going on and he came out and took a look at it and good old good old vermoner you know looked at it said well there's not really much I can do um but go ahead and use the phone you can call your husband my husband my mom my dad happened to be a mechanic so it was going to be a couple of hours before he was going to get down there to take a look at it so in the meantime the the store owner said well why don't you just come across the park there and uh I'll introduce you to my wife and we'll take care of you until your husband gets here which is really nice and um we got to know this family and we we would uh purpose to see each other two or three times a year and we just they just became friends of the family um my folks uh my grandparents owned a general store in Fairfax Parsons general store and the coup de marche has owned this one here so we had a lot in common and uh we lost track of each other over time and um I don't know there was a growing up in vermont facebook page I don't know if anybody follows that but I do and uh somebody was commenting this year actually I want to back up just a little bit so over time my wife and I would travel down that way and we'd want to you know kind of look at the you know try to reminisce and find out where this place was and try to figure out where the coup de marche has lived because it was so long ago and we'd we'd made some connections here and there which is part of the joy of being on the 251 club you always meet new people and um but anyway didn't we found out that um through the um growing up in vermont uh facebook page somebody had made a comment about the coup de marche's general store and I just felt compelled to to share that story and uh little ways down the road on that on that thread um this woman says I know who you are whoa I did not recognize recognize the name and uh turns out to be it was the daughter of this this couple that owned the owned the general store her name was darlene and she got married and darlene levy is her name and so that was pretty cool and so we started corresponding and made arrangements to see each other and made arrangements for her to call my mom unfortunately we had just barely missed the passing of her of her dad which was kind of sad but um my mom you know corresponded with darlene and everything um and interestingly enough I went back to I had to ask the question on the 251 club facebook page and I don't even remember what it was but this was before the whole growing up in vermont thread developed but it turns out that darlene had actually answered one of my questions so it was really really neat that that had happened um so recently we we met up in Plymouth and and I were staying at uh coolidge coolidge state park and I made arrangements and she came and visited us and it was like old friends we had never uh like we had you know just you know just you know those old friends that you you never see for a while and then all of a sudden you come back and it's like you know you never left and we just had so much in common and I mean we could have spent the whole night there talking and everything but it's just kind of interesting to me that you know it just really to me it just kind of shares shows what vermonters are really like you know from back in the day when you know you didn't have a phone and your car broke down somebody would help you out you know and then the just the we don't call them coincidences we call them God incidences but uh the people that come into our lives uh throughout uh throughout our lives and especially in the 251 club we found so many people that when we sit and take the time to get to know them that we have a lot in common and it's uh been really fun to get to know people in that way so I just thought I'd share that little story it's just uh I just think it's really cool that we get to travel uh as part of a 251 club and meet new people even at our table met a nice couple from uh Chelsea and got to know a little bit about their town and a little bit about them so it's a really cool thing so thank you thank you matt for sharing um you know matt brought up the friendships and that's why we were so motivated after the the spring get together in the old stone and so many members reach out even after the annual meeting about the friendships they have made at their tables they are sitting at and that's why we definitely want to try to keep going with the yearly tradition of a spring get together and then this annual meeting as well because I think those friendships are are very very special so thank you matt again for sharing that any other members that wanted to share our story if not we can move on to our guest speaker okay great thank you so we are now pleased to introduce our keynote speaker brian keith president of houdine the lincoln family home as many of you have read in the summer 251 club newsletter houdine is located in manchester vermont and is a 412 acre estate that includes robert and mary lincoln's home a restored 1903 wooden pulmon palace railroad car a goat dairy and trails my family and i we had a chance to visit houdine last summer and learn more about the history of the estate explore the beautiful gardens which hopefully we will see in the spring time if we time it right the flowers blooming and the trails and we also visited with the goats and the farm animals i am certain after having been there last summer that this would be an absolutely wonderful place for us to hold our next spring get together so i'm going to turn it over to brian and then after brian speaks um we're going to have you know some q and a with brian as well so with that i'd like to turn it over to brian thank you so much for being here with us today well thank you stefanie and thanks for having me here like to also recognize some fellow bennington county travelers davin paula canal came up from manchester where i live and barry minnearth is here from uh poly you live in poly right i get poly group i get poly group mixed up sometimes a little bit oh and sand gate okay any other bennington county people here so uh so i've got my timer on for 20 minutes and and i'll try to i'll stay within that and then we'll have q and a keep it to 25 minutes or so and maybe i'll finish a little bit earlier but the prior speaker matt parson's is it and your grandfather's parson's general store in fairfax you what's that yeah dav must be your cousin yes small world so matt's cousin i grew up in fairfax right next to this right next to the high school and right next to your cousin dav and dav and i were best friends we went through we didn't we i'm old enough we didn't have kindergarten then so we had from first grade to twelfth grade and dav and i graduated from high school together and he's a good friend of mine so the parson's store and i remember those days when uh your grandfather would allow charging i'm one of eight kids and my dad is a school teacher and so they would allow charging and and my you know come payday my dad would go down and pay off the bill and we growing up in the little town of fairfax we'd go down to parson's store and pick up groceries and stuff i had my paper route and i bought a lot of baseball cards there fact on the way up here i ran into jim caught in uh in ruttland on his way up here and i have some of his baseball cards from those days that i probably bought from your grandfather so uh i want to just briefly talk about myself that there's a lot of name dropping of towns seems like the towns are more important than the people but i'll use my family as an example of some of the towns that we uh have experienced i'm not a member of the club yet then i'll talk a little bit about manchester and what manchester is like and i'll try not to embarrass myself because david knows more about manchester history than probably anybody in the world and then talk a little bit about robert todd lincoln who he was and why he came to manchester and then briefly about hill dean so i'll try to wrap that quickly i actually was born in mob pillier i was born in this city my dad was a grew up in waterbury he was his uh he grew up on a farm on perry hill in waterbury for those of you know waterbury though you'll know perry hill and my dad's uh they had a farm up there and that's where he grew up my mom grew up in fairfield in a little hamlet called appropriately named st rocks and if you've ever been to fairfield or to st rocks you will know that fairfield and st rocks is a pretty hard scrabble community and they got married in st patrick's church there and in uh in fairfield and then moved to waterbury where my dad was a teacher and that's when i was born and but when i was five we moved to fairfax and that's where we grew up next to your cousin dave and uh and then from there i you know went to college and ended up back in manchester after being in washington and school in new orleans and things like that i'm one of eight kids as i said i'm just going to briefly go around there there where they live so by eldest fairfax ripped in i live in manchester uh morrisville huntington uh georgia fairfax and wilkett so we kind of are all around the place so i get to those places and and for about almost 30 years we uh vacationed as a family up at seamore lake up up in derby so when when the congressman talked about west charlson the camp that we spent every a week every year was about five minutes from west charlson there's a little for those of you from up that way who who here's from up that way if you're from up that way there's a little auto mechanic from on the road from seamore to west charlson and with all of our family and all of our kids and the grandkids we had a lot of cars and gave that guy a lot of business over the year uh so so yeah and and in my in my jobs i've gone all around vermont and and uh i haven't done the checklist yet but i'm really looking into that for those of you but not been to manchester manchester is a beautiful town and like i just said i'm i grew up in vermont in franklin county i love growing up in franklin county love all the towns my siblings live in but in my mind manchester is the best town in vermont and i'm sure many of you hear from you're different i know dentists things mount holly's the best town in vermont and i'm sure a lot of people feel the same but i really we love manchester got great schools great shops great restaurants great lots of things and it's got a great history and a lot of people don't think of the history of manchester or the geographic history but we're at a we're at a sort of a geological is that the right word crossroads where where the the headwaters of the otter creek start not in manchester but dorsif close right by your house i think or you're on the bat you're you're the baton kill going the other way there's a point in east dorset where the you almost can see otter creek going all the way up to virgins and a baton kill going all the way really down to new york city and then the other way to the west is the meadoway that goes out dorset polyp rooper beautiful part of vermont so manchester has a lot of history it's it's a crossroads even pre-colonial days but revolutionary war civil war there's a lot of history in manchester that we're all quite proud of being part of that and um and so with that history comes a lot of it became a natural kind of a tourist place and robert lincoln actually first visited manchester in 1864 when his mother abraham lincoln's wife was there with their his with robert's brother they visited manchester stayed at the equinox hotel for a week robert was a student at harvard at the time and they he met them there and the the plan was for president lincoln to come back to visit because that was those days getting out of out of washington dc of what people did unfortunately president lincoln was killed before that happened but that was robert's first visit and then he came back after in the beginning of the 20th century because his law part he was by then he was a he had been a lawyer in chicago he'd been the ambassador to great britain he'd been the secretary of war he had been uh president of the pulman rail company which was the largest manufacturing company in the world when he was president then he was was he was chairman of the board but he came to manchester because his law partner fellow named isham and i happened to be sitting at the table with two ishams who are related to robert's law partner from way back i'm sure distant because you know it's been a number of years but it's but the isham name i just struck out stuck out at me that we're by randomly at here at the table that that was uh robert lincoln's law partner came to manchester to visit his law partner isham was from bennington county but practicing in chicago loved manchester loved being there and built his summer home his summer cottage there in manchester and and as stephanie said on assembled about 412 acres which included where he built his 8 000 square foot georgian revival house cottage mansion and it sits robert was an astronomer amateur astronomer and land surveyor and he chose this this spot this promenary that looks south down the baton kill valley toward bennington and it's just a beautiful beautiful spot and there he spent about 20 the next 22 years before he passed away his wife passed away about 10 years later their daughter inherited the property and she passed away as soon thereafter and it was robert's granddaughter which is abraham lincoln's great granddaughter who lived on the property for 40 years full time and when she passed away in 1975 it was only her cousin still alive from the lincoln family and when he passed away shortly thereafter that was the end of the direct descendants of abraham lincoln uh there's cousins and there's all kinds of family tree stuff going on but as far as direct descendants of robert and mary lincoln it pretty much ended at hill dean and one of the things that makes hill dean special in in our view is that uh it was only the lincoln family that ever lived in this house so the the a lot of times you'll go to um the house museum and there'll be period uh furniture and and furnishings and such that have been brought back into the property because over time some of that has been lost or compromised pretty much at hill dean 90 or 95 percent of the of the furnishings and and chairs and shelving and a lot of the books and artifacts they are from the lincoln family they've always been in that building they've always been there it is sort of we think of it as sort of the dna of the lincoln family because uh that is where their family chose to be for 75 years until uh peggie passed away and there was a little scuffle over the ownership of it based on a will that willed it to the church on the condition that it be preserved as a memorial to the lincoln family the church didn't want to do that didn't think they could do it and so friends of hill dean was incorporated that's our business name and we are one of our founding uh principles as we want to maintain the lincoln family memorial there at hill dean and so we do that in a variety of ways trying to see how long i've gone here but we've we preserved the house and all the artifacts and we get about 40 000 35 000 people a year that come through the house including i was there yesterday we were very crowded with four tour buses and a lot of uh crowd through the house it's a beautiful property beautiful gardens beautiful views i just mentioned all my family in different places we live growing up in fairfax near pleasant valley is of course a beautiful beautiful view i've seen the vermont magazine and peachum you could all of us have seen thousands of pictures of peachum and in the autumn it's just absolutely beautiful if you're in if you're in shellburn at shellburn farms looking across the lake it doesn't get much better than that but i'm telling you the view from hill dean in my mind is one of the most spectacular in vermont we are sitting right there it feels like you're right mount equinoxes right there in your face and being there yesterday our the foliage report is we're a couple we're we're behind you folks so when you're up here and i realize people are from all over the state but if you're from the north when you get to the point where you think the foliage is a little past speak come down to bennington county right barry right paula it and we'll still have it for another week or 10 days well depending on a weather and such but uh it's it's a spectacular property hill dean is manchester's a great town um and i hope you all will visit and what we do there we've when robert bought it he also bought two farms that are down on the dean hill he he named it hill dean based on two old english words hill and dean hill meaning hill dean meaning uh valley with a river run running through it so hill dean is our 412 acres about half of it is up on the hill where the house is and about half is down in the dean where we have other farming operations including randall cattle which is vermont's heritage breed and endangered species we have alpacas that barry's very familiar with because he's been part of that project for years with his alpacas a lot of his equipment that he's given us or loaned us or partnered with us and we appreciate that we have rabbits and chickens and lots of things in a boardwalk over the baton kill river lots of things that and and the goat dairy as stephanie said is separate it's up on the top where we milk goats and and make cheese a lot of it is to we do a lot of educating a lot of it is to reconnect children but not just children teenagers 20s people of all ages to to things that are somewhat in the past but very much front of mind present these days you know where does your food come from how do how do how do you grow crops we we grew a lot of vegetables we have partnerships with the high school and with the local food providing groups we spend a lot of time providing food to a lot of different organizations in bennington county with with other partners we do a lot of education programs summer camps school groups we have a lot of beautiful trails and and i'll i'll close i'll stop and if we only have one microphone right so anyone who wants to ask a question i would ask you just be thinking now and and when i pause you can make a rush up here or maybe everybody maybe no one wants to ask a question but um we have a restored pulmon rail car that is there partly because robert was chairman as i mentioned a minute ago chairman of the pulmon rail company when this car 1905 model came off the lot it's a beautiful beautiful thing so we have the car there for that but one of our within our mission of values into actions we have key action items and some of them relate to agriculture some of them relate to sustainable uh living some of them relate to preservation but one of them also relates to civil civic discourse uh and the pulmon rail car is there to it's a beautiful artifact but it also we use it to tell the story of the pulmon rail company the gilded age the people that ride that would have ridden on this rail car which really was kind of the private lear jet of its day but also the pulmon porters and and the the black americans who who george pulmon recruited out of slavery post enslavement these porters uh became part of the pulmon brand really in in some ways they were the brand uh providing just excellent service for this sort of elite traveling class on these private cars a lot of people traveled by rail car in in more typical uh means but this palace rail car is really a it's for the vanderbelts and and the uh carnagies and things like that uh and these pulmon porters uh they their legacy that we tell the hundred year story of from the 1860s and the end of slavery excuse me to the 1960s and the civil rights movement and the role that the pulmon porters played in that excuse me sorry at first during the 19th century working their butts off providing this service for the elite passengers but then forming the first black labor union in the 1920s negotiating the first black labor contracts shortly thereafter and then continuing that involvement in in civil rights by uh sponsoring uh the the march on washington in 1863 where martin luther king had his poignant remarks of course uh a philip randolph who was the organizer of the union was also the first one to speak at that march on washington so we talk about we use that pulmon rail car as a way to talk about civics and civic engagement and we uh we we're right now going through long drive from manchester this morning for those of you who are it was one minute shy of two hours from my garage to the back parking lot today so just anybody keeping in store uh we we tell that story and we are in right now uh in the midst of a capital campaign to build a new year round facility at hill dean that's going to be tremendous it'll be a tremendous building uh and it'll give us a better venue to tell these stories and to get more engaged in civil civic discourse which is one of our principles of our mission so uh there's a lot going on at hill dean uh i hope you all get a chance to visit just real quickly how many people have been to hill dean in manchester so that's that's quite a few thank you for visiting so uh so with that i'm gonna i'll stop my remarks i'll take some questions uh i hope i'm still on schedule i lost track of my clock i i my daughter's not here so i don't know how to work the phone okay yeah it's part it's so the question is uh what about the special uh extra long bed that presumably was made for president lincoln uh for a visit that that's that is very much part of the manchester folklore and davie you can correct me if i got it wrong but as i said earlier mary lincoln had come into hill dean to manchester not to hill dean of course it wasn't there but to the equinox hotel in manchester in 1864 they planned to come back the next year and presumably there was a special bed that would have been built for president lincoln during that time he never made that visit and so for for decades or maybe a century there was this rumor that there was this bed and uh it's never been found i don't know whether it's true or not it's it's but it's never it's never been found but there that is that is a local legend it's not i'm not sure i whether it's true or not it's an interesting story that i've heard many times i also wanted my my wife is from rutherland and i want to give a shout out to her cousin and her aunt charol and linda are here somewhere back there so in addition to all those towns that i noted mainly in north of her mom my my wife being from rutherland we have a lot of rutherland uh connections as well um so other questions about hill dean or manchester or okay i'll wrap it up by just saying that uh in addition to being in a town of course a big part of uh visiting a town is how do you get there and everybody here knows where manchester is on the map of course i i i listed some of the geography but the the drive down route 22a and then into the meadoway valley is one of the best drives in vermont i think uh the uh from here going down the mad river valley down route 100 and all the way down through through plimoth and those lakes south of ludlow beautiful beautiful drive coming down that way there's a lot of beautiful ways to to get to manchester as there are for a lot of towns and so um it sounds like a lot of people like to take those back road routes in there's a lot of nice uh quieter ways to get into town rather than up and down route seven nothing against route seven but there's a lot of ways to come in and out so so with that i just want to thank you for having me here today we look forward to seeing you next year at hill dean and thanks for inviting me to speak i've really enjoyed the day thank you thank you brian the the view that you spoke of i know exactly where you're talking about from our visit last summer that we spent a lot of time just gazing out and looking at that view and it put me right back to that to that moment so thank you so much and like i said i i think hill dean is a great place for us for our spring get together and i'm excited for those who have gone there before to to go there again and those who haven't discovered yet to have a chance and in 2023 to come down and see hill dean so thank you again brian okay so now um we are going to move on to the announce the raffle winners so i want to thank all of the businesses and there were also 251 club members who donated to our raffle the share and there is a list of those businesses and members that you will have in your fall 2022 newsletter that should hit your mailboxes next week but thank you to everybody who donated members and businesses and also thank you to everybody who bought tickets i don't know what the final count was i know before i came here today just online sales of tickets we were close to 150 and and i know members have been supporting us for buying additional tickets so thank you so much to all of you for supporting the club and buying the raffle tickets so with that we will start pulling some names okay it's number one okay so we ask that if you're here um that you just you can go ahead and collect your prize so it makes it easier with with mailing it um we also had some live stream participants who purchased tickets as well so the first one is the explorer southern rematch do you want to go ahead and pick you want me to do why don't you go do it great so bernadette rose and i don't i think she is doing the live stream so bernadette if you're watching us right now you have one package one which is the explorer southern vermont number two the explorer chitenden county i'm not looking brian kief and that was not planned so brian you won the explorer chitenden county so great yeah and i just keep so this is package number three which is the brewery distillery and restaurant package again i'm not looking okay alfred andrea did i say that correctly alfred yes you are the winner of package three no no do you not right so this is the skiing at jpeak and we're actually going to have two winners and we're probably for this one do two separate winners for the skiing too so the first winner is john leddie and i do not believe he is here tonight i think he is today he's watching it live stream so john leddie and then ali mahar did i say that yes ali you won yes the skiing perfect thank you so number five is the adventure package for kids and megan gilbert who i know is also watching on live stream so megan uh congratulations i put it yeah i put the notes on it the next one is the coffee state house tour and lunch and mott pilier which i know brenda helps helps set up the state house tour okay ken mott willer i'm not sure if i'm saying that correctly but i also think he is on live stream so it's ken number seven is books coffee and local food and mott pilier thanks shawna and i think i'm going to say the last name wrong sorry apologize gian grande tina oh you're back they're all right tina thank you great next one is a mott country store gift basket and you had to be present to win this one so it will be somebody in the room to to win this one i'll just take a name hidey gia grande great okay the next one is the cheese olive oil honey in essential oils oh that was for the jpeak skiing okay let's see gene eisenhardt did i oh perfect great okay there's two more packages number 10 is outdoor time sarah capron capran did i say that correctly capron correct thank you great and then the last one is a family membership to hill dean okay let's see tina and lori i'm not sure if there's a last name oh okay great perfect great thank you so much and thank you shawna for helping with that great so if you like i said if you are here and if you don't mind going back to the raffle table to collect your packages so we don't have to send them to you that would be great i also just want to remind everybody to validate your parking ticket um which is right behind where orca is there's a table there and then i think that wraps up our 67th annual meeting so please continue to share your stories you know i say this a lot with members that's my favorite part of the job is hearing all of your stories and what you've discovered um and then we look forward to seeing everybody either at hill dean or their next annual meeting next year so thank you again everybody