Day 8: Vermont
Day 8: Vermont
Just now getting around to writing this!
On Saturday (the last full day of the road trip), we woke up in Barre (pronounced berry), VT at the Maplecroft Bed & Breakfast - which is a perfect name for a B&B in Vermont! We had a wonderful breakfast in the dining room.
The Maplecroft Bed & Breakfast
Breakfast. The English muffins were homemade and the herbs in the eggs are from the innkeeper's garden. The little leaves you see in the tin are maple butter.
Dining room and living room
After leaving the B&B, we drove around Barre a little. Barre is the "granite capital of the world." In the late 19th century, stone cutters from all over the world flocked to Barre to participate in the booming industry. One out of every three memorials in the US are made with Barre granite. Now, the town's main attraction is the Hope Cemetery, which functions as a museum of granite sculptures. We were able to drive around inside the cemetery.
Barre
Granite sculptures in the Hope Cemetery
Pretty impressive!
The next stop was Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks, Vermont's oldest maple farm. It's been in the Morse family for eight generations. We watched a video in a barn about how maple syrup is made, saw some maple syrup machinery and goats, and then bought a lot of maple products in the gift shop. We got to do a free syrup tasting in the shop and bought "maple creemees," which is soft serve ice cream made with maple syrup. It was very good!
The barn where we watched the video
Did you know?
Spencer and tractor
It's a very pretty area! It looks like Oregon
Did you know that many "maple syrups" in the grocery store have no maple in them? Just corn syrup and maple flavoring...
This was the second letter from President Eisenhower that we saw on the trip
Maple creemee
Spencer and maple products
It was a short drive from the farm to Montpelier, a charming town that doesn't feel big enough to be a state capital. We went to the Vermont Historical Society Museum, saw the state house, wandered around, went into shops, and got Thai food for lunch.
Porch of the Vermont Historical Society Museum. It was a really great little museum! Vermont started as the Vermont Republic and wasn't one of the 13 colonies.
In the 1800s, states kept cabinets with relics, collected books, natural specimens, etc, modeled after the "cabinets of curiosities" collected by upper-class gentlemen. This is the Vermont cabinet.
Re-creation of a typical WWII-era living room in Vermont.
The state house. If you look closely, you can see the small protest and counter-protest gathered in front (We were in Montpelier on the "no kings" protest day)
Lunch at Pho Thai Express
Spencer's pick: Holy Cannoli - creamy ricotta and pistachio ice cream with chocolate covered cannolis and roasted pistachio.
My pick: That's My Jam - Raspberry and chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks and a raspberry core.
Josh's pick: Fossil Fuel - sweet cream ice cream with chocolate cookie pieces, fudge dinosaurs, and a fudge swirl.
We then drove up to the Von Trapp Family Lodge, which the family from A Sound of Music founded when they fled Austria and came to America. They chose Vermont for their lodge because it looks like the Alps. On the way, we drove through Stowe, which is a small town that everyone says to stay in if you come to Vermont in the fall.
Stowe
The Von Trapp Family Lodge
The view from the lodge. I haven't been to the Alps, so I can't say how similar they look
After leaving the lodge, we had a longer stretch of driving as we made our way to the southern part of the state. It was all quite bucolic. At one point, we were on a gravel road!
Gravel road
We made a quick stop in Middlebury, VT near the end of the drive and walked around. It's a pretty town known for Middlebury College.
Middlebury
This waterfall is in the middle of town!
We also walked on the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, just outside of Middlebury. It's close to Robert Frost's summer cabin and has signs all along the trail with his poems. After the trail, we made a quick stop at Texas Falls.
The trailhead
One of the poems
The forest was blanketed in Queen Anne's Lace
Hurrying so we wouldn't use up too much daylight
A Texan at Texas Falls
The stop we were all looking forward to the most was South Royalton, VT, the town shown in the title sequence of Gilmore Girls. I didn't think the town would be anything special, since the title sequence only shows an aerial shot, but it was really cool! It's tied with Thomaston, CT for looking and feeling the most like Stars Hollow. The only problem was that the town green had two gazebos instead of one.
A gazebo in the town green with a white steepled church in the background. Perfect!
Gazebo #2
Unlike most towns we've been in, stores and churches surround the whole town green
Could be Doose's Market
Do you see it?
On the way out of South Royalton, we drove over three covered bridges!
After South Royalton, we had another pop culture stop: Strafford, VT, which is Noah Kahan's hometown and the inspiration for the "Stick Season" album. It's not much of a town, more country roads with the occasional building.
Coburns' General Store, which Noah calls "the heart" of his hometown
Driving through Strafford, we stumbled across the historic home of Senator Justin Morrill, who is Spencer's ancestor! He's best known for sponsoring the legislation that created land-grant colleges.
Our last stop of the day was Dartmouth, our third Ivy League school of the road trip. It's just over the border in Hanover, New Hampshire. We got dinner with my friend Anh, who I taught with at Great Hearts last year in Phoenix! He just completed an MA in literature. We ate at a great place called Molly's Restaurant and Anh gave us a quick tour of Dartmouth.
Anh and I both taught high school Humane Letters and middle school Literature & Composition at Chandler Prep last year. It was pretty crazy meeting up all the way across the country!
We hung out with Anh and his friend Alejandro
I loved the libraries at Dartmouth!
After Dartmouth, we wrapped up the packed day and drove to our hotel in Brattleboro, VT.
Comments
Post a Comment