Dale & Patti Schumacher's Travel Log: Vermont's Green Mountains

Vermont is one of three states Dale has not visited; the other two are New Hampshire (next door) and Montana (next year's western road trip). As we outlined in Monday's post, we wanted to explore the Green Mountains of Vermont. On Tuesday and Wednesday we did just that. Here it is.

Tuesday - October 06, 2015: Finding your way around a new town is always interesting. We headed out to Starbucks for out morning "wake up." The closest one was in Burlington Town Center - sounds like a shopping mall, right? Well, it is; in the middle of the downtown section of Burlington (Church Street closed to vehicles, a walking mall). Reminded us of Franklin Street in Tampa (limited traffic); the West End in St. Louis; Duval Street in Key West - you get the picture. Not at all what we expected, but Starbucks was there. Slowed our start for the day.

We had seen a couple of water fall areas on our drive up from Lake George NY and wanted to get some pictures. We couldn't remember exactly where we saw them, so we set out to retrace our drive, within reason. Shelburne VT is an area along Lake Champlain with views of the Adirondack Mountains to the West and the Green Mountains to the East. We started to see some better vistas with more color. Got some pretty good pictures, but didn't find the water falls, traveling a bit further south than we wanted.

On the way back, we stopped by the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory. Patti has received a Teddy from them, as well as a couple of Pajama Grams from their sister company, over the years. It was a pretty cool learning experience, with a lot of "bear puns" mixed in. The "hospital" was particularly interesting. With a "life time guarantee" the Company requires the "injured" bear be returned to determine if it can be mended or requires replacement. Dog bites often require replacement. Other "injuries" may just require a replacement part. We found the Tupelo Honey IV particularly humorous, as well as the IBU - Intensive Bear Unit.

The Christmas Loft! Of course we had to check it out. Nice but small. Not on the scale of Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth MI.

By the time we got back to the RV, it was late afternoon. But, we had located the second water fall, along I-89, about 3 miles from our RV Park. (LOL) After a futile attempt to get a picture, we decided to end the day with another movie, The Martian. Good movie. Matt Damon did a good job and the story line was interesting. We recommend it as a warm up to the next Star Wars episode coming out in December.

Wednesday - October 07, 2015: The day started with a good deal of cloud cover. By 10 AM the sun had shown its face and the temperature began to warm. Another beautiful day in our journey. We're thinking out of the 44 days we've been on the road, we may have had rain four days. That's pretty good for this time of year. Today's agenda was packed: Montpelier (State Capitol); Stowe VT (Trapp Family Lodge & Stowe Mountain Resort); and, Ben & Jerry's at Waterbury VT.

I-89 runs south toward Manchester NH, through the Green Mountain valleys. As Patti said, "The Green Mountains are getting dressed in their Autumn Finery." It's amazing what a difference a couple of days and a few hundred miles can make in the proliferation of Fall Colors. Not at peak yet, but getting there. First stop - Montpelier. For a State Capitol City, it is very small; very quaint. Beautiful.

After some time in the Capitol City, we moved back toward Burlington and visited Stowe. Must be the Winter Sports capitol of Vermont, perhaps the northeast. Quite a number of ski venues. One of our interests was the Trapp Family Lodge. You may remember the Trapp family; their World War II struggle to get out of Austria was the foundation for the musical, "The Sound of Music." They were able to relocate to Vermont after their escape. Beautiful place and view. Lunch was good, but a bit pricey.

Next stop - the highest peak in Vermont, Mount Mansfield (elevation 4,395 feet). While not even as high as Denver in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, it is impressive when viewed in the context of its surroundings. A couple of years ago Dale's sister Faye and husband Harry had visited the area and recommended the gondola ride up the side of Mt. Mansfield. Dale is not comfortable in high places, so a gondola ride did not excite him. He loved it. The length of the gondola ride was 7,664 feet, rising 2,100 feet to 3,650 feet. The top of the mountain was still about 700 feet above us. Check out the pictures. At the base of the mountain the wind was fairly quiet and the temperature was 63 degrees. At the end of our journey up the mountain, the wind was about 25 MPH and temperature was 39 degrees (cold). It was nice to get back down the mountain. We loved the ride, both ways we had the car to ourselves.

Back to Burlington, via Waterbury VT, the home of Ben & Jerry's. Nice tour, lots of "moos" in the story and plenty of environmental politics. A very successful company. Interesting to know that their number one seller for years had been Cherry Garcia (never tried it). Just recently it was replaced by Half Baked. The tour guide mused that they suspected that Half Baked (Chocolate & Vanilla Ice Cream; with Fudge Brownie and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough) took the lead because of increased sales in Colorado and Washington State as a result of recent legislation.