New England #4

Saturday morning we left Rutland VT in good time, and headed up the road to St. Johnsbury VT. After the "bus people" left the Inn in Rutland, we were able to partake of their fine continental breakfast and carb load for the day. We stopped on the way out of Rutland and topped up the gas. Other than one time I got snookered at a Sunoco station we have not paid more than $2.99 for high-test the whole trip. At the mentioned Sunoco station, they had 4 grades of gas, and they advertised their 91-octane stuff as top grade on the sign. It was advertised for $2.99 but when I pulled up the 93 octane was $3.03. I should have pulled off but we were in the middle of no where and I didn’t know where the next gas would be. Back to today. We had a beautiful trip, about 125 miles through the mountains. We stopped for coffee at a little roadside market and Vickie found a beautiful "Vermont" embroidered hooded fleece sweatshirt for a great price. I got a giant homemade thing like a devils food ca ke except it was maple with that killer white cream stuff in the middle. I ate about a third, and saved it for later to avoid a sugar blowout. Along the way we went through a little town named Williamstown and the high school kids were having a car wash. This was the class of 2010, which made me feel 100 years old. (I graduated in 1967 which is 43 years before them) The car was real dirty after 1000 miles, so I turned back and let them wash it. Made their day, and we made a donation to their cause. After we had ridden a while and everything dried out, we put the roof down and enjoyed the incredible scenery. This country is really remote. There are very few Wally Marts, K-Marts or any Marts. Today I needed some McGuires Quick Detailer, so we stopped at a True Value hardware store, which was the only place that remotely seemed to be a possibility. They had a small automotive section and 1 bottle of what I wanted. It was too early to check into the motel so we stopped and had lunch at Anthony’s Diner that had been mentioned in our Road Trip USA book. Food was great and atmosphere was perfect. Had some New England clam chowder (first time to have it actually in New England) and Egg Salad sandwich on toasted white homemade bread. Sandwich came with homemade potato chips, and everything tasted great. After lunch, we checked into the St. Johnsbury Comfort Inn and Suites, which calls itself "Vermont’s Taj Mahal!" (complete with exclamation point) After we checked in, we used our Quick Detailer to get the car back to pretty. Then we took some cool pictures in front of the fountain with the hundreds of mums in front of the place. If I get time tonight, I’m going to post some pictures from the trip so far. Well by now you have probably gotten an invitation to view our pictures. Don’t know what is involved on your end, but I do know it’s free. We went swimming for a while earlier after finishing the car. Then I came back to the room and worked on editing the pictures. I t was getting late, and Vickie said hey there’s a button on this phone that says pizza delivery. I said go for it, and we ended up with a delivered Hawaiian pizza that was great. Vickie has been busy saving marigold seeds from some interesting white marigolds she found out front. She even taught the young pregnant desk clerk how to save and grow marigold seeds. We are working on our route for tomorrow. We plan to get an early start and perhaps get to the coast of Maine. We have gotten some good travel suggestions from our friends Mary X. and Charlie Russell. The pool opens at 05:00, and we plan to get in some aerobic swimming prior to carb loading at breakfast starting at 06:00. Hopefully we can be on the road as soon as it is light. Oh and just a few comments about the current Taj Mahal. The sign over the front door says #1 Comfort Inn and Suites 2003. Well, it’s been all down hill since then. A bunch of stuff in our room didn’t work and they took care of things, but we had to ask a lot. Latest not so good: dutifully got Vickie up at 05:00 so we could swim before breakfast at 06:00. Went to the Inn front desk for towels and the lady said, "oh the pool doesn’t open till 5:00." I said it’s 5:30, she said no it’s 4:30, I said but the clock in my room said 5:30, she said but it’s 4:30. Note to self—check the clock in the room against the cell phone. Oh well at least we went to bed an hour earlier. Someone had a good joke on us. Did our swimming, and sat in sauna and hot tub. Got to the breakfast that was supposed to start at 06:00, and the lady said she was running behind. We hung around and got some stuff to eat as she toted it out. She reported that for the second day in a row, the waffle makers were not working. All in all this very pricey Comfort Inn was not worth the money. I’ll have to write to Comfort Inn’s and post something on Trip Advisor.com. In any event, we will be on the road as the sun is coming up, hopefully to make it to the Maine coast tonight . More later.

Wes

New England #3

Hello, it’s Saturday morning, and we’re in Rutland VT. Had a good day yesterday, rode with the roof down most of the day. We stayed late at the Red River Inn utilizing the good Internet connection and cell service to secure reservations for Friday and Saturday night. We don’t normally worry about reservations, but we’ve found Friday and Saturday nights in popular areas can be difficult with out a reservation. We found this to be true as many of the few motels available in New England were down to their last rooms. Last night, Friday, we ended up in Rutland Vt., which worked out perfectly. We didn’t set too aggressive a distance target for yesterday cause we got a late start, and we were driving the Rt. 7 trip we came up here to see. The trip up Rt. 7 lived up to its expectations. The scenery was beautiful and the drive was entertaining. The further North we get, the more the leaves are beginning to show color. I can’t imagine what it must be like at the height of the season. Alm ost every road here is like driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Also, often you are driving through long valleys with mountains on both sides of you. Many of the small New England towns resembled tourist traps, but I guess that’s what they do here. Along the way, we stopped at Kent Falls, a couple of covered bridges, and various other points of interest. The navigator had an easy day, as the route followed 7 the whole way. Last night we easily found the Comfort Inn in Rutland, and landed with no problems. It was interesting though because the whole place was full of older folks on bus trips. They were all wearing tags around their neck, and loaded up on the busses about 6:00 PM headed for somewhere. (dinner probably) We hung around for a while, and I wrote a review of the Red River Inn from last night for Trip Advisor. If you’ve never used it, Trip Advisor.com is a very useful web site. My friend Jerry hooked me up with it, and I now use it a lot and am starting to contribute review s. It is a community of over 17 million travelers that write independent reviews of various places they visit. It can be very useful when considering a visit to a resort, hotel or other establishment. Reading reviews yesterday morning saved us from booking an over priced room at a 3^rd rate rundown motel. After hanging for a while, we went to dinner at the Sirloin Saloon just down the road. It was an interesting place with a creative menu. They had something called "Bison Bread" that if you could eat 2 slices of I’d buy you dinner. It was baked in huge loaves about 2 feet in diameter, and weighed about a pound per slice. It was very tasty, but way filling—texture like eating crushed grain. They had a nice salad bar with the dinners, and on it we found an interesting new treat. They are called Wasabi Peas. They look like little yogurt covered mints, but don’t taste that way. They are sort of like way hot little crunchy poppers you can sprinkle on top of salads. They really go good with salad or just by themselves. We looked them up on the Internet, and they are available for purchase from various on-line places. After the cool salad discovery, I had a nice piece of broiled Cod probably my first of many seafood dishes in the next week.

Today we are also going to stay in Vermont. We were headed into Maine, but in order to make it to anywhere we could find a place to stay, we would have had to drive way farther than was comfortable with the speed we can manage on these New England back roads. I commented to Vickie yesterday, the speed limits here are like musical chairs. 30-40-45-30-25-45-50-55-40-55-40-25-etc.etc. and that is all in about 5 miles. Then you never know when there is a local law waiting to get you for 35 in a 25. (have seen many speed traps in little towns) Needless to say our average speed is nothing to write home about. (pardon the pun). So tonight we’ll land in St. Johnsbury VT at another Comfort Inn. Oh and by the way one of the attractions at St. Johnsbury is a 1916 portrait of Abe Lincoln made out of 6,399 dried insects--we'll be looking for that one. Got to get going, we better get to the "Deluxe Continental Breakfast" ahead of the bus crowd or it will probably be like following a heard of locusts. Oops went to get Vickie some coffee and the breakfast room was overflowing with "bus people". The lady who took care of the breakfast was harried beyond belief. She was pouring OJ concentrate into the machine on a stool while the lady in front of me whined at her because there was no decaf coffee. She said, somewhat sharply, "I didn’t know 2 bus loads would all be coming at the same time". I grabbed Vickie a coffee, me a yogurt and we’ll hang in the room a while till the locusts are done. More Later

Wes