20.7.2012 – 20.7.2012  27 °C

Early start this morning with us heading straight to McD’s for brekky. This is actually the first time we’ve hit the Big M to break our fast so I think we’ve been going pretty well! All three of us slept poorly last night so I think we were all just hankering to get away from this crappy motel as quickly as possible!! 🙂

After our pancakes we headed westward out of Lincoln towards the Vermont border. Our drive to the border was more trees and lovely towns.. A repeat of yesterday’s trip!! Our morning tea stop was in this beautiful little town in Vermont, just over the Connecticut river from Hanover. Hanover is the home to Dartmouth University. It seems that uni must be in start up mode because there were plenty of young people wandering around looking a bit lost! Reminded me of my first week at uni when I first started!!! 🙂

Not long after our morning tea stop we arrived into the town of Queechee, Vermont. We stopped to see the gorge. Our LP jokingly (I think) calls it the Grand Canyon of New England.. I wouldn’t really put the two in the same category! The Queechee gorge is a deepish (but nothing on the GC) and is very narrow! I guess it must be the best around though!! I needed to stretch out my legs so D and I walked down to the bottom of the gorge to see the swimming hole. The river was pretty disappointing but the walk thru the forest was worth the effort. Our walk was just like you are picturing for a Vermont Forest.. Dappled light filtering thru bright green leaves, big rough tree trunks with their roots covered in moss.. just picture postcard! My shutter finger went nuts.. I must have taken at least a dozen photos within 100 metres!! I’m really hoping I got at least one decent photo from our wander…

From the gorge we continued down the road another couple of miles and ended up in Woodstock, Vermont (it is not the Woodstock of music fame… it’s in NY state… there is a Woodstock in every New England state!). Woodstock must be the quintessential New England town! It is easily the most picturesque town I’ve seen here in the US… This is saying something because I think I’ve commented a few times on cutesy beautiful towns… Woodstock makes them all look drab and boring! The middle of the main street is filled by a big park that runs the length of the street. Both sides of the street are tree lined and every house or building on the main street is in tip top condition. The town obviously has always been wealthy and continues to be wealthy. It’s the sort of town you expect to see plenty of Aston Martin’s and Maserati’s driving down the streets.. we didn’t look out of place though with our Toyota! We decided to have our picnic lunch in this amazingly beautiful town, we just sat in the middle of the main street and people watched.

After we had gotten our fill of people watching we decided to head out to see the Rockefeller Mansion. We hadn’t really planned to go out but it was definitely worth the trip. It’s only a couple of miles out of Woodstock and on arrival we wandered into the info centre to enquire about tickets into the mansion itself. The lady sitting on the desk was lacklustre (to be polite), clearly she had no intention of helping us out so we decided to wander up to the mansion and try our luck at getting on a guided tour.

The Rockefeller family donated this mansion and its 500 acres to the NP service. It is a historical site and is a great testament to the philanthropy and conservation activities of the Rockefeller family. I think I said the other day that the family has donated the land for 20 different NPs here in the US. They have done this to ensure that there are natural wonders available for all American’s for now and well into the future. This particular NP (which is called the Marsh- Billings- Rockefeller NP) has been created to promote the conservation activities of this family and the prior three generations. The land was originally owned by the Marsh family, the last of which was the governor of Vermont. He was brought up on this farm and saw Vermont change from a woodland state into a totally agricultural state (late 1700s). This change caused mass flooding and siltation of the rivers in Vermont. It got so bad that laws started to be enacted to start reforesting Vermont. The last Marsh went on to write a famous American book Man and Nature where he outlined the symbiotic relationship between nature and the growth of the human race.

He sold the estate to another conservationist, Billings. Billings made his money in California as a lawyer during the Gold Rush. Whilst he was out west he saw the beauty of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada’s and really wanted to make some changes to the E Coast to ensure that the beauty there was not lost. Billings bought the land and immediately changed the way it was being farmed. He brought in a professional farmer from Scotland who worked hard to introduce sustainable farming practices as well as new strains of stock. He was so successful that his farming practices were eventually adopted by many of the surrounding farms.

Finally, Billing’s grand daughter married into the Rockefeller family, and she and her husband Laurence, decided to donate the family estate to the NP service in the mid 90s. The donation occurred late in their lives after they had spent their summers in the gorgeous old mansion. Today, the mansion is open to the public and open for viewing, but sadly, we were too late to see inside. We enjoyed wandering around the outside of the mansion and seeing a short film on the three different owners of this beautiful estate.

By the time we had seen the outside of the mansion it was late into the afternoon so we knew we wouldn’t be able to do some of the drives we wanted to do in the Green Mountains. Knowing it was getting late (and knowing we only had a few days left to get to NYC) we decided to just drive straight down the motorway to Brattelboro. We arrived late in the evening, checked in (D got us a great 80 dollar deal) and made ourselves a tasty stew for dinner. We’ve decided that tomorrow we’ll head out to Salem to check out the witches… Could be a bit spooky!

Song of the Day– Jimmi Hendrix, Foxy Lady