A grandiose, pastoral, messy, embarrassing Vermont day

We are way behind in getting travel posts published this summer because we're having too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

September 12, 2022

Our relocation drives in the motor home have been short in these smaller New England states. Today we drove only 38 miles in the motor home through the Green Mountains of Vermont.

While the Vermont highways are quite good, some of the side roads are a little questionable. We had to drive over a single lane bridge with a 24,000 pound limit to get to our next camp site at Onion River Campground.

After getting the motor home settled into its site, we headed out for a tour of the Rock of Ages Quarry in Barre (that's pronounced like "berry"), Vermont. This is the world's largest deep-hole granite quarry. We could look down to see the bright turquoise water that collects at the bottom. This amazing color comes from suspended silica in the water. That gorgeous blue water covers up most of the quarry. We can only see 200 feet of the quarried granite walls, while another 400 feet of this hole is below the water line. The word "grandiose" comes to mind when we look at this huge quarry.

It was hard to wrap our minds around just how deep that hole is. If you look very closely at the picture above you can see the tiny dots that are actually massive tractors and trucks that move the granite slabs out of the quarry.

We could only see these massive-wheeled trucks through the zoom lens. Maybe we should worry that a hole that big means they are about to run out of granite at this site? No, our tour guide told us that if they continue at the current rate, they will run out in 4,000 more years. 

The quarry hole is twice as deep as the Statue of Liberty is tall. When they were quarrying 600 feet below the surface, workers had to ride one of these boxes to get to work in the bottom of the quarry every day.

The trip to see the quarry has changed in the years since Covid. Instead of taking a company-owned bus from the visitor center to the quarry site, now everyone must drive their own vehicles. We followed our tour guide, who gave the group directions before we left. The last turn is right after one of those beautiful old white steepled churches. We have seen those old churches turned into a lot of different uses this summer. This was one of the saddest. It's now a MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) Fighting Gym.

 The Rock of Ages Visitor Center is very interesting, with a film and good displays that explain the granite quarrying process. It also describes the granite memorials that are made here. One of those displays mentioned that the Vermont State House (that we will be visiting soon) was the first public building built from Barre Gray Granite back in 1859. It also pointed out that in the late 1950's this quarry experimented with making bowling lanes out of granite. 

Seventy years later, the bowling lane is still in pristine condition even though it has been outside in all types of weather. The concept never caught on, but this prototype has been used by visitors for many years.

They encourage visitors to choose as many souvenir granite pieces as they want from the scrap pile out back. While Mark looked at them, we don't have room in the motor home for souvenirs like that.

They also encourage tourists to visit the nearby Hope Cemetery, where all the headstones were made from the Barre gray granite quarry we just visited. The Rock of Ages tour used to include walking through the memorial stone factory to watch the craftsmen carving these works of art. But that part of the tour died with Covid as well.

Our next stop of the day was the Morse Sugar Farm. We are in the heart of maple syrup country, where they are quick to point out that other stuff you might be putting on your pancakes actually includes 0% real maple. However, the syrup sold here is 100% maple!

We watched the very entertaining film at the visitor center that taught us all about gathering the sap and cooking the syrup. Then we walked the trail down to the maple trees that still have the plastic tubing attached. Instead of hanging individual buckets from each tree and having to dump them by hand, commercial syrup producers pump the sap through this web of tubing to common gathering spots. Each year a new hole is drilled in each tree to start the sap-gathering process.

We topped off our tour with a maple/chocolate twist ice cream cone that they call a creamee here in New England.

Today's drive took us over miles of gravel roads beside big barns, fields of corn, and green mountain meadows.

Some of those meadows were filled with sheep. We found ourselves using the word "pastoral" to describe the views today.

One gravel road took us to Coburn Covered Bridge. Built in the 1840s, it is one of over 100 covered bridges protected by state law in Vermont. This state boasts having the highest concentration of covered bridges in the country. Denisa is really liking it here!

Someone had taken the time to plant and care for flowers on this lonesome gravel road.

When traveling the backroads, we love to stop at the local fruit and vegetable stands. Almost all of them are un-manned, with prices on slips of paper and a box to leave your money. We have gotten in the habit of keeping small bills with us, because there is no way to make change at all these little produce stands.

Mark had read about the Plainfield Bike Trail, so we took another gravel road to that trail head. It was a narrow little trail, so we wondered if we were in the right place. We were glad to talk to a gentleman just finishing his bike ride today, and he assured us we had indeed found the Plainfield Trail. He told us about some tricky turns, and an old bus landmark on the trail, and a little history. 

So we knew that we were on the right trail as we headed into the forest. We were glad to see that the trail got wider.

But when we had ridden about three miles, we suddenly came into the worst mud bog of a trail ever! It seems that our friendly bike rider might have mentioned this in his description?!? We tried to pedal through the mud, but Denisa didn't make it. The word "messy" comes to mind. We would pass through two more muddy areas. Now Denisa is afraid of the mud that might be ahead of us, and doesn't want to go back through those mud bogs again.

So she stayed on the trail near the tall bridge overlooking Onion River. This bridge was close to the point where the bike trail had to cross a vehicular road. Then Mark rode his bike the four miles back through the mud bogs. He loaded up his bike on the pickup, and drove back to pick Denisa and her bike up. He is her prince on a white stallion (that looks a lot like a bicycle). While waiting on the bridge on this cool afternoon, Denisa saw some skinny-dippers in the river below. They were oblivious that there was someone on the bridge right above them. The word "embarrassing" comes to mind. (No need to zoom in on the picture below because Denisa took that picture before the skinny-dippers showed up.)

Mark loaded up Denisa's bike and we continued towards our campground. We're still driving little gravel roads beside big barns hemmed with old stone fences, 

with steep dirt road views of the Green Mountains around us.

Our last stop is the Martin Covered Bridge, in the middle of a park so there is no traffic crossing it. 

We had no wifi and no internet in this part of Vermont, so we spent some time in the evening trying to sort through the hundreds of pictures we have taken lately. We are over a month behind in blogging, with no signs of catching up any time soon. We're seeing and enjoying too much to sit around writing about it. We'll catch up later when we have less to see. We watched the sun lowering in the sky from the green pasture that overlooks our camp site in this remote section of Vermont.  We loved this grandiose, pastoral, messy, embarrassing Vermont day!