Green Mountains and White Mountains

Heavy rain, low cloud, poor light and detours due to road works, have hampered our style somewhat today. Reluctantly we left Crisanver House first thing this morning knowing we had a long journey ahead of us. We'll miss the fabulous meals cooked for us by Carole, and her husband Michael's homemade limoncello. (Must look up a recipe for that when we get home!) We also met some very interesting guests staying at the same time as us - a couple with a vineyard in California, a young German couple who gave us a web link to the rock band they were in, and another couple from Chicago, one half of which hailed from Oak Park where we had such a great visit with Victoria a few years ago.

Crisanver House

We had decided to make a detour  to Shelburne Museum on the way to our next stopover. It's situated in the north of Vermont, very close to Lake Champlain (120 miles long by 12 miles wide), which has its western shore in New York State. The museum has 39 exhibition buildings covering several acres but unfortunately we arrived in torrential rain

Not looking too happy with the weather

and we decided it would be foolhardy to walk around getting drenched so we pressed on with our journey travelling eastwards to New Hampshire. Still in Vermont we came across Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Factory and stopped here for a guided factory tour and some free ice cream sampling.

A happier looking Jim

We were impressed to hear that Ben and Jerry had paid 5$ for a correspondence course on making ice cream in 1977 and afterwards turned their knowledge into a hugely successful franchise. Milk for the ice cream comes from local cows and all ingredients are ethically sourced. For some Americans the factory seems like a place of pilgrimage.  I'm not a huge ice cream fan but the chocolate nougat and butterscotch flavours definitely get the thumbs up from me.
The White Mountain National Forest was beckoning though and we had many miles still to go to our destination. Moose warning signs pepper the highways and the roads twist and turn through spectacular scenery. The area is a haven for hikers, rock climbers, fishermen, bird watchers and skiers. It's a shame our view of the mountain tops was obscured by clouds but hopefully we'll see some better weather before we leave on Friday and get to see the Presidential Mountain Range including Mount Washington. Worthy of note though, even in the mist and rain, is the Crawford Notch Pass which has a 13 degree descent to the Notch floor.

 Silver Falls in Crawford Notch Pass

On arrival at the Inn at Thornhill, the owners told us not to leave any foodstuff in our car as there had been an incident of a bear breaking a guest's car windows to get at food that had been left inside!

As I said, this is great walking country, and the place where American poet Robert Frost spent his summers for 40 years. I hope we can do it some justice in the time we're here without any bear encounters though!