Vermont

If you have been following the blog you would have read sometime back that Fran and I have a goal of having been in all 50 states.  This trip up the east coast was, in part, to help meet that goal.  We are now in Vermont so that completes our 49th state and with that we have set a plan in motion to take a family trip to Hawaii next year to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.  Our 50th state!

Let’s get you caught up.  We left Montreal and were excited about getting back into the United States so we could use our cell phones and catch up with family and friends.  Well it just so happened that the park I picked in New Hampshire was a little off the beaten path and had no Verizon cell phone service.  In addition they had the worst internet service that we have encountered in a park.  To make and receive phone calls we had to drive 4 miles to the Lowe’s and sit in their parking lot.  It made for an interesting week.  A great attraction in New Hampshire is no sales tax.  We took advantage of this to stock up our wine cellar and buy a new computer.  The state capitalizes on this no sales tax by placing state run wine/liquor stores near the interstate and near the state lines.  The store had a great selection, great prices and no tax!

In New Hampshire we stayed in Littleton which is in the white mountains.  The scenery is just beautiful for the area.  We drove around the area with plans to take the drive to the top of Mount Washington for which they charge $30 per car to do, but we were turned away because our truck was to big for the narrow road.  The option would have been to take a guided tour at $30 per person to go to the top of a 6,000 foot mountain, we passed!

We did end up in Waterbury, Vermont, the home to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.  They have a factory tour along with a gift shop and a scoop shop.  They actually charge you $4 per person for a tour that encompasses seeing a movie on the history of the company then going into a room that overlooks the plant floor and then getting a small sample of one of their ice creams.  I am sorry, but why charge.  They make a ton of money at the scoop shop that is on the premises.  The lines were huge at the shop.  The fun part was seeing the flavor graveyard.  They have put markers in a cemetery setting for the flavors that did not make it or have been retired.  They put the dates along with a cute rhyme about the flavor.

While in New Hampshire our big TV in the RV finally gave out.  It has been acting up so I contacted our dealership to see what to do under the extended warranty.  They filed a claim for us and they had a check in the mail to us the same day to buy a new TV.  So far I have been pleased with the mechanical portion of the extended warranty. 

We moved onto Vermont at the beginning of the week so we could say we actually stayed in the state (49th state plus a sticker on our USA RV map, woo hoo!).  We have accelerated our schedule a little to get us into Knoxville just before Labor Day.  This means shorter stays at our next few stops.  Up next is Lake George, New York, which is in the Adirondacks, then onto Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania (just outside Scranton), Romney, West Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia then into Knoxville for six weeks.