Saturday 4 July Independence Day

Hmm, supposed to by sunny today!  Oh well, pancakes and maple syrup for brekkie again to fill in time until the sun comes out!  We found out Vermont is the leading producer of maple syrup in the States, by far.  It’s also where the Ben and Jerry’s Icecream Company was founded back in 1978 and they do factory tours - I checked on line and there is RV parking…..  guess where we might be going!

Going for a walk shortly to see if anyone is celebrating Independence Day.  Surprisingly there doesn’t seem to be so much patriotism at this camp, a few flags waving and that’s it.   However it is the camp’s 50th birthday today, so we are all meeting up for cake and icecream at 7pm to help them celebrate.  It was very yummy too!

Monday 6 July Maine to New York State

Today our plan is to drive north and stop in at Ben and Jerry’s for their factory tour.  It was interesting, we had a very good tour leader and yes, we did get a free sample!  Salted Caramel Blondie – they must have known I was coming, couldn’t have picked it better myself!

Then further north to Burlington.  We had been told back in New Orleans that this is a lovely little town nestled on the shores of Lake Champlain.  There are ferries which cross from here over the Port Kent in New York State and we line up to catch one, they go every 30-60 minutes and no bookings required but we find we are too tall so we backtrack about 12 miles to catch a bigger boat from Charlotte over to Essex.  This trip ($32) is only 35 minutes rather than the 60 minute crossing we would have been on.  It was lovely to be on the water and it was a fabulous viewpoint to see Champlain Lake from.

The town where we disembarked, Essex was a lovely little quaint town with antique shops and cafes overlooking the lake.

New York State has quite a different look and feel to it, the land we’ve seen so far is farmed, lots of crops and some dairy.  Most of the farm building we saw on our 15 miles to the campground were old and dilapidated, generally in poor repair.  Not all of course and we were on a two lane country road.  We saw a team of horses working in one paddock

We booked into a rustic little campground called  Magic Pines, had a sit in the sun for a while, a nice dinner and a nice quite night amongst the trees.  A lot of the motor homes had lovely coloured lights strung and it was very pretty once is got dark.

Tuesday 7 July Warrensburg NY

Little trip today, to line ourselves up to move further west.  We mostly stayed to a two lane country road and was the only vehicle for miles, then moved on to the Interstate as the pavement got pretty rough.  We were surrounded by lots of lake most of the way but could only glimpse it sometimes..  Booked into the Warrensburg Travel Park for two nights, using our Passport America discount card which gives us a 50% discount.  Some sites limit the discount to one night, some don’t offer the discount during weekends nor peak season – July August, so we have to check the rules for each camp. this one limited it to three nights.  The camps are all listed in a big book so it’s easy enough to check the deals out.

We transferred some NZ$ to US$ yesterday - shock and horror!!  Kicking ourselves we didn't change more back when it was .85c!!   Can't do much about it now though, except keep a watch on the rate and hope it improves dramatically before we need more.

It was hot when we arrived at camp so after setting up and lunch sat by the pool for a while and then did some research on where we will head next, when we will be at Niagara Falls and how we will do that.  It's all coming together and we are looking forward to the next stage of our adventure!

Started raining at 7pm, hopefully it will cool down before bedtime.  We have cable TV here so Kim in his element scrolling through 230 channels!