The road less travelled....

SAT OCTOBER 13
After a mixed week weather-wise, Saturday was gloriously sunny and crisp, the perfect weather for 'leaf peeping'. For my last full day in Vermont, Michelle and I headed northward with a plan to find the final covered bridge - successfully and amazingly obviously located on 'Covered Bridge Road' and to see the Fall foliage in all it's glory by driving a loop that would take us back home via a quaint town called Grafton (or that was the plan anyway). Passing Manchester, jammed with Saturday traffic in no small part due to the pumpkin carving competition which was in full swing, we headed north towards Wallingford, hoping to turn eastward and then south again towards Grafton and then home to Shaftsbury.

The best laid plans often never come to fruition and one picturesque detour later, the moral of which being never give your GPS unit to a tourist when time is of the essence, especially when said tourist used the GPS system to locate a lunch venue miles in the opposite direction in which we needed to travel, we ended up in Wallingford at Mom's Country Kitchen for some well-earned lunch.


In a slight food coma, brought on by the wonderful homemade apple pie dessert we swore we'd never tell Rich (who remained at home entertaining friends who had called with their kids for the day) about, we continued on our way to the village of Weston, home of the Vermont Country Store, a veritable treasure trove of Americana, maple syrup, candy, preserves, clothing, silly hats, long johns, 'Tired Old Ass' cream - I could go on, it was one of those places where you could browse about all afternoon and not notice the time go by. We only had time for a brief visit unfortunately and being Saturday the place was jammed with folks intent on gorging themselves with free food samples. Little old ladies with jabbing elbows are quite formidable.

I could have quite happily spent hours in there, sampling cheeses, dips and chocolate and trying on fluffy bobble hats but we had to depart and head back home - but not before an obligatory photograph :)

Rich makes a great BBQ dinner for all us guests that evening, and despite our so-called pact of 'non-disclosure' about the apple pie dessert, Michelle spills the beans to Rich, who manfully refuses to be all that jealous of our great dessert find in Wallingford and very kindly makes S'mores for us that evening despite the further 'disclosure' I also had an extremely delicious chocolate milkshake :)