More Cheese Please

Bob and I camped outside of Burlington, VT for the last five nights. It’s a great RV park with lots of seasonal people who are here shutting things down and putting their rigs into storage. The park closes on the 15^th which is pretty common around here. Time to move south.

We expected the fall colors to be about the same here as New Hampshire, but it’s past peak in northern Vermont. This is beautiful country with rolling hills and small mountains, rivers and Lake Champlain. We didn’t find the towns as nice as New Hampshire, and Burlington was sort of hard to get around and didn’t seem to take advantage of its shoreline on Lake Champlain, but we’ve still had a good time here.

Vermont is loaded with factory and farm tours and we took full advantage. Ben and Jerry’s was a wonderful and tasty tour. They even have a flavor graveyard with headstones for the retired flavors. We gained several pounds from our time at Dakin Farms, Cabot Creamery and Shelburne Farms. Shelburne Farms is a beautiful working farm originally built by a Vanderbuilt in the late 1800’s as a ‘model farm’. It is now run by a non-profit and is open for day visits, classes and the main house is now an Inn. The grounds and architecture are absolutely stunning. The animals are well cared for and actually seemed to enjoy interacting with the visitors, even during the milking demonstrations. Bob and I tasted many cheeses, maple syrup, smoked meats, honey and more. We also brought home pounds of lovely and unusual cheese, like hot habanero – Yowza!

Bob took me on a tour of the Rock of Ages granite quarry. It was quite impressive and fun to see how they cut and move tons of rock at a time. We drove around the Hope Cemetery that has some impressive, unusual and often whimsical headstones. The area is a center of granite carving and stone works, and has a great granite statue of the Scotsman Robert Burns, Bob’s favorite poet.

Bob also discovered an obscure state park that had some great hiking trails. We wandered in hardwood forests to viewpoints over Lake Champlain and down to the shoreline as well. Most of the other hikes we checked out were very steep. The mountains around here are not that high but the trails usually go straight up with elevation gains of 1000’ per mile very common.

It’s gotten cold in this part of the country with frost in areas. I want to head south ASAP, but we really want to see Lake Placid and the Catskills in upstate New York, so we’ll brave the forecasted nighttime temps in the high 20s for a couple more days.