Welcome to Vermont and more of God's wonders!

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 11, 2022

We pulled out of the Walmart parking lot in Lebanon, New Hampshire, where we overnighted and then left the motor home parked for part of the next day. It was only a few miles down I-89 before we crossed the Vermont state line. Even though we spent some time in Vermont when we were wandering yesterday, we officially crossed into this new state in the motor home today. According to the sign, we were welcomed to the Green Mountain State.

The interstate winds through the Green Mountain range, so we made most of the drive with green views.

In the first few miles after crossing the Vermont border, we saw warning signs for moose, bears, falling rocks, and deer. We felt like Vermont is certainly a dangerous place with all these road hazards. Don't forget to beware of birds as well, because they leave big splatters on the windshield (as you can see from the photo below).

Our destination is the little town of Randolph, Vermont, where our next Boondocker Welcome host lives. They have traveled extensively in their RV, and we had a great time comparing notes on places that we all have visited. Now that they no longer travel full-time, they bought a house in the Green Mountains with a great view. They also have time to garden, and we had lovely views of their flower gardens from our motor home windows.

While the Green Mountains look very green to us, the locals are calling it a drought year. They are expecting less-than-spectacular fall foliage because of the lack of rain for the trees. We are thinking that New Englanders have never seen what an Oklahoma drought looks like. The next morning, we drove down-hill to attend church in the town of Randolph.

Based on the advice of our hosts and other church members, we made an itinerary for a drive through the Green Mountains on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We drove up Camp Brook Road and Rochester Gap to find ourselves on some steep mountain roads. We were looking for some Vermont maple syrup, so we pulled into "Mom and Pop's World's Best Vermont Syrup" shop. Mom was minding the store that was miles away from the nearest town. She had time to educate us on the art of maple syrup. This family will tap 18,000 maple trees each winter. They own some of those trees, but rent most of them. The sap is running in early spring, and that is when they are busy gathering and cooking it down to syrup. In 2022 they made 64 barrels of syrup. They take a sample from each barrel to grade the syrup. Those samples make a beautiful display in the window of the sugar shack.

Mom let us taste each of the four different grades of syrup, that change color and taste as the season progresses. Our favorite was the "amber rich," the second lightest of the four samples on the syrup spectrum. While they had smaller and bigger jugs of maple syrup, we chose a quart. Interestingly, the supply chain delays have affected the maple syrup industry in New England. Made-in-China plastic jugs were very hard to get in 2022. Mom and Pop's adult son is selling their syrup at huge craft shows across the Southeast right now. He'll be back in December to start tapping trees.

We also bought some of their home-made candy. We loved the syrup, but we're not a huge fan of maple candy. It's a beautiful amber color with the sunlight streaming through it. But it's prettier than it is tasty.

Just a few miles further down our loop drive, we came to the trail head of the Long Trail. The trail was largely unmaintained, but we continued up 1.6 miles on a very steep trail.

Our climb was rewarded with great views over the Green Mountains. We had arrived at our destination of "The Great Cliff"--another of God's wonders!

We could continue on the Long Trail to the summit of Mount Horid. But it was another very steep climbing section, and Mount Horid doesn't sound all that inviting.

Back to the pickup, our next stop was the Robert Frost Home Wayside Park. The four-time Pulitzer-prize winning poet lived from 1874-1963. The last 43 of those years was spent here, and this state proudly claims him as a "Vermonter by preference." We turned off the highway on a half-mile gravel road, and then walked another quarter mile to this famous Vermont author's home. His farm is now a National Historic Landmark.

While the big white house had the most amenities, it was the little cabin in the woods where Robert Frost did most of his writing. Here he penned such poems as "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" with famous lines like:

"Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow."

Even though it would be lovely to see these woods filled with snow, we think we much prefer to travel through them in our motor home in September.

We loved the little hike in the woods where Robert Frost grew apples and got the inspiration for many of his poems. Today, these woods showed us mushrooms . . .

 

and these beautifully colored fall wildflowers. We love the oranges and yellows and reds of the flowers,

as well as in the trees along the highway. We are driving one of the prime highways for leaf peeping, so it's a little sad that we're a couple weeks too early for the peak of the fall foliage.

Even though we didn't get to see the Green Mountains at their peak, we still got to see some individual trees at their best. We probably couldn't have stood it if the whole mountain sides were this pretty.

Today's route would take us down little gravel roads with names like Hathaway Road, Flora White Road, and Goshen Road to get to Texas Falls. Now that we're Texans, we had to make a stop in the middle of Vermont to see this series of waterfalls.

While we keep hearing about how low the water is this year, Texas Falls were still pretty.

We did a 1.2 mile nature trail across the top of the falls, where Denisa is still taking pictures of unusual fungi.

Ten miles further on our loop brought us to Moss Glen Falls. The sign out front explains that this is the "Deer Hollow Brook cascading down the Hazen's Notch Formation made of schist with black graphite and pyrite." We summarize that by saying that we have wandered into more of God's wonders. 

Another six-mile drive through the Green Mountains brought us to Warren Falls.

The mountains are quite steep here, so the river will collect into perfectly clear pools . . .

and then cascade down the mountain in swirling currents that carves out circular pools and bathtubs. You can barely see Mark on the right edge of the picture below, enjoying the views from another pool side.

We thought our last stop of the day was the Warren Covered Bridge. But then we discovered that the Warren Town Festival was today from 1-6 p.m. When we saw the line of cars parked along the road, we stopped in for the last of the live music and bought dinner from one of the food trucks. What a nice and unexpected finish to our day of touring through the Green Mountains!

It was a 23-mile drive to return back to our camping spot on the mountain above Randolph, Vermont. We finished up our 90-mile loop just as the sun was setting over the mountain pass. We feel like we have been graciously welcomed to more of God's wonders in the green state of Vermont!

Update on our ongoing apple contest: The little Kindercrisp apple got the award for the best apple of the day over the Star Spur Mac. But we have to say that we haven't had a bad apple yet!