Vermont and New Hampshire Scenes

Well, the weather was marginally drier today (see yesterday's post) and it was much colder than we have had so far.  This post will cover the rest of our travels in Vermont and our start in New Hampshire.  As usual, I am having a hard time selecting only a few pictures to post but here goes.

Our first stop coming out of Burlington, VT was at the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory shown below. 

Look closely at the photo below and you will see the bear paw prints on the pavement outside the entrance.

The factory makes an average of 750 bears a day (150,000 a year) and it takes 15 steps to make one bear.  All bears are made by hand.  The shot below is in the sewing area.

One nice feature of a Vermont Teddy Bear is that if it gets damaged in any way, you can return it for repair or replacement.  We stopped at the Bear Hospital and saw one bear hooked up to a Honey IV.  Must have been serious.

The next thing we did was take the Equinox Mountain Drive. A business man donated the mountain to an order of Monks - there are still 18 monks at the monastery. The shot below is the monastery from a Scenic Overlook. 

From Mount Equinox we headed to SR 9 to connect with VT 100.  Wilmington (at the junction of SR 9 and VT 100) was badly affected by all the flooding from Hurricane Irene.  The two photos below are representative.

The shot below shows the wear on the banks of the river, a very common sight along all the rivers in Vermont.  Sadder is the loss of several historic covered bridges.

Since a lot of Vermont 100 was closed because of storm damage, we had to change our travel plans. We headed north to New Hampshire on I-91 where we stopped at Basketville (Jim wanted to get a Root Beer) and the King Arthur Flour store (great tasting opportunities). Since the weather was very nice and rain was expected the next day, Jim played golf at Lake Morey in Vermont as seen in the two shots below.  



Thursday was pretty much a wash out so no photos were taken. Today we stopped for a couple of hikes in Franconia Notch. The shot below is from The Flume of the flume.

The photo below from the flume area is of 3 peaks.  Mt Liberty on the left is 4460 feet high.  Mt Flume in the center is 4327 feet high.  Mt Osseo on the right is 3834 feet high.



Tonight we are trying to recover from the two hikes we took today so we can be ready for the two hikes scheduled for tomorrow.  Our next stop is in Rangeley, Maine where I will get to see a cousin I have not seen in years.  Jim is desperately hoping to see a moose and we are moving into prime moose territory so we are very hopeful.  From there we head to the coast of Maine and Lobster territory.  WOOOHOOOOO!!!