The PolyBlog

Day 3 was moving day! We were finishing Vermont and heading onward to New Hampshire (photos 1-2).

We had breakfast at the hotel, again, and then packed up, playing the second game of Car Tetris to pack the car back the way I did when we first left Ottawa. We took some photos around the hotel before we left (photos 03-08).

We drove up past the Gondola SkyRide again and onward to Smuggler’s Notch. The road had some nice canopy as we got closer and then it got jiggy pretty quick (photos 9-16, with 3 short videos). There were lots of signs about not doing the route in the winter in big trucks, but honestly, the actual “notch” is about one and a half car widths wide, and a tight turn. I had lots of room in our cross-over SUV, and I still felt like it was tight, there’s no way I would want to do it in anything big. It’s basically two giant rocks, with a small diagonal path between them. Beautiful area though, with some small waterfalls beside the road.

Next, we headed to the Moss Glen Waterfalls. If you feel a sense of déjà vu, it’s because we went to a waterfall with the same name the day before. This one is located just outside Stowe and was on the way to New Hampshire anyway. It was interesting to drive out the North-East side of Stowe as we also found another grocery store, and a few more businesses. We had wondered where the locals shopped, as there wasn’t anything really grocery-like in the main part of Stowe.

The waterfall area is a strange combination of formal infrastructure with an untouched ravine. There is a small path made of dirt, wire-mesh and/or boardwalk through vegetation and a bit of forest. There was one open area of tall bushes about head height that reminded me of the scene in Jurassic Park: The Lost World where they’re all walking through a large field and the raptors are making beelines for them through the tall grass undetected. We got to see a bit of river, and some rapids, before getting to the big waterfall. At this point, there is almost NO infrastructure at all, other than a small area of fencing to stop you from an area that looked like it might be prone to erosion and collapse. You scramble up an embankment of about 30-40 feet in height comprised mostly of slippery rocks and tree roots and a series of “ledges” that resemble stairs of sorts. Or at least, that’s what you use them for, even if they’re more sloped, slippery, and a really good way to twist an ankle or to fall and break a femur. But hey, what can go wrong on a trip to Vermont? (Small aside — we have a friend who took a trip to Vermont and literally fell and broke her femur while on an easy hiking trail).

It was a great waterfall (photos 17-54), well worth the visit, but getting back down was even harder than getting up. And since it was only supposed to be a very short walk from the parking lot, which was true, we didn’t anticipate it being super hot climbing up and down the hill. By the time we got back to the car, we all needed hydration pretty soon.

We drove through northern Vermont, with lush mountains and some rivers, lots of beautiful old houses, many done up as BNBs. We saw two covered bridges, and visited Hardwick, a cute town with a big grass square. We had lunch in St. Johnsbury. Lots of places were not open for lunch, so we opted for a café called Yummies at the Star, a cross between a snack bar and a diner attached to a movie theatre. It wasn’t exactly a gourmet menu but at least they had really good milkshakes, and a young girl running the place by herself and doing a fairly credible job of it. We crossed over into New Hampshire by bridge and could see the White Mountains for quite some time before we got to them. They were less green and bigger than the mountains in Vermont, more rugged, more pointy…more imposing and close together (photos 55-74). We arrived in Gorham, with lots of restaurants on the main street.

Since our hotel room wasn’t ready yet, we drove to the base of Mount Washington and the “autoroute” if you were to drive up it. I seriously thought about it, I admit. I wanted to do it. But I wasn’t sure what it would be like, would I “enjoy” it or feel like I “survived” it? We had other plans for the mountain for the next day, so we settled for viewing the Presidential Mountains. We had good clear views, and in fact, had had beautiful weather most of the day. We saw the Google Car and the parking lot had a pretty good selection of license plates (NY, VT, NH, ME, MA, PA, OH, FL, NC, UT, CO, QC, NS). We visited the gift shop and then headed farther south towards Jackson, to the end of the White Mountain National Forest (photos 75-97).

Then we retreated back to Gorham to our hotel (the Quality Inn) with dinner at J’s Corner restaurant near the hotel. And Andrea had her first lobster roll of the trip.

Overall, the driving wasn’t too bad for the day, 246 km, although there weren’t as many stops in the middle section. For photos, we took 271 which has been curated down to 97 for the gallery.

2023-07b July – Day 03 Vermont to New Hampshire

97 photos

Day 02 of the trip, a Sunday, was to be a “roam around Vermont” day (photo 1-2). We wanted to see a large lookout, go to Montpelier, and maybe see some waterfalls and/or covered bridges down towards the middle of the state. We managed to do all of the things we wanted, but not quite the way we expected.

We had breakfast at the hotel (one of the few perks, although they also had a pool), and headed off to Mount Mansfield for the Gondola SkyRide. It is the tallest mountain in Vermont and of course a major ski hill in the winter, with a summer gondola ride for lookout views of other mountains and valleys. It had amazing views, we saw lots of mountains in the distance, with great weather for our visit. There was an option to walk up or down, but we’re not crazy — it’s 3600 feet, although that isn’t including the full summit up behind the chalet. We bought a t-shirt for Jacob as a souvenir and took lots of photos (photos 3-60).

For our next jaunt of the day, we headed for Montpelier. We had been thinking that in every state, we would visit the state capitol building, look around a bit and move on. But Montpelier had an added reason to visit. They had been experiencing huge flooding issues in previous weeks, but they were supposedly into full recovery mode and we thought we could throw some tourism dollars their way, give them some business, even if only mild. News of their recovery efforts were greatly exaggerated. Montpelier is the smallest of state capitals by population, and the downtown area is about 4-5 blocks long plus 2-3 for the government buildings. All of it was closed off, with almost no easy access to any of it, and almost all of the businesses with huge piles of debris stacked outside of their doors. Note that to get to the area, the river had to rise a good 8-10 feet to flood it. All of the businesses were still closed, so we ended up stopping at a gas station across the river, and ate at a Dominos for lunch. The State House itself was impressive (photos 61-68), and there were lots of huge old houses above them on the hill.

We reversed course from Montpelier on the big highway, past the turn for Stowe, and on to Waitsfield which has a covered bridge (photos 69-84, with one video of the river, showing how clear it was which was NOT the case for much of the river elsewhere in the state). It is the oldest covered bridge still in use, and the second oldest in the state. It goes over Mud River, with people floating down on tubes, swimming, jumping off the edge. We enjoyed creemees (soft ice cream) in an old barbershop building that was destroyed by water levels from Hurricane Irene — up the bank, over the ground, and up another 8 feet. Almost to the level of the bridge itself, if not over. Yet no apparent damage from the recent flooding.

We then headed towards Moss Glen Falls. There are two falls in Vermont with that name, one down by Granville (where we were headed) and one near Stowe that we would visit on Day 03. We took a lot of back roads down to Granville, and our GPS took us WAY out of our way at one point instead of doing a simple turn-around back to the highway. We drove by it on the way down and there was almost no signage, so we had missed it. After our loop through a backwoods area on rugged dirt roads, we got back on the highway and found it relatively easily. Just really a pull-off area on the road, followed by a small boardwalk to the falls. I confess, I wasn’t expecting much given the lack of signage and infrastructure, even though it was on the list of the best 15 falls in Vermont. But I was too pessimistic — it was very peaceful, with a wide waterfall and definitely worth the stop (photos 85-102).

We could have just taken the same route back to Stowe, but that seemed uneventful, so we decided on an alternate route to the West. It was nice, and went over a steep mountain that I would ABSOLUTELY NOT want to do in the winter, with switchbacks and steep grades with turns at the bottom. Reminded me a bit of some of the roads in Cape Breton, actually. Overall, it was a long relatively boring drive back. We stopped for one fall and lookout, but the rain started and we mostly just drove up to Richmond. Only to find out that you can’t get ON the highway to Stowe at Richmond but have to go really far West to get on again. I’m sure there was probably another road to the East that would have done the same thing, but well, you rely on Google Maps to your detriment (photos 103-107).

We stopped at a grocery store outside Stowe on the way back, near the main highway, and then back to the hotel. Andrea and Jacob went for a swim while I had a nap.

And then it was time for dinner. One of the things that Stowe is known for is the that the real family from the Sound of Music, the von Trapps, settled in Stowe after the war and opened a hotel and restaurant. It has grown over the years, and while we thought of staying at the hotel, it was a bit more expensive than we wanted to pay. So we settled for dinner at their beerhouse. Really good Austrian food, with a laid back atmosphere. Afterwards, we drove by the hotel just to see it, and could see just how much property they own! In the winter, they push cross-country skiing too, and some of that is just on their own property. The beerhall is shown at photos 108-111.

Oh, and for stats — about 230km driven, 276 photos taken curated down to 111 (including 1 video).

2023-07b July – Day 02 Around Vermont

111 photos

As part of my goal to do 60 things by age 60, I have a goal to spend at least a week outside Ottawa per year. For 2023, my wife Andrea and son Jacob wanted to take an actual trip somewhere. For Jacob? He wanted to see a mountain. Initially, we planned a trip to Alberta, the US, and BC to see the Rockies. But with most of Alberta and BC tourism ministries saying in June that the wildfires were terrible and that we weren’t even in the hottest months yet, we reoriented our plans to New England (see the trip route in photo 1). Jacob would still see mountains, even if they weren’t as impressive as the Rockies.

On Day One we planned to go as far as Stowe Vermont (see photo 2). We headed out on a Saturday morning in July, passing through Eastern Ontario on the way to the bridge at Cornwall (photos 4-8) and the border crossing (photo 9, 10). We left around 10h45 (see photo 3), and crossed at 12h45. This was Jacob’s first time in the U.S., and it’s a little sad that you don’t get a “stamp” in your passport for crossing. When the immigration and customs agent asked what the purpose of our visit was, I was truthful — my son wants to see a mountain! 🙂

As we passed through northern New York state, we grabbed lunch at a Subway, and it was interesting to see the impact on the local area from 30 years ago and even from before the pandemic, when there were a lot more border crossings for shopping, etc. Now, the most common border businesses seemed to be selling pot. Many gas stations and other tourism support businesses were closed.

However, we saw windfarms (photo 11) and our first shots of distant mountains on our way to Lake Champlain by Plattsburgh (photos 12-16). We had decided to take the ferry across Lake Champlain at Essex, NY to Charlotte, VT (photos 17-28), and then work our way back northward via Burlington and on to Stowe. Lake Champlain was surprisingly calm given a decent breeze, and there were few sailboats about for a Saturday. As we passed through Burlington, Andrea had her first exciting sighting — there was an Olive Garden! As we got closer to Stowe, we could see the Green Mountains quite well, including some with rockier faces (photos 29-37). I never feel something is truly a mountain unless I can see rocky exteriors for part of it. The local river was high and muddy/murky, reflective of the recent flooding in Vermont over the previous weeks.

The road into Stowe was quite twisty, particularly as we got closer to the hotel itself, Northern Lights Lodge, which we checked into around 5h30. Pretty basic place, seeming like exactly what it is — a motel designed for skiers in the winter. A little tired looking in the hallways, a bit rougher, but when guests are likely to be carrying gear around, not unexpected. The room was good.

Stowe itself was interesting, as it is exactly what it is designed to be too — a small ski town for the winter. There were lots of small restaurants and specialty stores, with no chains hardly at all (outside of a grocery store at the edge of town and Dunkin Donuts). The hotel owner had recommended The Bench pub and we enjoyed a nice dinner there. The food was good, if a bit expensive, but I also enjoyed a really good local root beer and Andrea had a nice non-alcoholic cider.

We ticked off our travel goals with Jacob seeing mountains for the first time, although mostly small ones so far, and Jacob got to see two states (New York and Vermont). And I got to contribute to my 60×60 goal. Enjoy the photos from the day below, with 38 photos curated from our collection of 83 for the day. The total distance was about 370 km.

2023-07b July – Day 01 Ottawa to Vermont

38 photos