OK, besides escaping the rain who ha (and I don’t know exchanging it for snow???), this further north traversing is also reconnaissance for The Gluru. Yes, yes, per chance she hasn’t accepted it yet, but if I’m moving to the East Coast she needs to come this way as well. You know, the llama farm and the adorable school house abode…..Leuzini doing manly, outdoor, sporty stuff out in the hinterlands of Greenville.
So far though, Vermont, no cheese, no ice cream, they’re really pushing that maple stuff and yes we’ve seen a few more covered bridges, but you know how cranky I get when I don’t get my cheese. Fortunately Nutty did an emergency stop when he was tracking down his emergency Mexican Coca Colas (yeah, like that wasn’t getting ugly, him without Coca Cola) and just got me some generic yellow stuff. However……………………….where’s my Vermont Cheese Vermont?????? Ben & Jerry’s I can survive without, but the cheese!!! I could be getting a bit militant.
By the by, kudos to Vermont with the North/South, East/West signage. Finally a state over here on this side of the world that actually deems compass point directions an essential part of navigation. However, when it comes to their signage for camp grounds epic fail. I think I was reading on some of their printed literature that they would like us to comment on their campgrounds via the internet. Might be nice if they actually had service around their camp sites! We had to track down three of their campgrounds before we actually found one that was open!
The first one (that was closed) actually took us three tries to locate. It was early in the day and we were still determined at that point. This is what they do. On the highways and byways to alert you of the approaching state park they have these tiny little brown signs (not to be confused with their tiny little black signs, informing you of upcoming business locales) that when viewed at highway speed with you know, the geezer-meister eye sight, are not really viewed well at all. So the first targeted camp ground, definitely passed the turn off sign for that and finally felt that we had come too far down the mountain and passed it, so yes somehow managed to u-turn on the mountain highway and are still here to write about it. So, ah-ha! We saw the turn-off sign this second time around and managed the appropriate turn. But then again we were headed too far down the mountain again. This was just getting ridiculous. We are college educated and not willing to bow down to complete old age-dom, senility, and dementia yet! As God is my witness (think Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind), we will find this bloody (sorry to offend those of you in England right now) campground. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I don’t know how Nutty does this (with a stick shift mind you), but he gets us turned around again. Guess what? We find the tiny little brown sign indicating the location of the state park/campground 3/10 of a mile ahead. Unbelievable! We count out the mileage on the vehicle and yes, there it is with absolutely no entrance signage and totally blending into the forest! If we hadn’t been calculating the mileage with the vehicle we never would have seen that dirt drive-in campground. Indeed! Guess what? Closed. Ohhhh Vermont. Turns out, it’s all good, ’cause at that elevation they did get snow last night.
OK, OK, back down the other side of the mountain we go for another habitable camp side within say 100 miles of the AT. Whatever. I don’t see Kismet begging for a hike, but he does seem to be kind of jonesing for another wild mouse hunt. Campground #2, actually saw the signage, made the turnoff, saw some bucolic-type black moo-cows or something with these wide bands of white around their middles, little farms, tra-la-la stuff. A bunch of green stuff, that will look absolutely gorgeous in the fall. Good signage to entrance of campground, hellacious bumpy, rutted road that was kind of challenging the mini MINI tires, but we finally make it up to the top of the entrance. Guess what? This ones closed too, but we can call into some special Camp Dig Deep Vermont number to get info about camping off season or just log onto the web. Oh yeah, ’cause there’s actual reception up here in the middle of nowhere Vermont! Where’s my Cheese?! Back down we go, hoping the new muffler straps are holding and thank goodness we got those repaired.
Campground #3; well you know, that was closed too, but at least we found a live human to talk to who gave us the deets on the 2.5 campgrounds that were actually open in The Green State of Vermont and finally found a place to camp last night.
What’s the camp site like? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrusk! Per chance we are going a bit too far north to escape the weather. Adjustment #5,001. Time to head way down south and get behind the weather??????
Oh great, this just in per The Nutah. The whole East Coast rain city right over the AT. Let’s just call it Mossy Tsunami AT. We are managing to stay ahead of it by driving more than hiking and if we do continue this Northward bent, definite snowville in our future. Not good.
Maybe we should consider the Pacific Crest Trail this year.
