Ascutney, Vermont
We made an unplanned stop in Ascutney, VT on Wednesday evening. It turned out we had plenty to do and had a very nice visit. Last evening we ate at a local restaurant that was in a beautifully refurbished mill. The supporting beams were huge squares e.g. 16-18" of Chestnut and Ash.
Today (Thursday) we took a drive to near the top of Mount Ascutney, and then on a whim decided to take a hike to the top (3168'). The hike was challenging, but beautiful, and the temperature at that altitude was about 75...much better than the 95 degree heat we've been having in VT alll week. The top of the mountain was encased in fog and mist, so we never saw the view, but we remember it as beautiful when we were there 40 years ago....yes 1970....we had a lot of fun remembering.
Today (Thursday) we took a drive to near the top of Mount Ascutney, and then on a whim decided to take a hike to the top (3168'). The hike was challenging, but beautiful, and the temperature at that altitude was about 75...much better than the 95 degree heat we've been having in VT alll week. The top of the mountain was encased in fog and mist, so we never saw the view, but we remember it as beautiful when we were there 40 years ago....yes 1970....we had a lot of fun remembering.
After the hike, we decided we needed some food and refreshments so we decided to visit the Long Trail Brewery, who make some great beers and some great chili.
On the way there we saw a great old covered bridge and there is a video posted of when we went through it.
Following that, we went to Woodstock, VT, a cute little town that had some of the best ice cream we've had in a long while. It was all made on site, in small batches, and in true Vermont style, all organic.
Lastly, we followed the recommendations of a family we met while hiking to visit a butcher shop near where we're staying. This unassuming looking place had some great meats at very inexpensive prices. According to the family we met, the "marinated steak tips alone are worth the trip" and they are from Southern, MA.
We'll let you know how they are.
Tomorrow we break camp and head for the White Mountains....we think....
Bye for now.
Today (Thursday) we took a drive to near the top of Mount Ascutney, and then on a whim decided to take a hike to the top (3168'). The hike was challenging, but beautiful, and the temperature at that altitude was about 75...much better than the 95 degree heat we've been having in VT alll week. The top of the mountain was encased in fog and mist, so we never saw the view, but we remember it as beautiful when we were there 40 years ago....yes 1970....we had a lot of fun remembering.
After the hike, we decided we needed some food and refreshments so we decided to visit the Long Trail Brewery, who make some great beers and some great chili.
On the way there we saw a great old covered bridge and there is a video posted of when we went through it.
Following that, we went to Woodstock, VT, a cute little town that had some of the best ice cream we've had in a long while. It was all made on site, in small batches, and in true Vermont style, all organic.
Lastly, we followed the recommendations of a family we met while hiking to visit a butcher shop near where we're staying. This unassuming looking place had some great meats at very inexpensive prices. According to the family we met, the "marinated steak tips alone are worth the trip" and they are from Southern, MA.
We'll let you know how they are.
Tomorrow we break camp and head for the White Mountains....we think....
Bye for now.
FW: [Motorhome Journey] Great time on Lake Champlain
Hello all,
We’ve been having too much fun to post much…there’s a new post and more pictures in the slide show.
Enjoy.
Paul and Maryellen
www.Motorhomejourney.com
We've been at Lake Champlain since last Tuesday and are having a great time in the area. The campground where we are staying is right on the lake and we have a great view. More important, though, is that it's filled with the friendliest people we have encountered thus far on our trips. There are about a dozen seasonal folks here who all seem to want to make everyone welcome and go out of their way to offer help and assistance.
In the "what are the odds of that" category, 3 sites down from us are a couple we know from Beaufort, SC...out of the hundreds of campgrounds in the area, and thousands in the country, they just happened to be here at the same time as us.....it is a small world.
The Lake Champlain and Burlington area are some of the prettiest areas we've seen. Every road has farms, and hills and mountains....just one vista after another.
The city of Burlington is unique. It's kind of a throwback to the sixties, with a touch of the 70's and 80's. There are 60+ year old people who appear to be original "hippies" and there are more tattoo's per person than just about anywhere we've been.
Bike riding is a passion and there are many bike paths and riders are treated with care and given safe places to ride. It's a great place to have a bike and we've really enjoyed having them with us. (Maryellen keeps making noises about getting an electric bike, but I'm not listening....)
Since our site faces West, the sunsets each night are spectacular.
Yesterday (Saturday the third of July) was a great day. A nice couple from the area, who stay at the campground for the season, invited us out to breakfast at a great diner....and we had a BIG breakfast...so big that we skipped lunch and had a light dinner since we were not even hungry. We followed that with a visit to a local farmer's market where we got some FRESH vegetables and bread. We were surprised how good fresh potatoes were and we don't think we ever had any that had just been harvested before....they were delicious and needed nothing on them to taste great.
We came back to the campground and Paul was in heaven as Phred, one of the campers was a great guitarist and we played outdoors for hours until our fingers couldn't take anymore.
After that a big group get together at the water to watch the sunset, then fireworks.
To cap off the day, we met an amateur astronomer (and bass guitar player) who knew a tremendous amount about planets, constellations and stars. We had a great time just looking at the stars. Coincidentally, he knew John Hunter, the bass player in our old band (T.H. Rhode) from 30 years ago...
A truly great day. We may stay here a little longer.......
Paul and Maryellen
--
Posted By paulb4333 to Motorhome Journey at 7/04/2010 07:17:00 AM
Great time on Lake Champlain
We've been at Lake Champlain since last Tuesday and are having a great time in the area. The campground where we are staying is right on the lake and we have a great view. More important, though, is that it's filled with the friendliest people we have encountered thus far on our trips. There are about a dozen seasonal folks here who all seem to want to make everyone welcome and go out of their way to offer help and assistance.
In the "what are the odds of that" category, 3 sites down from us are a couple we know from Beaufort, SC...out of the hundreds of campgrounds in the area, and thousands in the country, they just happened to be here at the same time as us.....it is a small world.
The Lake Champlain and Burlington area are some of the prettiest areas we've seen. Every road has farms, and hills and mountains....just one vista after another.
The city of Burlington is unique. It's kind of a throwback to the sixties, with a touch of the 70's and 80's. There are 60+ year old people who appear to be original "hippies" and there are more tattoo's per person than just about anywhere we've been.
Bike riding is a passion and there are many bike paths and riders are treated with care and given safe places to ride. It's a great place to have a bike and we've really enjoyed having them with us. (Maryellen keeps making noises about getting an electric bike, but I'm not listening....)
Since our site faces West, the sunsets each night are spectacular.
Yesterday (Saturday the third of July) was a great day. A nice couple from the area, who stay at the campground for the season, invited us out to breakfast at a great diner....and we had a BIG breakfast...so big that we skipped lunch and had a light dinner since we were not even hungry. We followed that with a visit to a local farmer's market where we got some FRESH vegetables and bread. We were surprised how good fresh potatoes were and we don't think we ever had any that had just been harvested before....they were delicious and needed nothing on them to taste great.
We came back to the campground and Paul was in heaven as Phred, one of the campers was a great guitarist and we played outdoors for hours until our fingers couldn't take anymore.
After that a big group got together at the water to watch the sunset, then fireworks.
To cap off the day, we met an amateur astronomer (and bass guitar player) who knew a tremendous amount about planets, constellations and stars. We had a great time just looking at the stars. Coincidentally, he knew John Hunter, the bass player in our old band (T.H. Rhode) from 30 years ago...
A truly great day. We may stay here a little longer.......
Paul and Maryellen
In the "what are the odds of that" category, 3 sites down from us are a couple we know from Beaufort, SC...out of the hundreds of campgrounds in the area, and thousands in the country, they just happened to be here at the same time as us.....it is a small world.
The Lake Champlain and Burlington area are some of the prettiest areas we've seen. Every road has farms, and hills and mountains....just one vista after another.
The city of Burlington is unique. It's kind of a throwback to the sixties, with a touch of the 70's and 80's. There are 60+ year old people who appear to be original "hippies" and there are more tattoo's per person than just about anywhere we've been.
Bike riding is a passion and there are many bike paths and riders are treated with care and given safe places to ride. It's a great place to have a bike and we've really enjoyed having them with us. (Maryellen keeps making noises about getting an electric bike, but I'm not listening....)
Yesterday (Saturday the third of July) was a great day. A nice couple from the area, who stay at the campground for the season, invited us out to breakfast at a great diner....and we had a BIG breakfast...so big that we skipped lunch and had a light dinner since we were not even hungry. We followed that with a visit to a local farmer's market where we got some FRESH vegetables and bread. We were surprised how good fresh potatoes were and we don't think we ever had any that had just been harvested before....they were delicious and needed nothing on them to taste great.
We came back to the campground and Paul was in heaven as Phred, one of the campers was a great guitarist and we played outdoors for hours until our fingers couldn't take anymore.
After that a big group got together at the water to watch the sunset, then fireworks.
To cap off the day, we met an amateur astronomer (and bass guitar player) who knew a tremendous amount about planets, constellations and stars. We had a great time just looking at the stars. Coincidentally, he knew John Hunter, the bass player in our old band (T.H. Rhode) from 30 years ago...
A truly great day. We may stay here a little longer.......
Paul and Maryellen
Gettysburg and East Stroudsburg
We spent a day touring Gettysburg on a Segway! What a way to see the several miles of battlefields. It's hard to imagine that 51, 000 people died here over a very short period of time. Seeing the battlefields and hearing the events described, really brings history to life.
We then moved on to East Stroudsburg and saw some great falls. Hard to believe this is on the border of NJ and Pennsylvania and 65 miles from Manhattan. It was a pristine wooded setting and very enjoyable.
Today, we trekked up to Lake George, NY and are enjoying the cool weather....low humidity too.
More later.
Dingman falls ;Silver Thread
Beautiful falls in Dingman Falls, PA.
Pristine setting in Delaware Valley area
Pristine setting in Delaware Valley area
Luray, VA
We're getting ready to leave Luray, VA after a wonderful visit. What a beautiful area...farmland, mountains, wildlife, nice people....highly recommend visiting the area. Today we went on Skyline Drive, a part of the Blue Ridge Parkway..Stunning views in all directions. We've posted a few in the topmost, self playing slide show rather than just in the blog post.
The temperatures in the mountains today were fantastic today, 72 for most of the day and "heating up" to about 80 late in the day. Contrast this with our home temperature of nearly 100
We've also added a new feature to see if it works and is interesting....the fourth item from the top says "click below to see our track of Skyline Drive. There are many options map, Satellite, Hybrid, Terrain.. If you click on the link that says "Trackid#D133 etc" at the top of the map it will bring you to a link showing lots of info about the track such as elevation, speed, etc
A cool feature is viewing it in Google earth as well. Play around with it and give us some feedback
We've gone a little camera crazy and both Paul and Maryellen have digital SLR's and we are snap happy...so we are taking lots of pix.
We'll be putting up things nearly every day, but probably won't bug you with emails more than twice a week.
Tomorrow we are heading to Gettysburg, PA, where Maryellen is dragging me to the historical battle locations (she's going to educate me one way or another). From there, we don't yet have plans...but are steadily making our path northward, in no particular hurry.
Thanks for the interest and for all the great feedback.
Paul and Maryellen
PS These pictures are NOT photoshopped...it was a beautiful day...
The temperatures in the mountains today were fantastic today, 72 for most of the day and "heating up" to about 80 late in the day. Contrast this with our home temperature of nearly 100
We've also added a new feature to see if it works and is interesting....the fourth item from the top says "click below to see our track of Skyline Drive. There are many options map, Satellite, Hybrid, Terrain.. If you click on the link that says "Trackid#D133 etc" at the top of the map it will bring you to a link showing lots of info about the track such as elevation, speed, etc
A cool feature is viewing it in Google earth as well. Play around with it and give us some feedback
We've gone a little camera crazy and both Paul and Maryellen have digital SLR's and we are snap happy...so we are taking lots of pix.
We'll be putting up things nearly every day, but probably won't bug you with emails more than twice a week.
Tomorrow we are heading to Gettysburg, PA, where Maryellen is dragging me to the historical battle locations (she's going to educate me one way or another). From there, we don't yet have plans...but are steadily making our path northward, in no particular hurry.
Thanks for the interest and for all the great feedback.
Paul and Maryellen
PS These pictures are NOT photoshopped...it was a beautiful day...
Luray Caverns
We visited Luray Caverns today after taking a great bike ride through the gorgeous countryside.
The caverns are spectacular and the pictures don't do them justice.
It’s amazing that the caves are in nearly pristine conditions after much
tourist traffic. The owners seem to be good stewards of this treasure.
A very enjoyable day.
One of the most famous parts are the “fried eggs” These occurred naturally thousands of years ago.
Fried eggs
Here's our combined rig and "Toad" (towed vehicle),with a bike rack on the end. All together we are about 61
' from front to back.Here's what the Toad looks like in the back up camera. It really tracks along well and the experienced people say, that you can't really tell it's back there. That has been a pleasant surprise. Having the bikes along is really great.
Does this look familiar? This is the police car from the Andy Griffith show. We stayed at Mayberry campgrounds and visited Mt. Airy. A pleasant, friendly place and we helped the local economy by buying more "stuff" that we needed for the trip.Our first day on the road was great and the drive was very nice. Last night at 1:45 AM we got a call from our alarm company, ADT, that the alarm was going off and it showed the front door open. We had visions of having to rush home to deal with this. Since there was nothing we could do until the police went by, we checked the weather and saw that our home was under severe storm alert. So we hoped that it was a power surge or lightening strike that just caused it to go off. Our friends Dale and Nancy went by today to check on things, and all was fine...phew.....hopefully it won't go off again as our neighbors may burn the place down.
Today we also rode along the blueridge, went to a cherry orchard and had some fantastic fresh cherries. The scenery was really pretty and we'll post some more pix later.
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