Vermont

 The Drive to Vermont via New York...

The reason I wanted to  head to Vermont (in addition to striking off another state I have been in) was to see Lake Champlain and experience the Vermont folks... Being such a sparsely populated state and lots of beautiful woods and scenery, I wondered how the people there handle it. I was thinking things like social distancing would be kind of lost on them, since they probably live there for the built-in social distancing that comes with the territory. 

I hadn't really thought much about getting through western New York, but I am telling you that who ever built that part of the state forgot about the internet.  I would drive for a hundred miles with no connection for Waze  , and no Pandora for driving music... When I got my bike and bought things like a good helmet, jacket, and gloves, a big priority was bluetooth so I could listen to music while cruising... I have all sorts of stations on Pandora defined just for this purpose... My favorites vary from Boston and AC/DC to Vivaldi and Bluegrass Gospel Plow... But in the Western part of New York that is all for naught... Because somebody forgot the Internet... To offset that, the scenery was very nice. The color in the trees is shown in the pic below which is just an example of many areas and views...

Once I got through the crazy roads and construction of Albany I stopped in Saratoga Springs to see the Race Track there and get a Subway... The town is very relaxing and a little high-brow, perhaps for upscale tourist... There is a lot of historical stuff around and a good place to just get out and walk the streets. 

From there it was off to Vermont. Waze directed me through some two-lane roads for the best part of the trip when it comes to driving my bike... really nice curvy roads (but not too curvy) that followed along beside a river... Great scenery and very little traffic... I didn't even care about the internet at that point... It would have just been a distraction. I so enjoyed that ride and was disappointed when it ended... 

Instead of staying in Burlington proper, I decided to stay in a smaller town called Waterbury about 20 miles away...  I stayed at a Fairfield Inn which was right across from a great Mom and Pop Chinese restaurant. It was one of those where the Mom and Dad are doing all the cooking and preparing while their little kids run around and play... That is a guarantee the food is great, and it was.... I ate there 3 times while in town...  It was just too convenient to walk across the street and pick the food up... They even had low calorie selections and great Egg Drop Soup (my favorite)

The Waterbury folks there are very laid back and most of the businesses are Mom and Pop types... There were Cabinet Shops, Glass Blowing shops, and of course Antique Shops... The only place that was not in that venue was a Ben & Jerry's factory with a visitor plaza... I avoided it like the plague to maintain my calorie goals ;-)  They had something called a Ben and Jerry's graveyard where all the retired flavors end up... (and maybe all those who ate too much of them)... I maintained my morning walk each day and went right by the entrance to kind of snub my nose at it ;-)  I did make friends with a group of chickens that lived next to a cabinet shop along my walking path.... they seemed nice enough...

As you might expect in Vermont, all the roads have bicycle lanes (great for walking). I don't think the whole time I was there I saw anyone in what you might call formal clothing... It was blue jeans and sweatpants all around... I fit right in. There were hardly any name brand stores and restaurants... Maybe a McDonalds. A local chain call Stewart's Shops sort of filled the gap...  Even the grocery store had a different name like the pic below...  Beautiful place huh!

I had a spare day in the Burlington area and I wanted to spend most of it off the bike... 3 days straight of driving 5-6 hours is a bunch, and I needed a break... But, the forecast was for rain in the afternoon, so I drove out to Lake Champlain in the morning just to check it out... I went down to a place called Battery Park which was near the shore. 

There was a protest there a couple of days before, but the cool part was the protesters cleaned up after themselves when they were done... I think the groups out in Portland and Seattle could take a lesson from them. The area down by the lake reminded me more of an Ocean Harbor than a lake... There was a whole culture there based on the boating and fishing in the lake. It was a blustery overcast morning because the rain was coming in, but still very pretty and a nice place to hang out and walk around... I am sure during peak times it is very touristy. The pics below should give you a good feel for the motif of the area. 

 

One thing I noticed, is the folks in the area all wear mask, all the time. Even when driving down the road in a car by themselves, which didn't make good sense until I realized it was mask day in Vermont... Even with that, I felt that people there were very cautious about most things. The whole state is like a very big National Park. It's a toss up whether there are more pickup trucks or kayaks. A very nice state to just relax and enjoy, just not sure how people make a living there.

After a couple of days in Waterbury I headed down to Ryan's a house, and his family... I needed to go into New Hampshire so I went across the Connecticut River and drove around a bit... Waze had me going straight from Vermont into Massachusetts so I needed a diversion to mark that one off my states list. The drive through Massachusetts was really very pretty countryside... There were lots of very nice rivers that looked prime for trout fishing... There was a lot of that going on for sure... The pic below was just an example of many places I drove by.

When I made it to Ryan's house everyone was happy to see me... The boys were out in their new backyard doing what boys do.... I could tell it was going to be a fun time...