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Published: October 19th 2008
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At Ben & Jerry's
Look at the little guy! He has an ice cream cone! We started the morning doing business. Using the computer, we found a Walgreen's and a Bank of America and the auto place where the truck is getting an oil change tomorrow. Off we set.The map we had of the local towns was confusing and not to scale, so we were thrown off right away. We did find the auto place. Then we tried to find the B of A, but ended up close to the Walgreen's, so we started there. Then we got better directions to the hospital. We drove up and down the street by the hospital looking for the bank. Finally we asked a shuttle bus driver if the bank was IN the hospital. Indeed it was. Rich said he knew that some banks were sick, but that was taking it a little too far. I wanted to deposit my first retirement check.YAY! Anyway, it was in the Dartmouth-Hitchcock hospital. You have to say Dartmouth with no "r" and drag out the short o sound a little. There are NO Bank of Americas in Vermont. There's a story there, but we don't know what it is. Then we set out for our excursions of the day. On our way
to Montpelier, we stopped at a rest area and had our picnic lunch. It was a sunny day and we could eat outside in our shirtsleeves. Montpelier is a center for granite quarrying. The rest area had examples of polished granite that were beautiful! We didn't go into the capitol building, although we read that it was made of granite and has a statue of agriculture on the top. What kinds of agriculture? Dairy for cheese, maple syrup, and CORN? After Montpelier, we went to Waterbury to tour Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory. Our tour guide was funny so we had a nice tour - short. We got free cookie dough ice cream at the end. Ben and Jerry don't own the place anymore, but most of their foundations and work ideas are still in place. Then we drove to Stowe because it's so famous for its ski areas and because Maud told us to. It is a pretty town with mostly white, old houses with slate roofs. There were some pumpkins for sale on a bright green lawn for a photo op, so we stopped. The buildings behind it were an old egg "factory" - three stories of
chicken coops, chicken wire on the windows. Another pumpkin customer said that he used to come here as a child and they got their eggs from the owner. Now the place is totally rundown. It would be very interesting on Halloween! We turned south on Highway 100, to enjoy the foliage and the little towns. We noticed that more convenience stores have coffee AND hot water for a selections of teas. As we drove, we noticed that houses and barns that had had new roofs put on, were mostly smooth,metal roofs to shed the snow more easily. Some of the barns had the steepest roofs we'd ever seen on a barn. The foliage is pretty much past peak up here, but there are still fabulous individual trees. The main fall decorations are pumpkins and mums on porches and in yards. The hay bales are the small rolls here, but they are completely wrapped up in white plastic. They look like giant marshmallows, dotting the fields. There were a couple of farms that had a couple of those shaggy highland cattle. The farmhouses are picturesque, old, with four chimneys and their barns have cupolas on top and decorative air vents. The
Village Bridge, a covered bridge in Waitsfield, had the Chenoweth arch design, for those interested Chenoweth realtives. In the late afternoon, we saw a sign that said, Historic Round Barn, so we drove up a side road for two miles. Oh, my goodness! It was immense and beautiful! Then we saw an old time hay-baler "pooping" out small, two-wire, rectangular bales. We've been noticing that just about every house has a cord or more of firewood stacked and ready. Heating is expensive and hardwood is plentiful. As it was getting dark, we saw a pen with HUGE hogs! On the other side of the fence were cows. When they stood side by side, no kidding, the hogs were almost as big as the cows! When we got back to our camper, we ate dinner and watched the last Presidential debate. We went to sleep, dreaming of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and round barns.
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