SHELBURNE, VT TO BANGOR, ME—Friday-Wednesday, June 12-17, 2015

---

Shelburne, Vermont to St. Johnsbury, Vermont—Friday-Saturday, June 12^th-13th Shelburne Campground in Danville. Raining this morning, heavy overcast skies and 68 degrees. Starting mileage is 45,654.

Pulled out earlyish and got on the road toward the major city of Burlington. Thankfully, we hit a freeway bypass and didn’t have to go through downtown. Zoom, we were on I-89 and able to go more than the 30-40 miles per hour we were doing in the morning “stop and go’ to work traffic. This stretch of road is labeled “scenic” and it really is. It cuts back through the Green Mountains and must have been a real engineering feat to build.

At the exit for Waterbury-Stowe Road, we got off the freeway and found the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory to take a tour. There were so many people ahead of us that after we purchased our tickets, we had to wait for 45 minutes for the next tour to start. We used the time to check out the gift shop and bought a couple of things—a plastic ice cream cone for our Christmas tree, a bumper sticker for the back of Rosie, and a couple of other items of that nature.

The tour was informative and interesting. After viewing a short film on the history of the company, most of the time was spent in a room with glass walls that looked down on the spotless and stainless steel equipment. It seemed that it only took about 4-5 people on the floor to operate and turn out a batch of ice cream, one flavor a day, at 120 packaged pints a minute. You can look on-line for “Ben and Jerry’s factory tour” and see the whole thing. At the end, we each got a scoop of ice cream.

In the parking lot is a replica of the painted vehicle they used when they first started the company and toured the USA passing out free ice cream. The original “bus” burned up in Cleveland, Ohio and turned into a case where bad news is good news, publicity wise. I was surprised at how tiny the factory is compared to how popular the ice cream is in the US. I guess an output of 120 packages per minute or 7200 pints per hour, times however many hours that they run a day, IS a lot of ice cream!

We got back into Rosie II and continued on toward Montpellier, the state capitol of Vermont. I couldn’t believe how small the town is. It reminded me of Juneau, Alaska as both are hemmed in by steep mountains on the backside and water on the front side (here it is a river) before mountains loom up again. Parked right across from the capitol building and got out and took some pictures. It was lunch time and people were out all over the main street at restaurants and along the sidewalks. Once we cleared the 5-6 blocks of downtown, it took maybe 5 minutes of driving to be out in the “wild woods” again. We were now on highway 2 since Interstate 89 heads southeast from here.

In the town of St. Johnsbury we had lunch at a local restaurant. Not a great meal for either of us—can’t even remember what we ate. We then drove back the way we came, to the community of Danville and the Sugar Ridge Campground. The front area around the office is landscaped very nicely and the first impression is great; however, it was an expensive place and the spots for each unit were way too close to each other. We didn’t have wifi as we didn’t think the $7 daily fee was worth it. Before we saw the camp spot, we had agreed to stay still for 2 nights, and so grumbling about it, we did.

Danville, Vermont to Bangor, Maine--Sunday, June 14^th

Sugar Ridge Campground, 8:30 start on a beautiful bright sunshiny day at 59 degrees. Mileage 45,746.

Highway 2 goes right through the town of St. Johnsbury on Main Street and we continued on it as it crossed the river and left town. Went through several small villages and stopped at the community of Lunenburg to take pictures of all the flags lining and crossing the street as today is Flag Day. Crossed the Connecticut River and dropped into the state of New Hampshire.

The road becomes a scenic byway and, boy, are the people out along here doing “their outdoor thing.” Motorcyclists coming in for a BIG rally, hikers in droves parking and walking up to trail heads in the White Mountains and The Presidential Range, families out at various attractions like Santa’s Village, a theme park in Jefferson, or having lunch alfresco in area resort restaurants. When we got to the town of Gorham, NH, we stopped at a Micky D’s for their wifi and I posted a bunch of pictures to Facebook. This restaurant is a huge place with two Ben Franklin type pot-bellied stoves. Do you think it gets cold here in winter? This also seems to be the local hang-out for a group of seniors that we talked a few minutes with. They told us that the motorcycle rally was one of the bigger ones in the US held every year—like the one we were real familiar with in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Crossed into Maine and this road continues from one small town to the next. Seeing lots of vendors for canoeing and tubing down the Sunday River. Some ski resorts in this stretch also. At the town of Rumford, we stopped to take pictures of their falls and ate lunch in Rosie. We continued driving across Maine through towns named Mexico and Peru---which seemed strange to us for rural Maine. Not sure what people in these small rural towns do to support themselves. We always ponder that as we travel more on small 2-lanes roads through rural areas than on the interstates through large cities.

We stopped at Newport, Maine to get gas just before we got onto I-95, as highway 2, dead ends into it. Gas was $2.68 per gallon and she took 20.8 gallons for a total of $59.84. Made our way quickly into Bangor and found the Marriott, Towne Place Suites right off the freeway.

Bangor, Maine--Monday-Wednesday, June 15^th-17^th--Towne Place Suites

We used "soon to expire" points for a three nights stay here. We did do laundry, got haircuts, toenails cut, and shopped for groceries, but mainly, just relaxed. We also visited an LL Bean outlet nearby as I wanted to look at a rain jacket. We did look, but found the outlet reduced their prices by only a couple dollars on each item and did not have the deep discount we had hoped for.

---