Tuesday 13^th June: day trip to Stowe

Our run of good luck with the weather petered out today. We woke to rain and this put an end to our half-day bike ride along the Burlington Greenway. The rain eased up after a couple of hours but it was still too wet for a bike ride so we decided to take a drive out to Stowe, which we had planned for tomorrow anyway. 

Stowe is a pretty New England village about an hour away from Burlington, depending on which way you drive, and there is a scenic section of highway 108 nearby called Smugglers’ Notch, which was reported to be worth taking and so that is what we did. Smugglers’ Notch was indeed quite pretty but, at only 3 ¹/₂ miles in length, you have to drive quite slowly so as to be able to appreciate the scenery. It passed in just a few minutes however and without a photo to show for it; it felt like I had failed. The other attraction in Stowe that we passed was the Von Trapp family homestead and I did get a photo of that! The Von Trapp family fled to this part of Vermont after they left Austria and the family still own the property. It’s a sprawling resort site today and we were amazed at just how many cars were parked there; presumably all guests of the hotel. 

The scenery around Stowe was very pretty, and worth as much to see as the Smugglers’ Notch, with its lush green landscape of rolling hills and dense woodland. Stowe Village was rather reminiscent of Mogo, of New South Wales, South Coast fame; and there was even a fudge and a kitchen shop. We didn’t stop here for too long though, just enough time to have a coffee and share a sandwich for lunch, and then it was on towards home via the Ben & Jerry’s factory at Waterbury, Vermont.

The 30 minute tour of the Ben & Jerry’s factory was quite interesting as we gained a bit of insight into the mission of the two founders who, whilst they sold out to Unilever some time ago, are still involved in the company today. We also got to see the original test kitchen of the factory, which was surprisingly small, and taste one of the relatively new flavours of ice cream: Butterscotch’d. They also mentioned about a plaque on the ground at the original 1978 site of Ben and Jerry, when their ice cream was sold from an old garage, so I put this on my to do list to find. I realized this plaque was actually just across from the pub where Mark had a beer yesterday! The Ben & Jerry’s Waterbury factory was the first factory to be built  in 1985, and the only one open to the public, but there are two others: one in St Albans, Vermont and the other in Hellendoom, Netherlands, and these three factories supply all of the ice cream that is distributed globally, another fact that we found quite amazing. Our tour wrapped up near 3 pm and then it was a 30 min drive back to Burlington.

We decided to have dinner out and ventured into town to Honey Road. The food was ok but it was the number of homeless and disturbed people out and about that was the most noteworthy and distressing part of the evening. We had a seat by the window on the corner of the restaurant and our vista for the entire stay was, at first, of the fire department attending to a dispute over cardboard patch and, then, the police came to adjudicate on the same issue. There was a group of homeless camped there that we’d seen yesterday, and now again today, so it seemed a very popular corner. In hindsight, we should have known to avoid this venue.

We went for a bit of a walk after dinner to photograph the Ben and Jerry plaque from the site of their first ice cream shop and kept encountering more and more homeless and disturbed people. They almost out numbered the rest of the population and this was a distressing and sobering end to our evening. Burlington has taken the clear front place for the sad and upsetting part of our journey. You may recall from my previous blog posts, when we were in Canada, about how South Asians seem to have taken over from the Chinese as the dominant global tourist group. Well, they are not putting Burlington on their to do lists! I note that we have barely seen any South Asians for our time in the USA, except for a few at the very start in Plymouth and in Newport. In fact, the only tourists we have encountered in Mystic and Burlington have been from other parts of the USA. This is not for lack of tourist information about this region though. Do an internet search of ‘things to do in New England’ and ‘reasons to visit New England’ and a wealth of encouraging information populates the screen. The South Asians obviously have another filter they use that I am not using 🙁

 

 

Wednesday 14^th June: cycling the Burlington Greenway

It was our last full day in Burlington today and, thankfully, there was no rain meaning we could get out for our bike ride along the Burlington Greenway. I was a bit nervous at first as I had seen some geese the other day but, I’m pleased to say, we didn’t encounter any geese or any young girls dragging suitcases.

The distance from where we hired the bikes to the end of the physical Greenway path is around about 16.5 km. I say ‘physical’ because this distance marks the spot of a break in the north direction pathway along the Champlain Causeway. However, on the weekend there is a bike ferry that takes bikes across the short break in the Causeway to enable further northbound cycling.

The first section of the Burlington Greenway is through quite dense woodland, that lies just behind the lake, but the following 5 km are along the Champlain Causeway that extends out through Lake Champlain. The Causeway is a couple of meters in width and rests upon on a jumbled collection of local limestone but has a fairly compact gravel path making for quite easy cycling and or walking.  The sun was out by the time we reach the start of Causeway and this made for the the most beautiful conditions and scenery as we cycled along the path with water lapping on either side.

Unfortunately, the trip home was not as much fun. We made it back along the the 5 km of Champlain Causeway but then the chain on my bike broke. So that left me stranded for over an hour while Mark cycled back to notify the cycle shop owners. A new bike was eventually brought out and Mark and I cycled back, with numerous stops to adjust the dodgy seat on my replacement bike, and we finished the ride up around 1.30 pm. My back gave me a bit of grief on the ride and I had one lees than glamorous dismount (ie: I fell over) but cycling along the Burlington Greenway is definitely an activity worth doing if you’re ever unfortunate enough to be spending time in Burlington.

I had my legs waxed in the afternoon and this only rates a mention as the lovely young Alison, who did the waxing, mentioned how Burlington has changed greatly over the last two years or so. She has lived here for 20+ years but noted the use of hard drugs has greatly changed the social landscape of Burlington. She also said that Burlington offers more programs for the homeless than many neighboring towns and this may be why there is such a concentration of affected folk in this area. So, that adds some context to what we have seen during our short time here. She also noted that Albany was another problem spot, however we knew that already from our one night there!

We were rather tired after our eventful day and planned to eat at home as the trips into town of an evening were too distressing due to the large numbers of homeless. This was just fine for us as we will be without cooking facilities for the next four nights and having to dine out during that period. Our next stop is for two nights at Jackson, New Hampshire. Fingers crossed that it is not as concerning as Burlington.