Last year, a listener question inspired us to spend 12 whole hours at a park-and-ride lot in Richmond. This year, we posted up at another Vermont mainstay – a popular ice cream shop near the beaches of Lake Champlain, in Colchester.

The Village Scoop is the kind of place where, if you stay put long enough, you can watch a whole Vermont summer unfold in one day. So, we arrived hours before the shop opened and stayed long after the last customer was served.

During our marathon day there, we got a real taste of Vermont summer at its peak, in all its sweltering, melting glory.

Click here for the web version of this episode, including photos and a full transcript.

This episode was reported and produced by Josh Crane, Sabine Poux and Burgess Brown. Our intern is Sarah Bokelberg. Our Executive Producer is Angela Evancie. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; Other music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Special thanks to Catherine Hurley, Scott Waterman, Chelsea Blais, Hannah Smiley, Emma Foss and Meg Hershman.

As always, our journalism is better when you’re a part of it:

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Brave Little State is a production of Vermont Public and a proud member of the NPR Network.