NY to Vermont
Deer Run Campground was an interesting place. Upstate New York in general is pretty interesting. There are these areas we drove through that are clearly the places to go, beautiful and well kept. The people are a little more well spoken and sophisticated, edging on snobbish. And then, there is the wild, rural back country where you find a different breed of people living and shouting about their Trump energy and making snide comments about monkeypox conspiracies. At the campground we found a strange mixing of these worlds. The bathrooms here were large and clean, but it was still kind of strange place – the lights kept shutting off (it was on a motion sensor) while I was showering and I could hear voices upstairs, sometimes shouting, sometimes singing.
The second day I showered in the other bathroom and had no lighting or yelling issues. The boys heard the shouting this time and it turned their morning a little. But since we got groceries, we were able to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast so that helped. Our friendly neighbor stopped by to proudly show us her morning fishing catches of trout and walleye. She was very excited and shared that she and her grandson had been fishing on the lake every summer for many years. They liked to stay in a cabin and were on the water everyday doing things like wake boarding all summer. We repaid her the gallon of water, thanking her for her kindness and all the neighborly advice. As we were leaving, we discovered charging our devices had killed the battery on our car so she did us one more favor, she and her grandson gave us a jump. Then, we hit the road for Vermont.
We stopped at Saratoga National Historical Park on the way. This was the site in 1777 where the British Army, for the first time in world history, ever surrendered, implications from this moment were many. This meant America’s independence was set, foreign support was beginning come in, and wars began breaking out in other parts of the world as well. It is a significant place in world and American history, there were pretty views, lots of cannons, and informational demonstrations. We drove the Saratoga National Battlefield Road and took a couple of short hikes along the trails. Sam earned another Jr Ranger badge. After leaving Saratoga, we made a quick stop at a gas station along the way following a discussion about how the family trip felt less cohesive. We decided to take advantage of the nearby wifi to download Lord of the Rings (read by Andy Serkis – highly recommend, his voice acting might possibly surpass his movements, that says a lot!) so we could listen to a book as a family. We did this on a previous trip with Tom Sawyer (read by Nick Offerman – also a seriously good version). If you know me, you know LOTR and The Hobbit are my favorite books (I loved this, Sammy was hooked). We drove through some beautiful areas though Jeff wasn’t sure we weren’t driving off the map at times. We saw a maple syrup farm and were on a few dirt roads, but made our way to the Ben and Jerry’s factory. We missed the tour, but made it for ice cream cones so big no one could finish, a gift shop, and a flavor graveyard that had real tombstones for all the retired flavors. We settled into our campground for the night in the verdant Green Mountains (my favorite spot on the trip). We met our neighbors from NJ who had lots of advice on what to do in the area. We had decided to not drive all the way to St Johnsbury to the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium as originally planned as it was going to be too much time in the car (a return trip must be had! Also when we do, we can see Quechee Gorge, Stowe, Lake Champlain, and Bloomington, – more on NH sites in posts to come as well). We played Mancala and ate pulled pork and campsite coleslaw. As we fell asleep we could hear the howling of wolves in the distant mountains.
