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July 11, 2011
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This morning we headed out of New Hampshire primed for a big day in Vermont! Our first stop was the Goodrich's Maple Farm in Cabot, Vermont. It as about a 35 minute drive from the hotel and we arrived at 9 am. The Goodrich family has been sugaring for 7 generations, since 1840. We learned all about the maple syrup process and sampled the four different grades of maple syrup. As I suspected, much of the junky syrups found in the grocery store have a mere 2% real maple syrup contained in them, and it is what is referred to on the farm as "commercial grade". This is the syrup that comes later in 7-8 week the sugaring season and if not used for commercial purposes, it would be discarded. I have always purchased real 100% maple syrup at the store, but this stuff was SO much tastier! We bought a good sized jug of it to bring home! From Goodrich's, we headed to Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Factory Tour in Waterbury, Vermont. This was another 30 minutes west of Cabot. We signed up for the 11:40 am tour and we were not disappointed! The tour was so interesting. We first learned how Ben and Jerry, best friends from childhood, took a correspondence class from Penn State on ice cream making before beginning their own ice cream shop in Vermont. We saw how the business grew from there into what it is today. We also had the opportunity to see all seven stops in the actual ice cream making process and then sample the flavor of the day - mint chocolate chip. So creamy and delicious! Our tour guide played a game to see who on our tour had come from the farthest away. On our 40 person tour we were the farthest! We won an extra ice cream sample. Yum!
We decided that we still had a good part of the beautiful day, so we headed south about 45 minutes to the town of Middlebury, Vermont to see Middlebury College located there. It is a beautiful campus and the kids liked taking a look at it. This trip has been a good way for them to get a feel for various college campuses to help them get in their mind the school they might want to attend in the future.
From Middlebury, we shot up the western edge of Vermont to the town of Burlington. Burlington is a quaint little city perched right on the edge of Lake Champlain. It is a beautiful city that has been voted best small city many years running. It is also home to the University of Vermont. We purchased tickets and boarded the Ethan Allan III for a boat ride and tour around Lake Champlain. The boat wasn't very crowded and we had the 2nd level deck all to ourselves which was nice and made it easy to see and hear everything the tour guide explained. Learning about the history of the area from when it was occupied by Native Americans until it was discovered by Samuel de Champlain and on to present day. We saw one area, Red Rocks Park, that was especially interesting. There were kids jumping off the cliff there into the water below. We aren't sure how many feet up they were, but the water into which they jumped was 60 feet deep leaving them plenty of room for this activity.
After the boat ride and a quick dinner, we explored the University of Vermont campus and then headed north two hours toward Montreal arriving in time to drop into bed after another busy Blount Adventure day!
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