Back then I had no kids and skied my brains out at Killington. Then kids came, money went, and skis rusted. Now at 54 I had to come back and check out the road that meant so much to me as a place to eat, drink, and be merry. It is the only access road from Route 4 to the Beast of the East, as Killington is known, the biggest ski area in the region.
One thing is the same: Rounding the hill near The Summit Lodge and catching the first glimpse of Killington's snow-capped peaks, I got that familiar anticipatory belly churn I always had felt back in the day. But much is different; for one thing, there are sidewalks now, largely unused, the locals said. And there were never stop lights; three now regulate traffic on the roughly 3-mile-long road.
Other big differences leap out at me. Mother Shapiro's is no more; Sushi Yoshi has taken its place. The restaurant Powderhorns is now Garlic. And over at Wally's American Grill, a '50s-style retro restaurant-watering hole that a half century ago was a gas station and still boasts gigantic porthole windows in front, Roger Sims slings grits. Sims is 29, a full-time chef and part-time singer who hails from the West Virginia mountains, fancies cowboy hats, and makes one of the meanest omelets on the road.
"I'm a new Northern face with a Southern taste," said Sims, who came to Killington with his girlfriend in the fall and decided to stay.
Wally's is a fun joint about two years old where oranges bounce along an overhead conveyor belt toward a juicing machine and wait-staffers send orders along a zip line to the kitchen.
"I love it around here," Sims said. "It feels about as close to the West Virginia mountains as it gets."
The road has never been jammed with buildings, as some resort access roads can be, but lodging has been boosted in recent years with the addition of places like The Killington Grand Resort Hotel, a 300-room behemoth near the base of the mountain.
Many lodging places have been updated and renovated, including the Birch Ridge Inn, bought in 1997 by Massachusetts natives Bill Vines and Mary Furlong, he formerly of the tech trade, she a former executive for Ocean Spray.
