Sorry for the black "bunting", but today is a "dark day" in Killington. The Killington Ski Resort was forced to suspend operations because of the high temperatures this week and the heavy r@!n storm being experienced today in the region. The Following message was received from the resort:

"Killington has suspended operations for Friday due to weather conditions and we will re-evaluate based upon snowmaking progress the possibility of resuming operations for Saturday.

Killington's snowmaking crew is ready to fire up the world's most extensive snowmaking system Friday night. We currently have hundreds of snow guns in position, and based upon weather conditions, expect to have snowmaking operations resume Friday night and throughout the day on Saturday resurfacing our open trails.

As far as the weekend goes, Sunday is shaping up to be one of the best days of the season so far after our snowmaking crews attack the mountain with every available gun and our system operating at full power."

The storm here has been quite "entertaining". We have experienced some high winds which, combined with the wet soil, have succeeded in bringing down some trees around the inn. Nothing major from the standpoint of disrupting the inn's operation, but it will require spending Sunday with the chain saw in hand to clean it all up.

In other news, I have been remiss in posting this week because of all of the activity at the inn. Mary has been furiously decorating the Christmas Tree in the Great Room. It will make it's first public appearance tonight. In addition, yesterday we did a TV shoot at the inn for a program to run on the Fox channel in the Boston area starting at Christmas. Fox has been in Killington all week shooting scenes at various locations. I was interviewed as a 'Travel Expert" on country inns. In the process, I got a chance to talk about the Birch Ridge Inn, as well as several other inns in Killington. It is impossible to tell how the piece will look until it is all edited together, but we had a fun afternoon and evening filming at the inn.