Vermont- Saturday, Oct. 7, 2017

     It’s Columbus Day weekend and we’re ready for an adventure again.  Scott and Julie kicked around a couple of ideas about places that we could go, and eventually settled on a weekend in Vermont.  Anna and Emma didn’t care what we decided on because they were absolutely not interested in coming along at all.  They both say that they’re done with roadtrips after the marathon drives we took going across the continent this summer.   So it’s just Scott and Julie this time. 
     Yesterday, after school, we went as far as Albany, where we had a hotel waiting.  We figured that was a good enough place to stop after a day of work and several hours of driving, and we wouldn’t have far to go to get to Vermont the next day.  Our hotel ended up being near “Clinton Square,” which sits behind and below the state capitol building.  It was a nice neighborhood with an old church and a small park and a couple of interesting places to eat.  We chose McGeary’s Irish Pub, and enjoyed our late dinner.  Scott had a beer or two, but since we weren’t driving any more that night, Julie had a drink called a Fuzzy Pineapple.   She enjoyed it, but only drank about half of it before she was done.

     We got up a little after six this morning, and got on the road after a hotel breakfast.  We looked at the maps again and decided not to try to stop at the battlefield in Bennington, but instead, drove north through New York for a little ways before crossing into Vermont.  When we did, we had to stop at the visitor’s center and take a selfie, like we had when we crossed into new states this summer.  After all, the biggest reason that we decided to come to Vermont this weekend was because Julie has never been here before, and it’s a new state on her life-list.  Scott had been through it once with his parents before when he was younger, but whenever we’ve made New England trips since we’ve been married we always seemed to circle around Vermont instead of passing through it. 

     It was over a two-hour drive before we got to our first real stop- the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory.  We stopped along the way at little general store. We got some pepperoni and cheese that was smoked in a little smoke house by the parking lot, but we also got some maple sugar candy.  That sugar hit Julie just about the time we got to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory.   We knew the company from its radio adds where you can not only send teddy bears to a loved one, but also their “pajama-grams.”   They were having a tent sale on their pajama-jeans out by the parking lot, and with her blood pumping with maple sugar, Julie had a ball shopping there.  She spent a bunch of money before we even got into the bear store itself, and would have bought a 6-foot bear if she had just a little bit more sugar.  Inside the bear store, the shopping continued. We Facetimed Anna to help us pick out stuff for her and Emma.  We didn’t take the factory tour, but from what we could see through the windows, it looked like a large version of what we see at Build-a-Bear.

     We have decided that Shelburne, VT, is a great little place and would be worth a return trip.   After the Teddy Bear factory, we drove through the town.  We passed the Shelburne Museum and though we hadn’t planned on stopping there, it was quite impressive.  It looks like Mumford, or the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, with lots of cute little buildings, including a lighthouse and a paddle boat, apparently from Lake Champlain.   We didn’t have time scheduled for that big of a place today, but put a pin in it for a future trip.  We did stop at the Shelburne Country Store, and it was worth the stop.  The store has seven rooms and seems to extend back quite a long way.  Each is packed with the kind of things you might find at Viddlers, along with a lot of Vermont related goods.  In the farthest corner of the building, in the room highlighting some Christmas decorations, a “Porter” music box had a large copper colored disc the size of a vinyl record but with holes punched in it.  The music box was playing “Music of the Night” from Phantom of the Opera.  We later found out that the music box was Vermont-made and cost $12,500 to buy.  Julie was enchanted enough by it to by a CD of music played on it. 

     The people at the Shelburne Country Store also run the Christmas Loft, a short ways away.  We drove there next.  Julie unconvincingly said that she didn’t know if she wanted to stop at a Christmas Store.  The inside of this store was even larger than the Shelburne Country Store.  Though it was not a big as Bronner’s in Frankenmuth, it was still worth a stop.  The center of the store has a close to life-sized Christmas village of store fronts and houses,  and it alone was worth seeing.  After leaving the Christmas Loft, but before we had left Shelburne, we went for lunch at the Magic Hat Brewery.  Scott sampled a flight of beer with his lunch.

     We then had a short drive to get to the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory.  While Shelburne was certainly busy, the crowds at the Ben & Jerry’s factory were absolutely crazy.  When we commented on it to one of the guys that worked there, he said that not only was this one of the big weekends for fall foliage every year, but it was also homecoming weekend at the University of Vermont, Canadian Thanksgiving, and a couple of other festivals that made this one of their biggest weekends of the year.  We already knew that Vermont was going to be busy because we weren’t able to get a hotel room anywhere in the state, and were going to have to return to New York tonight.  Anyway, we bought tickets for the first available tour at 3:40, and we had a little more than an hour to spend before we’d have to line up for that.  We went through the gift shop, naturally, and we waited in long line to buy some ice cream, of course.  Scott had a scoop of Cookie Dough and a scoop of Cherry Garcia, while Julie got a Orange-Strawberry-Banana Smoothie, because she didn’t want the dairy in the ice cream to get her sick.  While we were on the tour itself, Scott got a fit of the giggles when the guide said they threw a pair of monkeys into every batch of Chunky Monkey.  Julie, however, had a mission from her friend Tina at school.  She wanted Julie to push them to bring back the Wavy Gravy flavor.   Julie found its “tombstone” in the Flavor Graveyard and sent a picture of it in a text to Tina.  When Julie finally had a chance to ask the guide about bringing back past flavors, the guide explained that many times flavors are retired because they just stopped being economical to produce.  She used the example of the White Russian flavor which singlehandedly killed the Kalhua market, and said that with Wavy Gravy, it was the volatility of the nut market that made it too expensive to produce.  Even though it was a weekend day, there were some workers in the assembly line area and some pints of ice cream coming through the assembly line.  We got a sample of Steven Colbert’s “Americone Dream”.   We then made the trek back through the parking lot to head out. 

     We had been getting texts and calls from Anna.  She and Emma had a pretty good plan for their weekend.  They went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, but on the way home, Anna was forced to pull over due to car problems.  We don’t know all the details yet, but she did have to have the car towed to Buck’s.  Scott had wondered if our trip was going to be cut short the way our Connecticut one had been,  but Anna showed she had things together in spite of the car problems.  Later, Anna helped her sister and her friend get ready to go to the homecoming dance at East.  We saw some pictures of Emma before she left for the evening, and she looked nice.  Apparently, Emma had a good time, and went out to Applebee’s with a group of friends afterwards. 

     If we had only come for the fall colors, it would have been a slightly disappointing trip.  This weekend is usually when the leaves are near peak, but the weather has been so warm recently that the trees are a little behind.  They’ve been mostly green.  “You can’t see the foliage through the leaves,” Scott said.  We’ve seen some splashes of color here and there, but the sky has been mostly cloudy, so even those views lacked the sunlight that can really make the leaves pop.  As we drove north towards Stowe, it did seem like we were seeing more colors, though.

     Our last stop was the Von Trapp Family Lodge.   This lodge is the spot where the Von Trapp Family Singers finally settled after making their trip here to escape the Nazis in Austria.  It felt like we were completing the Sound of Music tour that we had originally taken back in Salzburg.  As we approached the lodge, Julie's music box CD started playing "Edelweiss," which took us both by surprise.  We drove up to the lodge itself and admired the view.  Allegedly, the Von Trapps chose this spot because it reminded them of Austria.  As pretty as Vermont is, it doesn’t really look like the great stone faces of the Austrian Alps—the Black Forest of Germany, maybe.  Still, the view across the mountain ridges was pretty and the best we had seen all day.  We went into the lodge itself to poke around.   It has a lovely Alpine design, with a lot of flowers, like you’d expect, long low dark wooden balconies, and bell on top of its sloped roof.  The gift shop has lots of Von Trapp family items and it was here that Scott spent a lot of money.  He bought a book of Maria’s favorite songs, a CD of the original recordings that the family made when they got to America and a couple of postcards to show what the original family looked like.  There were lots of pictures around of the real Maria and the family.  In fact, outside of the gift shop, we saw a gentlemen posing for pictures and signing various items.  We listened to him and learned that he was Sam Von Trapp, the grandson of Maria and the Baron—the youngest son of their youngest son.  He seemed very friendly, but we were a little too shy to talk directly with him or get a photo.

     After the lodge, we went to the nearby Von Trapp Family Brewery, also begun by the family though it opened much more recently than the lodge.  Scott had been hoping to go here, and since it was a long way from everywhere else, we decided to wait for a table, even after we found out that it was going to be an hour wait.  The wait started off pleasantly enough.  The breeze blowing outside alternately brought smells of the Vermont fall air coming out of the forest or the familiar smells of German cooking, and the both really smelled good.  Scott bought some more Von Trapp stuff while we were waiting, including a large glass mug and a sticker.   However, as the time grew from an hour to an hour and a half, we were starting to get restless, and it certainly was the low part of our otherwise busy day.  Once we were finally seated, we already knew what we wanted from studying the menu on the cellphone.  Scott got a flight—all lagers instead of ales, which is unusual but welcome, and he really liked the Helles, though they were all good.   Scott got a plate of sausages and Julie got some chicken schnitzel, though we shared from both of our plates.  We also had desert, though it was an even longer time coming than the food.  We shared an apple strudel.  The food was not as good as other German/Austrian food that we’ve had, perhaps, but it was still good.

       Then came the hardest part of the day.  Because everything in the state of Vermont was completely booked, Julie had to get us a room reservation in Lake George, New York, and that meant we still had a drive that was going to be over two and a half hours long, through a lot of deer infested woods.  We saw signs that warned of moose too.  We were disappointed that we didn’t see any moose in the daytime, but we probably didn’t really want to encounter one at night.  We turned the music way up and Julie made the drive back while Scott helped watch for animals.  We went against the GPS and decided to cross Lake Champlain on the bridge from Chimney Point, VT, to Crown Point, NY.  We hoped that would gain us some time.  It didn't, but at least it didn't seem to cost us any either.  When we finally got to our hotel in Lake George, it was after 11:30 at night.  It had certainly been a full day.

P.S.-

     On Sunday morning, we were slow to get up.  When we finally did we went to breakfast at a nearby Denny’s and then started the drive home.  Julie wanted to break up the drive with a stop at the Del Lago casino in the Finger Lakes.  After scoping out the slot machines, she put $20 in one and in a few minutes walked away from it with a ticket worth $50 and change.  That was more than enough to buy us lunch at the food court there.  She tried again before we left, put in $5 and walked away with a $15 ticket.   She put in another $5, but since she didn’t win anything this time, we decided to call it a day and made the rest of the drive home.