As he’d promised yesterday, Ed came around to our campsite with his Mazda and his dog to have a look at our setup. We sat and chatted with him for half an hour or so while we were finishing breakfast, and he showed us the platform that he’d built in the back of his car. This was the maiden voyage of the car camper! Ed had been planning to sleep in it last night, but had opted for a tent instead, so he was going to try again tonight. He’d had trouble finding a mattress that would fit perfectly and was about to give up when he discovered a custom foam mattress maker just down the road from his house! He only built it to be single bed width, as his wife wasn’t too keen on driving out into a forest and sleeping in the car.
We asked Ed for some recommendations of hikes to do in the nearby area, and he told us he was planning to take his dog for a walk shortly and we could join him if we wanted to. Other than a 5-hour drive to the Adirondacks, we didn’t have anything planned for the day, so we agreed! Half an hour later we had our campsite all packed up and followed Ed down the road for 10 minutes to the Sabbaday Falls trailhead. The trail was only half a kilometre, but we walked slowly to give his elderly dog time to sniff all the best trees. Ed told us that he’d visited Nelson in New Zealand a few times several years ago, and really wanted to move there, but the emigration requirements were too strict.
While looking at the incredible formations that the waterfall had carved out of the rock we talked about travel, nature, Americans, and New Zealanders. Ed asked what we thought of their president, and when Katie cagily answered that it was a little like watching a reality TV show he was quick to reassure us that he thought the same. I’m really happy that we met Ed, and he told us that talking to us had made his trip!
After saying goodbye to Ed, we carried on westward on the Kancamagus highway, stopping many times at various “vista points†to take pictures of the incredible autumnal landscape. Unfortunately, we found that photographs don’t properly convey the magic of the area, so we spent lots of time taking brain photos.
We stopped in the capital of Vermont, Montpelier, for lunch at a little taco shop. Vermont (at least, the parts we’ve seen from the road) is beautiful, and we decided that we could imagine living here. It’s easy to think of America as just the big cities on the coast, but there are so many wonderful, interesting cities in-between. Montpelier itself is full of grand brick buildings and small independent restaurants and coffee shops. It definitely had a foodie vibe, and had similar feel to Portland, Oregon, although on a much smaller scale.
Our next stop was at the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream factory in Waterbury, Vermont. This is the original factory of the famous ice cream brand, and even though they only have a single production line here they still manage to produce 80% of the demand for Vermont! We went on a half-hour tour (for only $4 each!) and stood on a mezzanine floor above the factory and watched hundreds of pints of Cherry Garcia ice cream flying through the packaging machines. At the end of the tour we were each given a scoop of Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream, which was really yum! Both of us were worried that it’d be sickly sweet, but actually it was really well balanced.
A few minutes further along the highway we found The Alchemist brewery in a little town called Stowe. We sampled three different IPAs, including their famous Heady Topper double IPA. BeerAdvocate.com has rated it the fourth-best beer in the world, and local demand for it has forced the brewery to limit customers to two four-packs each. We decided not to buy any, as we already had a few cans of other beer in the cooler, but I’m strongly regretting that decision now that I’m writing this blog post.
To cut a few minutes of travel time (and 30km) off our journey, we decided to catch a vehicle ferry across Lake Champlain, which took us across the state line from Vermont to New York. The ferry only cost $15 and was boarding right as we arrived, which was perfect! We stopped at a store called Hobby Lobby in a town called Plattsburgh just after the ferry for Katie to stock up on yarn and zippers for some bags that she has crocheted.
It was pitch black by the time we reached our campground, Fish Creek Pond, in the Adirondacks. The campground is right on the edge of a lake, but we couldn’t see it while we were setting up our tent. The sites themselves are large and flat, carpeted with orange pine needles, with lots of giant pine trees scattered all over. The trees were so tall that our torches didn’t reach far enough up the trunks to see where the branches started!