Dreaming

Growing up I always dreamed of living in Vermont. I pictured myself driving a Volvo and going in to town each morning to pick up fresh produce at a tiny market, owned by people who knew my name. I am not sure where I got this image, having never been to Vermont or even New England until after I was married, but as soon as I drove into the little town of Woodstock, all my dreams came flooding back. I called Steve and told him to Google Woodstock, Vermont because that is where he would be retiring.

We got out early on Thursday morning and drove into Woodstock, passing covered bridges along the way. I stopped at a little roadside market that I absolutely fell in love with. They sold pansies, tulips, topiaries and forsythia out front and inside was loaded with the freshest produce and local delicacies. A basket labeled "fresh duck eggs" was in the refrigerated section, homemade marshmallows in cellophane bags were at the counter and atop the pastry counter were blueberry maple pies. The children chose warm muffins for their breakfast and walked out with freshly squeezed orange juice.

This was my first introduction to Woodstock. My next was their town center which included a green where we enjoyed our breakfast, surrounded by the most perfectly charming colonial architecture.

Right off of the nostalgic main street was a covered bridge that carried locals and travelers over a mountain stream.

Stone churches and white steepled chapels were tucked between the picturesque city hall, quaint town library and historic homes.

Even the random cottages, with their wood supply piled high, ready for a cozy fire any night, made me happy.

Next time I am in Vermont, Steve will definitely be with me and we will stay at the Woodstock Inn and Resort, right on the green.

On our way out of town, we passed the most picturesque covered bridge, spanning a large river, weathered to perfection.

Our next destination, Queechy George, is referred to as Vermont's Grand Canyon. This tag line must have been thought up in some small travel bureau office, far from the West, because Queechy resembled nothing of the Grand Canyon. Neverless, it was a great stop for the kids, who hiked with me to the bottom of the gorge, spied a beaver in a pool of water and posed for a few photos.

(The kids loved watching the beaver, located in front of the larger rock to the left.)

(Ezra is now in the "refuses to take a photo" stage. He is not observing the view here; he is being defiant, with arms crossed and all!)

We then headed over to a glass blowing factory at the high end Simon Pierce glass store. I hoped to take a nice glass bowl home with me, but when I turned a beautiful piece over for a look at the price tag, I immediately headed back to the clearance and seconds section which still was out of my price range. At that point I moved the kids out of the store quickly in fear that they would break one of these exquisite items and I would end up paying for shards of glass that I couldn't afford. Behind the building was a view of the covered bridge that we had just driven across.

We made our way to Norwich, a town right on the border of New Hampshire. I took the kids to a science museum where they played with bubbles, watched leaf cutter ants, participated in an magnetic demonstration and experimented with lights and beams.

Because we had been trapsing around the exact area that Joseph Smith spent the early years of his life, we just had to stop again at his birth place, a weekend trip that we had made the summer before. Being so far from the high concentration of visitor centers and church sites in the west that I always took for granted, I look forward to being at any church related site in our area. There is such a contrast between the feeling of my everyday life and the visitor centers in both Vermont and Palmyra. The cute couple missionaries running the sites definitely add to the feeling of love. Our first stop was in Turnbridge, where Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack met while Lucy was working at a town store. The Smiths married and lived on a farm here for several years, having their first four of eleven children.

We then traveled about twenty minutes to Sharon, where Joseph Smith was born. We were welcomed by the missionaries who gave us a tour, refreshing our memory and adding information we hadn't heard before. We were fortunate to have visited during a time that sculptures depicting Christ's life were on a traveling display. It was so fun to have the children walk through the visitor center, telling me the stories that they could remember with me filling in the blanks. The kids ran outside and played around the monument, with Annelise and Sophia once again playing make believe house, pretending this time to be the Smith family, right on the original spot where Joseph's childhood home would have been.

The sister missionary brought her golf cart out and asked if she could take us for a spin, which was definitely a highlight for the kids. She took us down to see the remains of the Mack family homes. She stopped for the kids to stand on an old stone bridge that still had the wagon imprints in it from the time of Joseph's childhood. She also pointed out the stone wall that lined the Vermont Turnpike, which took travelers from Boston to Canada. It ran right through the Mack property. She told us that it was illegal to move any of the rocks, so they are in the exact spot that they were in when Joseph Smith would have have been playing around them as a child. This sister missionary was so much fun. She took us on "roller coaster" rides in the cart and let all the kids load up in the front with her, as if she were a carefree twenty- something sister. She definitely missed her grandchildren.

(This is the one room school house turned modern day home where Joseph Sr. taught school when not farming.)

I knew that the kids would have remembered our time in Sharon Vermont well from the summer before, so I wasn't sure if we needed to make the stop. After our time at the birthplace, I was so glad that we had taken the time to visit. We drove home, enjoying more beautiful scenery and looking forward to a quick swim and a good night's rest.

Poetic Meandering

As soon as we moved to New England, I began marking up our travel books, planning out "must sees." The Robert Frost Trail was one of the items that I asterisked. I had always wanted to hike along the loop trail, through woods, past beaver dams and over bridges, that included plaques with Frost's famous poems. I read that this was the area that Robert Frost loved to visit during the summers, so the trail was dedicated to him. We started the day traveling along country roads through the Green Mountains of Vermont. We arrived at the trail, which was just as picturesque as the drive there. And as expected, along the trail were posted Robert Frost's poems, including my favorites. I brought our children's book of Frost's poems in the car, so the children were familiar with and enjoyed most of his poetry along the path.

I thought that we were done with Frost for the day, but soon passed a dirt road with a wooden street sign labeled Robert Frost. I couldn't help but turn down the lane. A white wooden cottage was what we found at the end of the road, with a plaque indicating that this was Robert Frost's summer home. I was curious why the guide books didn't mention that this treasure was hidden in the woods not far from the Frost Trail or why there were no signs guiding us to this spot. We were the only ones around, so the kids played on the front lawn of Robert Frost's summer cottage. I wondered if Frost sat on the front porch of this little home writing my favorite poems, or if the stone wall that the kids took pictures on was the actual "mending wall", or if the path through the trees could be the "road not taken", or if the surrounding woods were the ones that filled up with snow. With the setting so peaceful and serene, the light perfect for a few photographs and the kids happy to be together, we hesitated to continue on our journey.

(Miriam LOVES to play "So Big"!)

Our next stop on our itinerary was a museum on the banks of Lake Champlain. We drove through New England's oldest towns, enjoying each stone church and town square until we reached Basin Harbor, Vermont. We pulled up to this out of the way museum to find a "closed for the season" sign. Despite my online and travel book research, I feared that my drive to this tiny town was a failure. However, we ran into the grounds keeper of the Harbor Homestead, which was a very upscale summer resort right on the lake. The resort was being prepared for East Coast families who would summer on Lake Champlain. We were invited to have our picnic down on the waterfront, and for just an hour or so we felt like some of those wealthy Easterners. We could see the maids through the windows of the summer cottages dusting the curtains and the gardeners pruning the hedges, which added to the fun of pretending like we belonged at this fancy resort. We pulled out our Tiki Marsala and Hot Buffalo Cheddar that the kids had hand picked the day before from the Cabot gift store along with crackers, grapes, carrots and juices. The kids tossed rocks in the lake, explored the beaches and raced on the lawns. Ezra even dragged us over to a pile of floating moss in the lake that he swore was a real live alligator! We soon packed up our belongings and returned to our car, hoping that the next time we visited the Harbor Homestead, we could be one of their legitimate guests.

I knew that a few miles up the lake, a ferry crossed over to New York from Charolette, Vermont. I wasn't sure when the ferries ran, but I thought that climbing on board would be a great way to get a good feel for Lake Champlain. As we pulled up to the ticket booth, we could see the ferry about to dock. Just in time, I thought. However, as is often the case in New England, no credit cards were accepted for ferry tickets and I didn't have enough cash to get us all on board. "There is an ATM at the red store, but you won't have enough time to get back and this is the last ferry for the night," I was told by the attendant. The red store? I had no idea where this red store was, but I spun the car around and rushed back up the hill. Several miles away I spotted a store painted red and inside the ATM that I was in need of. I raced back down the hill, passing all the cars that had just come off the ferry. I figured there was little use in trying to make it to the ferry, but I just couldn't give up. To my relief, we arrived barely in time, parked our car and ran on as pedestrians, the last to board. Our trip across the lake was beautiful, with the Adirondack Mountains rising above the little village of Essex, New York on one side and the quaint summer homes of wealthy Vermonters on the other side, with tiny islands in between. Ezra loved watching the cars load onto the boat, Emilie caught up on a few texts and Jonathan helped take photographs of the scenery while the girls played yet another make believe game, this time of two orphans on a steam boat.

We took the last return ferry to Vermont and finished our day in search of the perfect Vermont treat, which came in the form of maple ice cream from the most quaint country store.

After what felt like a full, successful day, we returned home to a night of swimming and ending with six children tucked into their beds, snuggled up watching late night movies.