Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream

Saturday - 5 June 2004 - Grand Isle, Vermont:  Our daughter is moved in to her new apartment in Boston! I told her this is the last time I am helping her move. (NOTE: That didn't turn-out to be true!)
 
We headed up I-95 in New Hampshire and caught 89 into Vermont.  For breakfast, we stopped at a "State Safety Rest Area" and Welcome Center to enjoy home-made sticky buns. Guess what the State of New Hampshire has at every rest area? A liquor store! Does anyone other than me find anything wrong in this concept? What we have figured is that New Hampshire has the cheapest liquor in New England and neighbors drive up the freeway to buy booze? Anyway, I feel selling booze in a highway rest area is a bad idea. (Not that my High Morals stopped me from going in and picking up a few bargains...)

New Hampshire Rest Area

Just over the Vermont border, we stopped at one of my favorite (mail-order) stores - King Arthur Flour. Since King Arthur is such a big company, I thought their store would be huge and their parking lot would cover acres. I was wrong. It is just a little country store. We actually had to park in front of the shop on the side of the highway! If you are unfamiliar with this company, King Arthur sells everything a person could ever want or need for baking - bread, cakes, muffins, pastries, pies, cookies, tarts... well, you get the idea. They specialize in products for the "advanced" home cook who might need a product not typically available in a normal grocery. Lately, I have been using more products from our local mill, Bob's Red Mill, but if you need gigantic sheets of parchment paper, French yeasts, or Polish pottery - King Arthur is your place!  DT came in the shop for a while, but was bored within 2 minutes. I didn't really need anything, but was just curious to actually see some of the products I had read about, so was "just looking". A crowd of clerks had gathered at the front door and they were all looking out the front door and pointing at something, so I went over to see what the fuss was about. Our Intrigue! They were admiring our motorhome and when I claimed it, they had many questions and thought Oregon was a very long way to come for a teeny wooden scoop for my salt cellar. (NOTE: King Arthur now has a huge new retail center and plenty of RV parking.)

Later, we stopped at Montpelier, the Capital City of Vermont. Montpelier is just like a little country village. Oh, wait - it IS a little country village! The Capitol Building was closed, so we were only able to tour the outside, but we learned much from the friendly guide at the Visitor Center. There are a lot of friendly hippies in Vermont. I like that in a State.

Vermont State House

Vermont is famous for many foods. Cheese and Maple Syrup come to mind, but Vermont is also home to the Ben & Jerry's ice cream empire!  DT and I took the tour, had a free sample, bought a dish of heavenly ice cream and had our photo snapped by a friendly New Englander during our visit in Waterboro. At this plant in Vermont, every pint of ice cream sold in the United States is churned. Ben & Jerry's have another plant up the road that packages the ice cream in larger containers for their ice cream shops, and they also have plants in Canada, Israel and Holland. All of the milk comes from local dairy cows. No hormones are allowed. They also produce organic ice creams now. Today they were sampling Oatmeal Cookie and Brownie Batter ice creams. Both were yummy, but when it came time for me to buy a scoop, I chose Vanilla. Our funny tour guide said employees get a free pint daily! (Maybe Ben & Jerry should make a "Luscious Lipitor" ice cream?) While not exactly a rags-to-riches story, it is a story of two friends with a great idea that really took off! Ben & Jerry are no longer involved with the company - Ben & Jerry's is a Unilever brand now - but the company philosophy is still in place, and Grateful Dead music plays over the stereo system. If you are ever in Waterboro, Vermont (what are the chances?) I recommend a stop to Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream. They have parking for about 10 RVs.

Ben & Jerry never looked so good!

The afternoon was spent on back-roads, winding our way to the Burlington area. We must have passed 50 "DANGER - Moose Crossing next 1000 feet" signs. This is a very narrow window of opportunity, we realize, but we did not see a moose all day. We did see a deer! Dead on the road today, we saw several beaver and a dead fox. Even these Ducks don't like to see dead Beavers on the side of the road. We are camped on Grand Isle - a large island in the middle of Lake Champlain. This huge lake sits between Vermont and New York. Lake Champlain is so pretty, the weather was nice all day and the campground is very nice.

RV Park: Apple Island Resort, near Burlington, Vermont