Who knew Whirled Peace could be so sweet?

OK, so we've been a little out of range lately. For some reason I wasn't picking up wifi in the tent last night:)

Well, we headed to the Adirondacks yesterday morning after church with the Lawrences. It was four hours of beautiful leaves as we climbed the mountains into the Adirondacks. We stopped by the Adirondacks Museum for a patch to add to Tim's collection, a bathroom break, and to sit on this enormous chair! At first there were many tourist trap towns on the way, but after Old Forge, we passed through many quaint towns bordering little lakes. It is amazing that people can live out in the woods, where there really weren't many things I consider staples in everyday life.. like grocery stores and gas stations. It did make me think of a simpler way of life though, which is always appealing. I'm not sure I could be a mountain woman though:).

We were planning on staying in Lake Placid for the night, but all the campgrounds I called were booked or never answered. I was definitely getting a little worried as the sun began to set, but we found a KOA on the GPS and began to head that way. About an mile before we got there, we found a small state campground called Wilmington Notch and pulled off there. A nice park ranger checked us in and gave us a site close to the bathroom. It had been awhile since I'd camped, and I wondered if my skills would come back.. and they did! We quickly pitched the tent and Tim built a very nice fire. We fried up a bag of wontons that we'd be saving a bit too long, but they still tasted pretty good, remarkably. I think we've just about used up the weird food from the house:)

This morning, we woke up early.. probably partly due to not having the best night's sleep. We packed things up and by 8:15 we were on the road. We drove through many more quaint towns as we made our way to Vermont. Once in Vermont, it was an immediate change of scenery. Farms started popping up everywhere. The stereotype of Vermont as a dairy state was validated.. at least until we hit the mountains. We made our way through the Green Mountains and made a stop in Ripton, the home of Robert Frost. I had remembered there being a park devoted to him last time I drove through Vermont with Allison. It has always been on my mind to stop, so we purposely put Ripton on our stop. Ripton is a tiny town, but is said to have given Frost much of the inspiration for his poetry. Ever since I wrote my junior research paper on Frost, I have had a special admiration for his poetry. Sooo.. we found the park and stopped. We read about the park and started down the one mile loop. I'm not sure if it's just the time of year.. but the land chosen for the park was not very picturesque. I felt a little bad not being able to give vision to the poems posted along the trail, but still enjoyed reading his work again. The real disappointment was that 3/4 of the trail was closed due to flooding. I did get to read my favorite poem though, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," so I was happy.

From the park, we journeyed on to possibly the highlight of the day, the Ben & Jerry's Factory! We took a tour through the factory and saw the famous ice cream being made. We even got to sample "Chocolate Therapy" which was amazing. After our free samples, we waited in line for about a half hour more to get more ice cream. This time, we got Imagine Whirled Peace, a combination of vanilla ice cream, chocolate peace signs, and a toffee swirl. Kinda cheesy, but really good!

From Ben & Jerry's, we hit up the Cabot Cheese store and the Apple Cider Factory. So basically we ate our way through Vermont:). We hopped on the highway towards Maine.. but auto-programmed the GPS, which took a different way than we wanted, and by the time we found out, we were too far off track. Sooo... we are in Portsmouth, NH tonight. We're camping out at the Motel 6, which is pretty nice. Tomorrow morning, we will cover both the New Hampshire and Maine coasts, to spend tomorrow night in Acadia National Park. Stay tuned to see if that's what we actually end up doing:)