Cape Cod

 Our last couple days of vacation!  I'm starting to look forward to sleeping in my OWN bed - ha!  Switching beds all the time does get weary and sure does a number on my back!

We went out and got donuts for breakfast - yummy!!  And then fixed a picnic lunch to take with us on our exploration of Cape Cod!

It was a beautiful day out and the clouds were plentiful out at the beach!

It must have been still chilly out as I see we have jackets on - how soon we forget!!

I sure enjoyed seeing all the lighthouses - you couldn't get real close to this one but I still got a nice picture of it!

And I HAD to have a picture of these lighthouses which had been moved into a park like area - they're called the 3 Sisters!

We enjoyed our picnic lunch after a short hike and did one more stop at the beach!

At a lookout point - Eric and Hillary.

We picked up pizza for dinner that night and while Eric was getting it, I ran into a shop that Hillary had suggested to pick up an ornament - gosh that shop was nice and I could have spent a LONG time in there looking around!!  But found my ornament and that's all that matters!

Cards were on the docket for the evening which is always fun!  I slept much better the second night!  And the next morning it was time to grab some breakfast, pack up, and head back to their house so Glenn and I could head out to Portland for our flight the next morning!

It was a nice drive back to their place - we ate some lunch and packed up the large suitcases and soon headed out!  Made it back to Portland without too much traffic and checked into our hotel for the night!  We had leftover pizza from the night before so that was dinner!

I had to repack everything to get it all into 2 suitcases but that was no problem - I don't buy much - HA!

Got the rental car returned the next morning - the airport was quite busy and I had to settle for Starbucks coffee but hey, it was coffee!  It was nice that our flights were mostly on time!  Our layover was in Baltimore which made for a longer trip to Denver for our 2nd flight!  But all was good and it was nice to have Gary pick us up from the airport!

And here's my cute ornaments from the 4 states we visited - soon I'll be hanging them on the tree!

All in all it was one fantastic vacation - longer than anything we've taken together before (except for our annual Mexico trip south in winter) but I'm so glad we went and got to do as much as we did!

Great Friends in Massachusetts

 After our 2 outings in Woodstock, we headed south to Eric and Hilary's place in Milburn, MA. We've been friends with them ever since we started going south to Mexico!  Met them the first day we arrived and have been close with them ever since!

They have a house in Milburn and also one on Cape Cod - so we were to spend 1 night at their regular house and then ride with them to Cape Cod for the next 2 nights!

We had a nice trip driving south - stopped for some ice cream for Glenn and a frappe for me at McDonalds before we arrived as we both needed a boost - ha!

Only took 3 wrong turns getting to their house - ha!  Their house is very unique since the brick part to the left of the picture was built in the late 1800's and was the house that Eric grew up in - then the house was added onto twice so as you can guess, it's a large house!  It was great to see them!

We took a tour of their house and grounds out back and then had a great rib dinner that evening!  The next morning we packed up and headed to Cape Cod, which is about 2 1/2 hours from their house, depending on traffic!  It wasn't too bad getting there but 1 bridge is being worked on so there was a lot of traffic on the one bridge that we took!

Cape Cod was a lot different than I had imagined!  I had visions of this skinny piece of land with NO trees and a 2 lane highway with homes and services on each side - that SURE isn't what it is!  There are actual TOWNS on Cape Cod and lots of trees and it's much wider than I imagined!  Live and Learn!

Their home is tucked away in the trees on a nice sized lot with 3 bedrooms and a couple of baths - it's an older home but has been fixed up nice and is a typical "Cape Cod" house!  We did stop for lunch before we went to their house and had some wonderful fish!

After unpacking and getting settled, we hopped back in the car and went to a couple of places along the beach.

Seeing the dunes was awesome and they WERE just like I imagined!  I've read SO many books that are set in the Cape Cod area that the beach and the dunes were really fun to see!

It was a cool day so we were glad we all had jackets!

It was fun to just drive around and look at different areas of the Cape.

The clouds rolled in and sure made for a nice picture!

Hillary made spagetti and garlic bread that night for dinner!  One of their neighbors popped in and enjoyed ice cream with us and soon enough,we were all ready for bed!

Woodstock

 Yes - I just had to go to Woodstock to say that I had been there!!  But there were also a couple of neat things to see there too!

Time to say goodbye to the Aerie Inn!  We enjoyed our "leftover" breakfast before we headed out!  I loved these bush/flowers that were growing on the turn into the Inn!

The clouds were still hanging in the air but at least it wasn't raining!  But it doesn't make for many spectactular pictures without the sun!  

I sure enjoyed seeing all these covered bridges in Vermont!  I had to look this fact up of course but Vermont has the MOST covered bridges in the nation - 104 of them!!  WOW!!  New Hampshire has 54, Maine has 9, and Massachusetts has 12.

It was a beautiful drive to Woodstock and not too far away!  We headed to Sugarbush Farms which makes maple syrup and cheese so it sounded pretty interesting!  What a narrow road to get to this farm out in the country!

Parking was once again at a premium but we found a spot and headed in!  First of all we did a tour through the maple syrup plant - it was just on your own with a lot of explanations of what the different machines did!  But this sign just blew my mind!  I can't believe it takes that MUCH maple sap to make syrup!

After the tour, we headed into the building - there we got to taste 3 different kinds of cheese - all yummy!  And 4 different kinds of maple syrup - from a light colored one to a dark colored one!  The gift shop was next!  I found my ornament, a 3pack of different cheeses to give to Hilary and Eric and a tshirt from there that has Woodstock on it- yay!

Then we took a self guided walk which showed all the tubing running from tree to tree to its' final destination!  A far cry from the days of old when they used buckets to hang under the taps!  I had no idea they used the tubing now and I'm sure it's a lot handier!  But the thought of seeing buckets catching the sap is always a great picture in my mind!

There's even a little chapel on the farm premises that had the most beautiful flowers sitting outside!

Next we were heading to VINS - Vermont Institute of Natural Science - to do a canopy walk and this covered bridge was one we DID get to drive through which was on the way!

The canopy walk was really nice!  It wasn't too busy which was nice and you walked on wood walkways the entire time!

I climbed to the top to see the view - Glenn opted to stay down!

There were a couple of spectacular metal art pieces to see!

And this is the "spider web" - the kids playing there were sure having fun!

There was also an outdoor exhibit of many birds that you could see!  Here I'm seeing how far my arm span is compared to other raptors!

It was a great day and I was sad to be leaving Vermont but it was time to head to our friends' house who live outside of Boston!  So onward bound to one more state!

Shelburne Museum

 I had checked the weather last night and it didn't look very hopeful for Sunday - rain again!  So I had a backup plan if that happened and that was to go to the Shelburne Museum up by Shelburne, Vermont!  I had researched this museum (mainly because it was highly recommended) and even though we sometimes don't enjoy museums, this one sounded really interesting!

We ate breakfast along the way and even though I can't remember the place we ate at, I remember the meal as I ended up taking most of it along for the next morning since it was such a huge portion!  It was a nice drive up to Shelburne, even with some misty rain!

This museum is set on many acres and you go into several buildings to see the displays!  Sure glad we brought our jackets because the wind was awful and I was VERY cold walking between buildings!

We started out at this huge round barn - it was something else to see and the inside had dozens of old fashioned carriages and modes of transportation!

This particular one was the hearse!

A log cabin with the largest fireplace I've ever seen had an entire wall of trophy animals!

And of course I had to get a close up of this huge bull moose!

Sure wouldn't want to encounter any of these bears if I was out hiking!

It was fun to tour this huge boat, used to ferry passengers on overnight trips!

Being the short person that I am, I literally had to crawl up into this chair!

This is a one room schoolroom - I took pics of it and sent it to the grandkids, asking if they would have liked to go to school in something like this - NOT!

And a covered bridge that was moved in to the museum grounds.

They had a nice cafeteria that we ate at - we split a grilled cheese sandwich with chips and hot apple cider - yummy!!

Besides being cold, it was a great day and I'm so glad we chose to do this instead of just driving around in the rain, looking at leaves!   Below is the display at the Inn we were staying at!.  I kept waiting for the sun to come out before I took a picture but it just didn't happen! (and yes, that's a firepit with chairs in the distance!  Something we did NOT use due to the weather but some hardy guy was out there starting a fire!!)

Because we had leftovers from the night before, we just walked down to the office part where they have a nice big room and deck to hang out in - heated up our leftovers and ate in there before we headed back to our room for the evening!

Vermont

 We woke up to misty rain - it was still pretty out but it's sure not as fun to drive in the rain to see things!  Headed into town hoping we could eat at the pancake house I had picked out the day before but the line was out the door - nope - no time for waiting in line!  So grabbed breakfast sandwiches AND coffee to go!  Did I mention before that none of the places in Maine or NH had whip cream for my coffee!!  I thought that was kind of strange!!  

Anyway, we packed up and loaded the car in the rain - and we were off to Vermont!  We had reservations for the Ben & Jerry's tour at 11:00am and were only a couple of hours from the town of Waterbury so we made it in plenty of time!

It was raining pretty good when we arrived at Ben & Jerry's - the parking lot was pretty darn small from what we could see but someone happened to pull out and we pulled right in behind them - yay!  And then later discovered there's a huge parking lot up the hill!  Luckily I carried our umbrella up to the huge building or we would have been soaked by the time we got inside!

Was it busy?  OH MY, YES!  Our tour wasn't for a while so we looked around and snapped some pictures while we were waiting!

15 pints tall - YES!

And lots of flavors on that wall!

Finally it was time for our tour - they weren't actually making ice cream that day since it was a Saturday (and Columbus Day Weekend so a 3 day weekend which made it SUPER busy!!) but we still got to see where everything was made and it was an excellent tour!

We watched a short movie and I didn't realize that Ben & Jerry no longer own it, but the name will always be the same!    There are 3 other warehouses that make Ben and Jerry's ice cream but this place was the original start-up of the ice cream!

300,000 to 400,000 pints are made at this factory daily - 144,000 gallons of cream are used for that amount along with 7200 gallons of milk - WHEW!

After the tour, we were all invited to sample one of the "new" flavors that is not out yet - so we all tried a butterscotch one and it was delicious!

Just had to take a picture of my favorite ice cream - CHUNKY MONKEY!

After the tour, we donned the umbrella and went out into the rain, up to the Flavor Graveyard - it was fun to walk around and see all the flavors that DIDN'T last!

Apparently Pina Colada was not a hit!

Getting out onto the 2 lane road to head to our next place was almost impossible!!  We needed to turn left but there was NO way we could do that so had to go up and turn around - traffic was almost at a standstill because there was SO MUCH!

We got turned around and were only a couple of miles from where we were going - Cold Hollow Cider Mill - and just couldn't figure out why there was such a line!  It took us about 45 minutes to go those 2 miles and once we got up there, we could see that most EVERYBODY WAS turning into the cider mill!  Gosh - I had NO IDEA it was such a tourist trip!

But we finally got there - finally found a parking spot - and finally got into the huge building where they sold all kinds of "cider" related things!  We looked a round a while and finally got in line with our purhase and got our cider donuts - yes, they were excellent!!

The back room had free drinks of apple cider - yum - and a nice video going of making the cider!  It was a nice place, just too bad it was SO busy!!

We had planned to ride the gondola up to Mt. Mansfield where you can see for miles - but it was quite expensive and I opted to just wait to see what the weather would be like - good thing I didn't book in advance because I'm not even sure they were operating because of the rain!

When we left the cider place, we had to go back out to the interstate and the traffic was backed up off the exit and onto the interstate - glad we were heading away!

It was a nice drive to reach our destination for the night, Aerie Inn of Vermont!  The hillsides were gorgeous, just no sun to show the brilliant colors!

It was an actual downpour by the time we reached the inn which was out in the country!  I ran in to take care of the reservation and the gal talked and talked and talked - Glenn thought I got lost!!  But I did find out that there were NO restaurants in the tiny town a couple miles away and that we would have to drive to another town, 10 miles away for dinner!

Our room was lovely - and the whole grounds were lovely, you just couldn't appreciate it with the rain!  We opted to not even unload the car for a while since it was pouring so hard!

Glenn took a nap but I got him up early evening as it was STILL raining and we needed to get to town and eat before it got dark - I knew it would be super hard to even find this road at night and in the rain!  

Once we got into town, we knew darkness was coming fast so we just got our order to go and made it home as it was growing darker and darker!  Our meal was great (fettuccine and cheesy bread) and there was even enough for the next night!

Our room had these pretty business cards AND 2 chocolates  - they were delicious!  

And we fell asleep to the rain and the wind outside.......

Franconia Notch State Park

 We woke up to cloudy skies - I figured we would hit some rain during our journey so no surprise on the cloudy weather!  Drove into town for breakfast sandwiches and for some reason I DID NOT get coffee and later determined I should have - ha!  

We headed into Franconia Notch State Park which was just a few miles away so that was nice!!  Timed entries are needed to get into Flume Gorge and even though we were early, they let us go on in!

Flume Gorge is a 2 mile hike - beautiful - and then you start climbing on this wooden walkway and steps for quite a ways - I can see why they have timed entries because it can sure get crowded on this narrow walkway with everyone trying to take pictures!

Blogger is not being kind this morning as it posted all my pictures in the reverse order - oh well!

This is a neat covered bridge that we discovered in our travels on one of the roads we drove on!  I LOVE the picnic table in the middle.

Another beautiful scene taken off a bridge!

Another covered bridge as we wound our way down from Flume Gorge.

So since the pictures are all reversed, this is the top of Flume Gorge, after we hiked in!  Flume Gorge is a natural gorge than is 800 ft. horizonally length.  The granite sides reaching to the top are about 70 to 90 feet high!  It was a really wonderful walk to it!

Here you can see the walkways leading to the gorge!

It was a serene and calm walk along these boardwalks!

Beautiful trees with some reds - oh how I love the reds!

Another of the covered bridges inside the park!

Hiking above the bridge always makes for a nice picture!

I had hoped to hike up to Artist's Bluff which was a little shorter hike, and the views are supposed to be fantastic!  But the clouds had really settled in after we were done seeing Flume Gorge and we decided it just wasn't worth it to hike more and not see the views!

We had went to the store the day before and bought some lunch items so just ate in the car as we drove!  We ended up driving the Sawyer Hwy which took us from Warren to Woodstock and it was a very pretty drive - note, this is NOT the Woodstock where the music festival was held - that was in Woodstock, VT.

By this time it was raining so we headed back to the cabin for some rest time, before we went out to dinner that night at the White Tavern - I must have been tired that evening as my notes for the day weren't very complete so I have no idea what we even ordered - ha!

The rain lulled us to sleep that night - or maybe it was the stream out back!