Road Trip Day 5

On day 5 of our road trip we went to to the top of Mount Washington, hiked all the way up… Haha we drove, they had minibus tours up the most windy small rickety road that looked like it should be on ice road truckers minus the ice.

You could also take a cog train up but as we had a train ride on the agenda we just went for minibus and we had our own tour guide/driver so that was very nice. We shared the ride with a Canadian couple and their baby. They took a photograph every minute and asked what every height mentioned was in meters. They proudly declared, whilst taking a photo of a tree through the bus window that this was the reason they bought a zoom lens. Brilliant.

Mount Washington has been a tourist attraction for a very long time and they still had the old bunkhouse at the top.

And it hasn’t been changed very much only you can’t stay there anymore.

Possibly because no one is short enough except 5ft Kim to fit in the bunk beds.

I feel sorry for whoever had to lug this up the mountain.

The view out was really clear.

It was really cold and windy, you’ll notice the old gift shop is literally chained to the ground because of how strong the wind can get.

There was a visitor centre with a macabre but interesting list of known deaths on the mountain and at the bottom they had a museum with old carriages that used to take people up the mountain run by a very sweet old man who wanted to know why Kim and I weren’t in school.

I don’t think I’d fancy sitting at the top of this round some of those bends!

Afterwards we drove through Jackson who had a pumpkin festival on.

And there were more covered bridges.

After that we drove to the Conway Scenic Railroad.

Where you get a round trip on a nice old train, the carriages were open so I imagine it’d get chilly on a cold day but it was fairly warm out.

There were some nice views to be seen.

And parts of the train were old fashioned.

Then came the long drive to Maine, to be continued!

Road Trip Day 4

We started day 4 by visiting some of Kim’s family and having breakfast which was fun and then we went to the aerial tramway at Franconia Notch State Park.

 

There are two aerial trams, one is red and one’s yellow (called mustard and ketchup apparently) and they take you up to the top of Cannon Mountain.

The view going up was great and we saw lots more wild turkeys.

We were lucky it was so clear out we could see loads from the top viewing platform. Then we went for a walk around the Flume Gorge.

The Flume Gorge was discovered in  1808 by an old lady and was a popular trip for tourists, more recently they put in walkways and it’s so pretty. Even if there was a lot of uphill walking!

So much uphill… I’ve withheld the photos of the hundreds of stairs we climbed in favour of the prettier ones.

We saw a lot of chipmunks on the walk and they were all very tame and came very close to us, we named each one after the chipmunk that lives in Kim’s parents’ garden (Chippy).

So it was a very nature filled day. The American roadside was very helpful to us by pointing out how nice the countryside looked with large blue signs saying ‘SCENIC VIEW’ everywhere, and what could be more scenic than that?

Road Trip Day 3

 I was particularly looking forward to day 3 of our road trip as we dropped into the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory in Vermont and went on the little tour.

They said you couldn’t take any photos of the factory, I immediately took this to be a challenge and took some covert snaps just to prove I could… I mean I photographed the crown jewels under armed guard, you think I’m not up to the challenge? Also we discovered that some of the flavours Kim can buy in the USA I can’t get here and some that we can buy in the UK she can’t.

Towards the end of the tour we went to the tasting lab where they make up random flavours of ice cream that don’t get sold.

We tried caramel apple which was so tasty I really think it’s a shame they won’t release it, it tasted really fresh.

I have a large squashed penny collection so I was pleased to add another to the bunch, I got quite a few squashed pennies this trip.

  

And then I got an ice cream milkshake which I had whilst browsing the ice cream graveyard of all the flavours that have been discontinued over the years.

Ice cream for breakfast is a win in my books.

  

Then on we drove, we stopped to be touristy and take photos of this old covered bridge.

We saw a lot of these about in Vermont and we drove through one in New Hampshire which was a novelty for me, I think Kim was less impressed.

  

It looked pretty nice out and there was lots of leaf peeping along the way.

Then we took a look around the Cabot Creamery, which for the English folk of you reading this is a big cheese brand in the USA.

  

We got these stylish shoe covers for our tour.

Again there was no photographs allowed so I had to rise to the challenge. Why do I want to take a photo of the inner workings of a cheese factory you ask? Because I can.

  

Then we went in for the free samples because… free. I have always been highly dubious of American cheese or “plastic cheese” as I call it because of its suspicious colour, apparently they dye it yellow because Americans buy it more if its yellow. Also because Americans invented sprayable cheese… this is just wrong on so many levels and as a devoted cheese lover it offends me. Although I find English and French cheese superior in every way… it was still passable. I ate 4 samples to confirm my findings.

It was still rather nice out.

We stopped for lunch. I feel that now is the time to educate those of you who are English about iced tea. Iced tea in America is not like our delicious tasty bottled iced tea you buy in the shop with lunch like Liptons or the stuff you get while you’re on holiday in Spain. No no, that is what they call sweetened ice tea in America, mostly they served unsweetened iced tea. This is basically a cold cup of tea sans milk, it is bitter and disgusting, even when they flavour it so it sounds like it’d be nice. Oh, hibiscus and raspberry iced tea you think, that’ll be lovely… but it’s the devil. And they say oh you can add your own sugar to sweeten it, you know what doesn’t dissolve well in icy water? Sugar. Do not be fooled my friends and only order sweetened iced tea, you have been warned.

After lunch with my SWEETENED iced tea we drove to our hotel and we were a bit early to check in although whilst we were drive we noticed we were going right past part of the Appalachian Trail which you might recognise as the subject of Bill Bryson’s book a walk in the woods so we took a little investigate.

  

I pictured the trail as being a regular sort of path, well marked, maybe a few ups and downs… it’s not like that, it was rocky as hell and there were some pretty steep parts and we only walked it for half an hour! It was fine for a quick walk but I don’t think I could spend months and months walking like that. After leaving my mark in nature we set off.

It was still fairly nice out.

  

We’d booked in at an Econolodge which from the name I was expecting to be a bit like Travelodge is in the UK but I was so surprised at how nice it turned out to be, they even gave us free cakes to welcome us which is a sure fire way to get 5 stars on TripAdvisor in my estimations.

We had dinner in a nice restaurant called the Common Man and they had smores on the menu which we shared, I was pleased because I’ve never had official smores as they don’t sell Graham Crackers here. It was pretty much an entire day devoted to food.

Road Trip Day 2

Have you seen my new socks? They’re cool aren’t they…

Anyway I digress, we kicked off the second day of our road trip with a little wild turkey spotting. There were a lot of wild turkeys in New England and they always traveled in little packs which I thought was sweet.

We took a trip to a maple sugar farm, we started off with a maple latte, thanks a latte (had to).

And fed the goats, I don’t really know why the maple sugar farm had goats but whatevs.

It was nice out so we had a mill about and observed (laughed at) a large bus load of Texan tourists that said “Verrr-mont” instead of Vermont and wore cowboy hats. I enjoyed that.

We learned how maple syrup was made, I was surprised how easy it is actually, from a video that was made in the 80s shown in a barn. I assume it was the 80s because everyone had glasses like Deirdre Barlow and the old farmer was a tad racist. He seemed very concerned about Arabs and “them damn Yankees”… I was a bit confused as I thought people in New England were Yankees.

After this we took a trip to Walmart, Asda’s American sister store (if you want a laugh Google ‘people of Walmart’). Somehow the car’s cigarette lighter stopped working and so our music and phone charging capabilities were down (the GPS had long been ditched since the snowmobile track incident).

We bought a charger pack to recharge Kim’s iPhone which we then had to return and exchange for another one because Walmart, much like Asda, is not a purveyor of the highest quality of goods. We did get a tasty pumpkin pie though.

We then went to Cold Hollow Cider Mill, again cider as in Apple juice, not alcoholic cider which they call hard cider.

We got a little free sample of cider (we like free stuff, ok?).

And went to see the cider press.

Then we toured the extremely large gift shop (actually everywhere we went had gift shops) and got a cider smoked hot dog each, because who says you can’t have hot dogs for lunch twice in a row? Isn’t that what being an adult is all about?

Then we finished off with hot cider and a cider doughnut which was advertised at the packed counter by people continually shouting “I have doughnuts!” in the tone of someone shouting that they had a gun and weren’t afraid to use it.

After this we took a drive to Burlington, a very pretty place, and took a little stroll down by the sea where they had swing seats which I enjoyed immensely.

Also it was my favourite weather of all time (grey) so it wasn’t too hot or too cold but just right.

They had a free tourist shuttle bus that took us to a long market type street, I hope it was free anyway because we didn’t pay!

Then we had dinner, walked back to our car and headed back to the hotel for the night. Very pleasant all in all.

Road Trip Day 1

Kim and I planned a big New England leaf peeping road trip but the day before we went I had an early birthday dinner including Kim’s masterpiece as you see below, my robot cake I requested for this year’s cake construction. It’s pretty good isn’t it?

Also I got my birthday gifts early so that was a treat.

The next day we were on the road, Kim lives in Connecticut so we started off driving north up to Massachusetts and stopped off at the Yankee Candle Factory which was all decked out for autumn.

We chose some wax ornaments for candle dipping.

Kim was left in charge of the actual dipping, I held my breath.

But it actually turned out good, I think the dipping lady was impressed (but it was her first day there in fairness).

They had a historical candle dipping workshop.

They also had a very large Christmas section with a snow machine, train, decorations and a zillion candles.

They also had a section that started out part English knight and castle then went inexplicably into a German section. I’m still not too sure why.

So that was good. After that literally down the road from the Yankee Candle Factory was a a butterfly conservatory that we popped into.

They were everywhere, one landed on my head and turquoise butterflies dive bombed everyone like they were drunk kamikazes, they were huge.

After that we drove further north into Vermont, the leaves had started to change colours already.

We stopped off in Watson, Vermont for a bit of barbecue and cider (in the states cider does not mean cider… it means apple juice sadly).

But the real reason we stopped in Watson is to visit the Vermont Country Store, this weird old store I heard about that sells very strange things and has a mail order catalogue.

You may already know that I adore looking through tat so this store was right up my street. Also they had about a million free samples of food of which Kim and I tried the lot.

They had old lady nightdresses, halloween outfits, orange lipsticks, talcum powder that looked like it came from the 60s, table cloths, cleaning stuff… they sold everything.

They even let you do shots of maple syrup.

After we were full of free samples we made our way onto our hotel, it was at this point that the GPS sat nav rebelled against us.

At one point it tried to take us down a snow mobile track deep in the countryside where upon a toothless couple with mullets stopped us and informed us that a couple had got stuck down there the previous night when their GPS did the same to them. The couple had spent the night in their car and the mullet couple took great pride in telling us that they had told them they didn’t own a phone when they knocked on their door asking for help. Cute. Then they cocked their shotgun and… ok I’m lying, they didn’t have a shotgun but there were a lot of “vote Trump” signs in Vermont, lets put it that way.

So we ditched the GPS in favour of Kim’s iPhone. Now it was Columbus Day weekend and the peak of leaf peeping season and so hotels were scarce and expensive. Whilst booking our trip online we had chosen a strange Buddhist yoga hotel as the best of a bad lot and we did not have high hopes. I kept joking that I thought they’d worship crystals. When we got the the front desk I found these.

Seriously… Anyways turns out their spirit animals or whatever had messed up the booking and they had no record of us existing, then we produced our booking confirmation and they rang round sharpish to their “sister resort” ( AKA hotel down the street completely unrelated to them).  And so we settled there and it was basic but fine, no chanting or healing crystals in sight so perhaps we traded up. Also no one has charged us for this stay yet so I’m counting it as a win.

 So ended a pretty busy day with a ice aged wait for a pizza but it was tasty so that was good.

Off to America

I’ve been off on my travels again, off to visit my lovely wife whilst we wait the year and a half plus for our visa… haha… fun times. I decided the coach was the cheapest easiest way to get to Heathrow so I parked Goldie (the car) in Norwich and I got to take a little nap on the way up on the way I passed a transit van in flames surrounded by about 6 fire engines… Dramatic.

 

Luckily I got to the airport unsinged and I decided to try out an airport lounge, it was about £30.

It was pretty good, there was a view of the runway and comfy chairs, newspapers, magazines, charging points. You could order free meals (well not really free you already paid for it) and alcohol.

There was also a big buffet with breakfast stuff and cakes.

And then before I knew it I was on the plane, I flew Virgin on the way out but Delta on the way home. Virgin was ok but I thought it would be better after seeing all their adverts, I wouldn’t go out of my way to fly with them again, they were just the same as anyone else.

I made a buddy on the plane so we weren’t bored because we chatted, she worked for a big radio show in the UK. I also watched Bad Neighbours 2 or Neighbours 2 depending on what country you live in.

I made myself a tasty little spritzer and had some chicken dish that was nice.

For some reason we also got a Fab ice lolly… I hadn’t had a fab since I was a child.

Then a little snack before landing, I’m just obsessed with aeroplane food. By the way, did you know cheese and pickle is an English thing? I found myself explaining at length to my father in law why it didn’t contain meat and that pickle was a sort of chutney… the rest of the world is clearly missing out is all I can say. Cheese and pickle for all!

When I got into Boston I had a welcoming committee (complete with sparkly welcome sign!). And I got to meet this little dog who’s so cute but so naughty.