Best way to access a Rails 3 REST-ful web service using a VB.NET consumer?

What is the best way to access a Rails 3 REST-ful web service, developed using standard Active Resource techniques including HTTP authentication over SSL, from a VB.NET consumer?

Consumer can be .NET 4.0 if that is necessary.

Are there any .NET l开发者_StackOverflow中文版ibraries yet that can bridge the gap?

I have already come across links like this (http://aspguy.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/dealing-with-rest-web-services/), which use Linq.XML or XML.XPath to parse responses and generate post data for REST-ful web services. I have in fact coded a system similar to the one at that link, except for a different geo-coding provider and using XPath instead of Linq.

I'm looking for something more like Rails Active Resource, rather than hand-coding the XML or JSON encoding/decoding of every single data model?

---

Have you tried using RestSharp to consume the service from the .NET application? (Coincidentally enough, the ad for it is just to the right of this box while I'm typing.)