Started our grand fall vacation. Drove to Flint Michigan and spent the night.
On 9/25 we crossed the border at Port Huron into Ontario Canada. We had a picnic lunch in London Ontario where we spoke with a local truck driver. We then drove into Toronto and spent the night. We dined at Jack Astors Bar and Grill that evening.
Drove to Kingston Ontario and toured Fort Henry. It was a great tour, very informative. Our tour had just gotten finished when the rain came. We then drove to border and crossed back to US at Ogdensburg, NY.
We spent the night in Hogansburg, NY for the night. We gambled at Akwesasne Casino for a couple of hours, unfortunately neither of us did any good.
We drove to Plattsburgh Vermont. We took a ferry across lake Champlain to Grand Island, then drove into Burlington. We had a delicious lunch at Shanty on the Shore. Nothing beats fresh seafood. We toured the ECHO aquarium which highlights the areas lakes and wildlife. We then took a 90 minute boat tour of Lake Champlain. We learned all about Champy which is Vermont’s version of the Loch Ness monster. After a full day in Burlington we drove to Stowe for the night.
We started this day by doing a tour of the original Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory at Stowe. We then traveled to North Conway New Hampshire. We stayed at the Kersarge Inn while in North Conway. We stayed in the carriage house. It was lovely. We then took the dinner train in the Hattie Evans car. I had meatloaf for my dad and Sam had a seafood bisque. We sat with a couple from California and had a great conversation.
We continued traveling east from North Conway to Boothbay Harbor Maine. The interesting fact about this day is we didn’t take any freeways, toll roads, or state highways on our route. We saw local life and beautiful fall foliage. We ended the days journey at the Brown’s Wharf Inn. We decided to stay an extra day here. We had dinner in the Inns restaurant, Sam had the twin lobster meal, caught fresh this day. They both weighed 1 1/8#. I had the seafood Alfredo. All was delicious.
Still in Boothbay Harbor, we went whale watching. The boat took us about 20miles in the bay of Maine. We saw 5 minke whales. They are much smaller than humpback whales. The weather was colder with temp in mid 40’s and biting cold wind off ocean. We had dinner at Porta of Italy, Sam had pasta with shrimp, scallops, and clams in the shells. I had ossification with risotto.
We traveled from Boothbay Harbor to Rutland Vermont on this day. We stopped at the Quechee Gorge in route to Rutland. The gorge is breathtaking. We spent the night at Rutland and dined at Table 24, a local restaurant. Had good burgers there.
We visited the. Penal Rockwell Publication Museum in Rutland. Amazing that one man collected most of the original magazine covers in this museum. We then traveled to Proctor Verona’s visited the Vermont Marble Museum . The tomb of the unknown soldier in Arlington is made from Vermont marble. After visiting this museum we traveled to Kingston New York and spent the night. We are at Enzo’s, a local brick oven pizzeria. We had great pizza.
We drove through the Catskills forest preserve to East Meredith New York. Enroute we stopped and toured Hannaford Mills Museum. The mill was a functioning grist mill and saw mill. We saw demonstrations in the saw mill portion. After the tour, we traveled on to Binghamton New York for the night. We dined at a Red Robin.
We traveled next to the horseshoe curve at Altoona Pennsylvania. We saw 5 trains in a little over an hours. There are three sets of tracks in the curve. We saw two trains go through curve together. There had been a derailment earlier in the year and several cars were still laying along side tracks. When we left there we traveled to Beford Pennsylvania and spent the night. We had supper at Ed’s Steak House, a local restaurant and we had great meal.
We traveled to Shanksville Pennsylvania to the Flight 93 Memorial. The memorial is very somber and impressive. The timeline of the flight is documented with recordings from the passengers to their families. These were average Americans who became hero’s for their country. We then traveled to Cambridge Ohio and spent the night.
Traveled home to Waynetown today. We had a great trip, traveled 2,641 miles and saw much beauty in this great country.