We departed at 9am and drove cross-country through the gorgeous Green mountains, weaving around the sparkling lakes and streams of Southern Vermont. Bennington was the biggest city we ran across, and is quaint, prosperous, and very much alive. They are one of the cities that has elected to have full size statues of animals made and then decorated/painted by local artists and merchants. In Bennington's case, it allowed statues of mountain lions and moose. Here are a representative pair of the mountain lion decorations--there must have been 30-40 total around the city.
Bennington also has a lively art community representing many different forms (ie, paintings, sculptures, statues). As we drove through the city, we passed the Bennington Art Center, which has a mini-"Stonehenge" in the front yard. Here are two photos Becky took showing the building, metal sculptures, and the Bennington Memorial statue in the distance. The other major event that we saw was the annual Bennington Garlic Festival, with hundreds of cars parked near the school.
There were many cute towns along the way, and we discovered that Vermont has quite a number of what the British call "B" roads; very rural, and very rough on automobile tires.
Continuing along the roads, we saw several billboard ads for the "Bull Moose" café and deli. Clearly a "local" touristy spot, it is rather heavily decorated by statues of cows and moose.
We didn't stop, as we still had to navigate the "B" roads of New York state. It's a clever idea, but we needed to push on so we didn't stop.
The last "sight" we saw in Bennington was the annual garlic festive, a very large event that must have attracted some 500 cars.
The last event we saw in Vermont was the Stillwater County Fair. There must have been 2000 cars parked on the school grounds. This seemed to be quite the weekend for county fairs in this area of New England and upstate New York.
It took a full 3 hours to drive the 100 miles to the home of Lisa Nargis in Galway, NY. Lisa was one of Becky's best friends growing up, and they rarely get a chance to see each other. Lisa taught school in Galway until her retirement, and was a friend of fellow Galway teacher Pat McKee of Boothbay Harbor. 
The photo to the left was taken during lunch. Lisa has never been on Facebook, so Becky spent part of the time during the visit getting Lisa set up, and this may be a photo commemorating Becky telling Lisa to make sure she gets on line occasionally! We really had a delightful time during the short visit.
We then proceeded on to our campground at Unadilla, NY, and arrived there around 6:30 pm. The KOA at Unadilla seems to be primarily a camp for those who like to fish, as it is set up along a trout stream and many of the camping sites are laid out parallel to the stream. There were also a large number of trailers and 5th wheelers set up in semi-permanent sites, indicating long-term camping arrangements. It rained while we were there, and with lots of kids running around many dogs, and a combination of high heat and humidity, we spent the evening holed up with the dogs in our air-conditioned RV.
We made the decision today to drive straight through to Dayton Ohio, rather than break the journey in Western NY. Normally we like to limit our travel to between 200-300 miles in a day, and rarely go over 400. It was also our record in an RV--619 miles, with 3 brief rest stops and 2 diesel fueling stops. We left at 7am, and arrived at 7pm and all 4 of us were exhausted. The Dayton KOA is a huge, well-laid out facility that was virtually empty for tonight. The end of Labor Day Weekend and kids getting back to school combined to give us a campsite no closer than 100 yards to anyone else. Our kind of place!
Tomorrow are plans are to visit the Air Force museum and plane collection here in the Dayton area, and stay at least one more night.
No comments:
Post a Comment