Wherever the Road Leads: Vermont

For our second day, we headed back to Quechee to visit the Cabot shop. Unfortunately, the factory tours are only available in Cabot, VT, and that is too far for us to go this time. Nonetheless, the store has gobs of samples, and everyone had fun sampling the wide array of goodies---cheese, butter, chips and dip, crackers, cheesy popcorn, pretzels and dip, and lots of flavored syrups. There were also plenty of little shops to explore.

When we left the Cabot shop area, we drove to the Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historical Park. Our National Park pass is due to expire at the end of the month, so we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to use it! It turns out that the park itself is free (the farm, however, is not), but the guided tours are fee based. Even though we could have taken the tour for half price, we opted out. The focus of the tour is advertised as strong on stewardship of natural resources and conservation, and well, our kids understand the importance of taking care of the earth pretty well after a year of travelling and visiting various parks. We did, however, do the Junior Ranger program, and we enjoyed the perfect weather as we strolled the grounds. Beautiful day!! The best part, however, had to have been the cows that came over to the fence right next to the spot where we ate our picnic lunch at the parking lot. Friendly cows! The kids, all four of them, had so much fun feeding them whatever green things they could find to offer them! The kids also played a rousing game of chase, even Jake.

The day still wasn’t over yet, though! Before meeting our friend Marilyn after work at Dartmouth, we popped into the King Arthur store. Now, if you’re not a baker, you might not be into this, but I speak from personal experience when I say that you can tell the difference between King Arthur flour and store brand, or even other name brand flours. There were only a few chocolate chip scone samples, but I have to say they were yummy, so much so that Steve ate & ate until they were gone. Most of the products in the store are rather pricey, for sure, but it was still fun to browse! And…Steve surprised me by getting me a rolling pin (I’ve used a nalgene bottle for a rolling pin for the last year) and a heavy duty baking sheet that won’t warp at higher temps, something I’d been looking for. I was slightly hesitant ‘cause it won’t fit in my rv oven, but it sure looks like something more permanent is lurking on the horizon, and Steve was feeling generous, so I figured I’d better take him up on it. ;)

Linda scored a rolling pin and baking sheet.

And…we packed still more fun into the day. We went to the green on the Dartmouth campus for the
Farmer’s Market and to meet up with Marilyn. Farmer’s markets are so fun and interesting! We sampled lots of different foods (the strongest cheese I've ever tasted or hope to taste along with some very nice goat cheese, jams and jellies, pesto, black bean hummus, bread, etc.) and chatted with lots of interesting people. I was spotted as a homeschooler…because I was wearing a dress, of course…lol!! After trolling the Farmer’s Market, we grabbed a bite to eat with Marilyn, and then she gave us a bit of a tour of the library at Darmouth…one very cool library! We made quite the interesting entourage through an ivy league school library with our crew. Jake kept yelling, “bup” and “moo.” We ended the day with some play outside, catching up with Marilyn, and trying to keep Jake from removing bricks outside one of the buildings on campus. That boy keeps us on our toes!!