Drive

On Monday we drove up from Londonderry in the South all the way up to Swanton in the north (just before the Canadian border). We didn't take the freeway, so we got to go through lots of cool little towns including Brandon where we stopped for icecream. We really didn't have time to look around, but all along the street where we were parked were these wonderful sculptures of cats and dogs.

We went to Swanston to go to a chees factory owned by an ex lawyer friend of Matt's who's gone back to the family business. They don't really do tours, but we got a tour of the factory and saw how mozzarella is made. We had to wear these spiffy little getups. I nearly died laughing when Matt put his beard cover on over his nose...looked like we were going to hold the place up!

On the way back, we stopped in Burlington for lunch. Looks like a great town. Biggest in VT, and right on lake Champlain. It's also a university town so it's hip and funky. If we'd had more time we'd have taken the ferry across and driven back down the NY side. But we had lunch and a bit of a walk and then we had to hit the road.

Here's Kit and Ella in the shiny new car our friends bought. The kids were all fighting over whose turn it was to go in the car next. Kit and Ella looked so funny in the back as their heads hardly came up to the side.

We also saw many, many birds and the VINS centre near Queechee gorge. They had lots of raptors...some they did a flight show with and other, injured ones in cages. I loved the all the owls, but this little screetch owl (6 inches) was my favourite.

We decided to drive back to CT a different route, and went the back roads. We stopped and went up Mt. Equinox which was really worth it for the view of the mountains.

Here's Oscar overlooking the largest Cartheginian monastry in the "Western Hemisphere".

All in all it was a wonderful trip. We were away for a week and I felt like it had been a month. Vermont is just such a great place. We've been dreaming the whole trip about getting a house up there in the woods somewhere...or on a lake. To me it's like going back to my roots. I love the big city, but Vermont is so much like Tasmania and we all feel that kind of connection to it. Mum, you'd love it up there...we said so all the time while we were driving around. It was an added bonus for us being able to use our friend's house and to have them there for the weekend. I'm hoping we'll get another trip up there before the end of summer.