Mickey's Musings

Vacation Part one :)

Yes, I know, I didn't even mention that we were going away :)
We went to Vermont and then up to Maine. Maine, as always was amazing. Vermont was a shocker, the people are so incredibly nice and the scenery is wonderful.

We began our trip with the electricity going out here at home. I don't think I've ever left for Maine without if being sweltering hot here before we go. It doesn't matter if it's June, July, August or September. The loss of power naturally stressed me because now I couldn't do that last minute vacuuming that I like to have done before a trip. I suppose it's a akin to the whole clean underwear syndrome *G* Seriously, it had more to do with the fact that my good friend Trudy was going to be coming in to give Sebastian his insulin shot 2x's a day. All things considered though, with the way the place looked when she was over the night before, *anything* was going to be an improvement. We encountered a good deal of rain on the way through NY state and had some trouble with the confusing signs to Vermont for Rt 4, we finally rolled into Fair Haven and found the streets rolled up, with the exception of a cop and 2 firemen that we chatting outside the fire house. We stopped and asked for directions and they all seemed a bit surprised that we were heading out to Half Moon State Park, they said it was "God's Country". We were very surprised when one of the firemen offered to show us the way there. He took off like only a fireman can, roaring past the 30 MPH signs at about 50! Down the winding rural roads we went finally turning off onto what can only be described as a dirt road in the woods, complete with sharp drop offs, holes in the road the size of Vermont and no lighting. It was one of those roads that they use in horror movies and I was really glad I had suppressed the (slight) urge to see the new Eliza Dushku movie. after a good 15-20 minutes and this still at full fireman speed, we came upon Half Moon and a locked gate. Thankfully the attendant was awake enough to tell us the trick to the gate and of we went to our site. It was raining, so we decided to sleep in the truck for the night. I hate mosquitoes. I will probably repeat this at least a half dozen times just to remind you. What *was* Noah thinking?! Anyway, we loved Half Moon so much that we decided to stay two more days. We found a cute little restaurant downtown, The Wooden Soldier, that had the best french toast I've ever eaten. The maple syrup was delicious. After eating there every day but one (we got up too late on Sunday) the owner was nice enough to let me buy a jug of the maple syrup that she uses. When we asked the waitress if she knew the best way for us to get to Ben and Jerry's, she said she didn't, but she'd find someone who did and promptly brought a man over who'd been sitting at the counter having his breakfast and said he'd be happy to help us! I thought that either I'd stumbled into Mayberry or these were pod people!

The Rangers/helpers at the park were so nice too. Kyle was the Ranger and Michele was working in the office along with Kyle's huge black Lab, named Dublin.

My son made friends with a mother goose and her two little babies and tried feeding them his left over bread, but it was a bit of a struggle because the fish kept jumping up and stealing the bread! We were surprised to see a really large, well fed snake sunning itself about 5 feet from the tent on a log in the water one morning. We saw a smaller one a few days later. We were extremely delighted to see porcupines, as we've never seen them in the wild. And Aeryn Sun was pleased that a deer came out and stood in the road every afternoon as if to greet us.

Our first adventure was to the Ben and Jerry's Factory tour The factory resembles a small amusement park complete with a graveyard for flavors that are no longer offered and a brightly colored playground for the kiddies. The gift shop is small, but colorful offering a cute assortment of T-shirts and socks and mugs and cups and other assorted items. We settled on a couple of mugs and I got a Half Baked refrigerator magnet. At the end of the tour you receive two small samples, that day the samples were Brownie Batter and something Oatmeal, that my son liked. Naturally they have an ice cream shop there and I was surprised that they charged me $2.50 *each* for a 2 small cups of vanilla ice cream for the dogs. The servings wasn't very large either. After treating the puppies, we had a couple of cones ourselves and was really disappointed when the man in front of me rather snottily questioned the girl behind the counter about whether the two different scoops in his cone looked the same size to her? I'd never seen anyone return an ice cream cone before like that. After having so many nice people in Vermont, this crabby guy stuck out like a sore thumb. The rain was coming down pretty good at this point and it was getting pretty chilly, but we still made our way up the hill and over to see the graveyard after letting the puppies back into the nice dry truck! They were pleased by this and rewarded us by not barking.

Next adventure - The Vermont Teddy Bear Factory

Posted by Mickey at June 26, 2003 1:58 AM