"Going Down to the Country"

VERMONT – “what happens here, stays here, but nothing really happens here.”

That’s the slogan for Vermont and I suppose it’s fitting. I think Vermont is our favorite yet. What’s so nice about it is that between the lovely mountain drives, there are little towns that are really neat. They are usually centered around what was once a mill, with a dozen or so two story brick buildings from a hundred to two hundred years ago. The other thing is that there seems to be no trash or junky homes along the byways, just cool little farms, with usually an old farm house. The architecture is beautiful on many of the buildings, particularly the ones that are made from stone. One of these neat little towns was Weston. This is home of the well known “Vermont Country Store”. We spent an hour in there before we drug ourselves out to keep going. Weston also sports a theater, and Christopher Lloyd was the lead actor in the play going on there. The little library, with internet, was absolutely stunning on the interior. (See pics).

Our campsite in Vermont was Winhall Brook Campsite. This is a Federal Corp of Engineers campground. It is situated high up in the Green Mountains where two streams run together. It was probably the cleanest, neatest, best run campground we’ve been to. We went on a couple of very long bike rides along the streams where way back when, there used to be a railroad that ran along here. We also visited a couple beautiful towns named Manchester and Middleburry. Vermont is the best.

From Vermont we made our way down to the Catskills to a campground named Mongaup Pond. This was up at the top of the mountain range with a lake and a few streams. We drove through the Catskills one day, including a stop at the artsy town of Woodstock. This is not where the festival took place in 1969, that’s down the road in Bethel. We went there to, and toured the museum – which was very well done. Sure brought back a lot of memories from the 60’s. We’ve got our Sirius radio with us, and we’ll be tuned to the “60’s” channel for a bit. The Catskills are nice, the countryside is beautiful, and the rivers and streams are wonderful. We did come across one very interesting thing … that is, a town that seemed to be full of what I think were Hasidic Jews. It wasn’t like seeing the quaint Amish, it was just a little more different than that to us. The town was not very well kept either, it was kind of messy, with a lot of chain link fences which we hadn’t seen till then. The Amish do seem very neat and clean, well, except for the horse poop in the street part.

To our friends Gordon, Lori, Paul, Flo, Charlsey and Jeff …. We cannot seem to get away from the French Canadians up here! Don’t these people ever stay in Canada? You guys know what we mean.

From the Catskills, we made our way down to the Poconos. Again, very beautiful forests, streams, rivers, mountains and all. We didn’t stay long, just two days, but the campsite at Hickory Run was great, and it was nearly empty during the week. And yes, we did have a heart shaped campsite and all the trees have some ones initials carved on them. Ha Ha! The one thing I will say, is that the roads here in Pennsylvania and a little rough, even the darn interstate! You people need to get more of that Obama money like New York has.

We stopped in Carlisle PA to visit with Bill's aunt and uncle and their family once again. Our time went by much too quickly and we thoroughky enjoyed our visit with all of them.

The next stop is Shenandoah National Park as we head the “rig’ back south.