California to Vermont

Tuesday-Oct 16, 2018 Flight from San Francisco was early morning so we spent Monday night at Dan’s daughters place, took BART to the airport and flew off to Charlotte, NC where we changed planes to finish up the day at Burlington, VT. Started in the dark. Arrived in the dark. Had rental car waiting for us at the Burlington airport so headed off to the Northstar Motel in Shelburne, VT. Seems like it was party time in the motel but it wasn’t our party so we were not happy. The owner of the motel moved us to another room for our second night. It was a nicer room and it was quieter. Hooray. Wednesday-Oct 17, 2018 We spent the first full day in Vermont driving around looking at fall colors. I had a route from the Vermont state tourism site which we started to follow. We drove along Lake Champlain and onto some of the islands. However, as we stopped along the way, we received other suggestions and decided to follow them. One suggestion was to take Smuggler’s Cove, which was the name of a road. It came with a warning…the road is narrow, steep and there are rocks one has to go around. To me, it sounded like there would be rocks in the road. Of course, this was a challenge for Dan, the professional driver, so we went that way.

Interesting things grow in the trees here

Smuggler’s Cove is narrow, steep and there are rocks. However, the rocks were not in the road but right on the side of the road so I do understand what the locals were trying to tell us. We went slow and carefully around the rocks while crossing our fingers that no one would be coming from the other direction. Crossed fingers worked.

Stopped along the way to admire the trees.

We also ended up driving by Stowe. I had seen articles in skiing magazines about the resort there so it I was glad we could go by and see it in person. There was no snow but I could see where the runs were and the cuteness of the area. As we wandered, we happened upon Ben & Jerry’s factory! Of course we stopped and took the tour and test tasted the latest ice cream flavor.

We were both impressed with how much space was between homes in the country. The towns were small and the homes close together but not many fences so it appeared more open.