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Vermont
Kendyl’s Buns on the Run Serves Snowmobilers Trailside in the NEK
To get to the hottest hot dog stand in the Northeast Kingdom this winter, you’ll need a snowmobile — and plenty of snow dances to ensure good conditions.
Kendyl’s Buns on the Run, a seasonal business in Norton, is not accessible by car, which makes it completely weather dependent. But it’s an essential stop on a popular snowmobiling loop from Island Pond to Canaan (see “In the Loop,” page 36), whether for a quick snack or a chat with proprietor Kendyl Bell.
“She’s right on the trail but in the middle of nowhere,” said Mark Quinlan of South Burlington, who started snowmobiling six years ago when he borrowed a sled from Pat McCaffrey, also of South Burlington.
“It’s tucked right in the pines,” McCaffrey said. “You’d fly past it if you went too fast.”
The friends often stop at Kendyl’s while snowmobiling around the NEK during the roughly 10-week period when there’s enough snow to ride. Quinlan’s name is even written in “The Wiener’s Circle,” where Bell has regulars sign the side of the stand.
The idea for Kendyl’s Buns on the Run came from a garage party, as many ideas do during NEK winters. Bell, 30, had moved in December 2020 from San Francisco, where she was a fashion stylist, to Norton. Though her parents owned land there, she didn’t know many people and figured a hot dog stand was as good a way to make friends as any.
Opening the stand on the snowmobile trail on her parents’ property became Bell’s 2021 New Year’s resolution. By January 3, she and her mom had painted an old trailer — previously used as a hunting blind and a “she shed” — and dragged it into a freshly cleared spot in the woods. Bell got a local trail groomer to hang her hand-painted signs with arrows and opened for business.
A few seasons later, her business — which she now operates out of a minibus — is a regular weekend stop for snowmobilers in the know. Trails around Vermont are officially open from December 15 through April 15, depending on snowfall. Typically, Kendyl’s gets up and running in January.
“I tell people to get lost in the woods, go the long route and you’ll find me,” Bell said with a laugh.
Once you’re in the general area, though, she’s easy to spot. Bell drives an old Jeep lifted on track wheels, which she parks near the stand. She decks herself out in pink, from her hot-pink metallic snow pants to her sweater to the napkins she hands out.
The stand is an oasis for snowmobilers looking for warm food, a drink of water, a conversation break or a Porta-Potty. On a good snow day, it’s hosted more than 100 sleds at a time, Bell said. This winter, she will add a full-size bus that doubles as a warming hut and seating area.
“People are happy I’m out there, because I’m far from the restaurants and gas stations,” Bell said. “When they’re driving by and they forgot to pack a snack, it’s like, Bam. There’s this blond girl in a school bus handing out food.”
Bell’s menu features hot dogs, bratwurst, pulled pork and chili made with meat from her parents’ cows and pigs, chips, popcorn, granola bars, hot chocolate, coffee, water, and soda. Everything is available by donation.
“It’s just hot, good-quality, simple food,” she said. “Nobody wants to sit down and have a five-course meal. People want something quick that will warm them up until they get to whatever their next restaurant is.”
Bell views the stand’s honor-system, donation-based model as keeping things accessible to everyone. She reinvests some of the proceeds into the business and donates the rest to local snowmobile clubs and causes such as the American Cancer Society.
Bell also hosts special events for the community; in 2022, she organized a benefit for a local woman battling breast cancer, which drew a crowd of pink-bedecked sleds. She plans to host another breast cancer ride-in this year, and she’s once again participating in the Northeast Kingdom Snow Blasters’ Stake Out Cancer trailside fundraiser, offering $10 stake sponsorships.
Bell herself is still new to snowmobiling, and her personal motto is “go slow and be cautious.” She gets lots of advice from the strong community of riders who stop by, ranging from locals to Floridians and from young kids to a Canadian gentleman in his nineties.
“What I love about snowmobiling is, regardless of your age, your gender, how you identify, you can be out there having a great time,” Bell said. “Everybody’s happy when they’re on a sled.”
When they catch a glimpse of Bell’s bus ahead on the trail, they’re even happier.
In the Loop
Plenty of restaurants are accessible from Vermont Association of Snow Travelers trails — weather permitting. In heavy snow years, Mark Quinlan has started 100-mile snowmobile treks from the parking lot of the Dutch Mill Diner on Route 7 in Shelburne. VAST trails around the Champlain Valley take riders through farm fields across Spear Street and Dorset Street, down to Shelburne Pond and up Mount Philo. Quinlan has followed them all the way to Rosie’s Restaurant in Middlebury.
But in restaurant-rich Chittenden County, “the conditions are usually pretty sketchy,” he said. “It’s not like up in the Northeast Kingdom.”
More popular with riders is Island Pond, which Pat McCaffrey, who has been snowmobiling since 1989, called “the snowmobile capital of Vermont. You see traffic coming in from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Connecticut — all coming in to park for the weekend and get at it, riding all through the trails up there.”
Hungry riders can find trail-accessible restaurants on the VAST website, which hosts a color-coded map showing conditions on the 5,000-plus miles of trails the nonprofit organization maintains around the state.
To ride on VAST trails, snowmobilers must insure and register their sleds; join a county and local club, choosing from the group’s 127 clubs statewide; purchase a trail pass; and take a snowmobile safety course if they were born after July 1, 1983, according to the VAST website. Passes are currently available at vtvast.org for $155 for an annual in-state registration through December 15.
For riders who are drawn to the “snowmobile capital” for its ample parking and trail access, Kendyl Bell suggested a dining itinerary. From Island Pond, they can stop at her Kendyl’s Buns on the Run in Norton before hitting April’s Maple in Canaan for lunch.
April Lemay’s multifaceted maple biz (6507 Route 114, Canaan, 266-9624, aprilsmaple.com) has been a destination for snow travelers since its launch in 2013. Even before it had a year-round on-site café, snowmobilers found their way to the sugarhouse to eat hot dogs and warm up by the boiling sap.
A decade later, April’s Maple is an official stop on the VAST system. Inside the shop, metal racks labeled “Snowmobile Gear Here” will be loaded with diners’ helmets once the snow piles up.
From fluffy pancakes to maple dogs with maple mustard, the maple-packed menu is perfect fuel for a winter adventure. But the pièce de résistance is the maple creemee, made with a 10 percent butterfat base and April’s Maple syrup and served in a cone coated with maple cream and rolled in maple crunch.
“It’s decadent beyond decadence,” Lemay told Seven Days last spring. Even on a cold, snowy day, that’s worth hitting the trail for.
From the sugarhouse, Bell suggested looping back to Island Pond for dinner at the Essex House & Tavern (138 Cross St., Island Pond, 723-9888, essexhouseandtavern.com), where she happens to work. The recently renovated circa-1866 hotel may be in the village of Island Pond, but it sits directly on the VAST trails — and across the street from the town’s eponymous lake.
At the Essex House & Tavern, helmets and snowsuits pile up “all over the tables in the restaurant dining room” during snowmobile season, Quinlan said. “That place is super hopping.”
The first-floor tavern’s lunch and dinner menu ranges from poutine to burgers to broiled maple-bourbon scallops; there’s regular live music and other entertainment, too. Upstairs lodging makes an easy home base for snowmobilers from out of town.
Working dinner at the Essex House can be “crazy busy,” Bell said. But she loves seeing the same people she saw in the woods earlier in the day.
“They’re supporting our small towns, eating everywhere and drinking everywhere,” she said.
Vermont
Vermont’s men’s soccer national title was unprecendented. Dalen Cuff rose to the occasion on the call. – The Boston Globe
“They were not just happy to be there,” said Dalen Cuff, who called Vermont’s 2-1 overtime victory over Marshall on ESPN2 last Monday night. “They felt like a team on a mission and they were. Their mind-set was, ‘We will be forgotten if we don’t win the whole thing.’ I think they were just very salient in the fact that if we win the whole thing, then we hit legendary status. And they were right.”
So when the Catamounts achieved what might have been a stunning outcome to just about everyone outside of their own locker room, prevailing on Max Kissel’s golden goal in the 95th minute, Cuff’s exceptional call included acknowledging the Catamounts’ own we’ve-got-this, no-glass-slipper-necessary mentality.
“Oh my gosh! They do it!” exclaimed Cuff as Kissel’s goal rolled toward the net. “Don’t call them Cinderella! You can call them national champs!”
Vermont’s victory and how it occurred made the Catamounts an instant social media sensation, and the buzz carried through much of the week. On Tuesday, the match drove conversation on such shows as ESPN’s “Around The Horn,” where host Tony Reali declared it the best sporting event of the year.
I told Cuff – whom locals may remember from his time at Comcast SportsNet New England nearly a decade ago — that watching the end of the championship match reminded me of what it felt like when Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary found Gerard Phelan to lift Boston College over Miami in November 1984.
“It’s funny you mention the Flutie thing,” said Cuff, who has called four NCAA men’s soccer finals for ESPN. “When I grew up, I had the VHS tape, ‘Great Sports Moments of the ‘80s.’ One of them was the Flutie play, with the radio call: ‘He did it! He did it! Flutie did it’!
“I never thought I’d be the voice of any type of unforgettable moment, especially since I started my career as an analyst.
“I’ve heard people like Al Michaels or Mike Tirico or Joe Buck talk about when you’re calling something that has a chance to be an incredible moment, or when you’re calling a championship, ‘Do you think about it in advance? Do you rehearse?’ The weird thing is, I don’t think you can in soccer, where one moment that can define the game can happen at any time.”
Cuff said he just instinctively went with what was already on his mind.
“And what was on my mind was that they found it practically offensive to be called Cinderella,” he said. “Their point of view was, ‘We’ve won more games than anybody in this tournament the last few years. We know we’re a small school from America East, but we’re not Cinderella.’
“So we mentioned that during the broadcast a couple of times, and so in the moment I communicated that they’ll never be considered Cinderella again. Just call them champs.”
Cuff acknowledged that he didn’t quite grasp how much the championship match and Vermont’s team was resonating with sports fans until the next day.
“I walked out of there in kind of a stupor,” he said. “Not that they won, but more like, ‘I can’t believe that happened.’ The way it went down. I was kind of dumbfounded for a couple of hours, and I don’t think I understood the response and how many people watched and appreciated what they’d seen. I realized Tuesday with all of the talk about the game and people texting me how much people gravitated toward this.”
The championship aired on ESPN2 in the spot in which the “ManningCast” would normally be on as the alternate broadcast of “Monday Night Football.” But there was no show last Monday.
“Shout out to the Manning brothers for taking the week off,” said Cuff with a laugh. “Thank you for that. I’m sure some people tuned in thinking the ‘ManningCast’ was on, stuck around, and got this unbelievable game.
“I do think where it’s on television matters. It was on ESPN2 for the first time since I’ve been calling it. I think random people stumbled across the game. I recognized that part instantly. When you walk into a bar, ESPN is likely on TV. ESPNU is not likely to be on. So the platform made a difference.”
…
Jim Donaldson, an important member of an outstanding Providence Journal sports section for nearly four decades, died Thursday morning at age 73. Donaldson never smoothed the edges of his opinions as a writer, particularly when it came to the Patriots, and was a friendly companion in the press box. I enjoyed his wry sense of humor as a frequent weekend host on WEEI back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Even after his retirement in 2016, he remained an engaging — and opinionated, of course — presence on social media. I’ll miss hearing from him . . . Expect the Red Sox to announce their broadcast booths for both NESN and WEEI at Fenway Fest — an even kinder, gentler version of Winter Weekend, apparently on Saturday, Jan. 11. Dave O’Brien (NESN) and Will Flemming (WEEI) will remain in their play-by-play roles, but some other specifics are still being worked out.
Chad Finn can be reached at chad.finn@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeChadFinn.
Vermont
Vermont’s men’s soccer national title was unprecedented. Dalen Cuff rose to the occasion on the call.
Media
The University of Vermont men’s soccer team — excuse me, make that the national champion University of Vermont men’s soccer team — was undeniably an underdog along its now-storied journey.
The Catamounts were ranked No. 17 and unseeded entering the NCAA Tournament. Even as an exceptional America East program, they don’t have the resources to match the big programs from the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conference.
Underdog? Accurate assessment. Just don’t tell the Catamounts themselves that they were a Cinderella story, as if their success required some sort of fairy-tale caliber intervention. For one thing, Cinderella doesn’t wear flannel, as the Vermont players were prone to do when they took the field for warm-ups. For another, they were certain they could beat anyone, even while the final chapters of its extraordinary and ultimately fulfilled quest were still being written.
“They were not just happy to be there,” said Dalen Cuff, who called Vermont’s 2-1 overtime victory over Marshall on ESPN2 last Monday night. “They felt like a team on a mission and they were. Their mind-set was, ‘We will be forgotten if we don’t win the whole thing.’ I think they were just very salient in the fact that if we win the whole thing, then we hit legendary status. And they were right.”
So when the Catamounts achieved what might have been a stunning outcome to just about everyone outside of their own locker room, prevailing on Max Kissel’s golden goal in the 95th minute, Cuff’s exceptional call included acknowledging the Catamounts’ own we’ve-got-this, no-glass-slipper-necessary mentality.
“Oh my gosh! They do it!” exclaimed Cuff as Kissel’s goal rolled toward the net. “Don’t call them Cinderella! You can call them national champs!”
Vermont’s victory and how it occurred made the Catamounts an instant social media sensation, and the buzz carried through much of the week. On Tuesday, the match drove conversation on such shows as ESPN’s “Around The Horn,” where host Tony Reali declared it the best sporting event of the year.
I told Cuff – whom locals may remember from his time at Comcast SportsNet New England nearly a decade ago — that watching the end of the championship match reminded me of what it felt like when Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary found Gerard Phelan to lift Boston College over Miami in November 1984.
“It’s funny you mention the Flutie thing,” said Cuff, who has called four NCAA men’s soccer finals for ESPN. “When I grew up, I had the VHS tape, ‘Great Sports Moments of the ‘80s.’ One of them was the Flutie play, with the radio call: ‘He did it! He did it! Flutie did it’!
“I never thought I’d be the voice of any type of unforgettable moment, especially since I started my career as an analyst.
“I’ve heard people like Al Michaels or Mike Tirico or Joe Buck talk about when you’re calling something that has a chance to be an incredible moment, or when you’re calling a championship, ‘Do you think about it in advance? Do you rehearse?’ The weird thing is, I don’t think you can in soccer, where one moment that can define the game can happen at any time.”
Cuff said he just instinctively went with what was already on his mind.
“And what was on my mind was that they found it practically offensive to be called Cinderella,” he said. “Their point of view was, ‘We’ve won more games than anybody in this tournament the last few years. We know we’re a small school from America East, but we’re not Cinderella.’
“So we mentioned that during the broadcast a couple of times, and so in the moment I communicated that they’ll never be considered Cinderella again. Just call them champs.”
Cuff acknowledged that he didn’t quite grasp how much the championship match and Vermont’s team was resonating with sports fans until the next day.
“I walked out of there in kind of a stupor,” he said. “Not that they won, but more like, ‘I can’t believe that happened.’ The way it went down. I was kind of dumbfounded for a couple of hours, and I don’t think I understood the response and how many people watched and appreciated what they’d seen. I realized Tuesday with all of the talk about the game and people texting me how much people gravitated toward this.”
The championship aired on ESPN2 in the spot in which the “ManningCast” would normally be on as the alternate broadcast of “Monday Night Football.” But there was no show last Monday.
“Shout out to the Manning brothers for taking the week off,” said Cuff with a laugh. “Thank you for that. I’m sure some people tuned in thinking the ‘ManningCast’ was on, stuck around, and got this unbelievable game.
“I do think where it’s on television matters. It was on ESPN2 for the first time since I’ve been calling it. I think random people stumbled across the game. I recognized that part instantly. When you walk into a bar, ESPN is likely on TV. ESPNU is not likely to be on. So the platform made a difference.”
…
Jim Donaldson, an important member of an outstanding Providence Journal sports section for nearly four decades, died Thursday morning at age 73. Donaldson never smoothed the edges of his opinions as a writer, particularly when it came to the Patriots, and was a friendly companion in the press box. I enjoyed his wry sense of humor as a frequent weekend host on WEEI back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Even after his retirement in 2016, he remained an engaging — and opinionated, of course — presence on social media. I’ll miss hearing from him . . . Expect the Red Sox to announce their broadcast booths for both NESN and WEEI at Fenway Fest — an even kinder, gentler version of Winter Weekend, apparently on Saturday, Jan. 11. Dave O’Brien (NESN) and Will Flemming (WEEI) will remain in their play-by-play roles, but some other specifics are still being worked out.
UVM men’s soccer celebrates National Championship with home fans
The 2024 D-I men’s soccer National Champions, Vermont returned home to celebrate the first title in program and school history with fans.
How did University of Vermont men’s and women’s basketball teams fare during its final games before the holiday break? Read below for schedule, scores and stats from the Catamount basketball programs.
SATURDAY, DEC. 21
Women’s basketball
Vermont at Princeton, noon
Men’s basketball
Vermont at Dartmouth, noon
Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @aabrami5.
Contact Judith Altneu at jaltneu@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @Judith_Altneu.
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