Vermont

Leaves, leaves, leaves! Amazing colours - whole hillsides vivid with reds, yellows, oranges, greens - sometimes just one lonely, blazing red tree in amongst its friends who still have their oranges and yellows on board. We spent this morning wandering around Burlington which is on Lake Champlaine ergo lots of boats which must be inspected. There's a charming pedestrians-only market which runs for about 4 blocks with lots of original stores and tons of places to eat (and people-watch!). We started on our resolution to share a meal for lunch, which turned out to be a good plan - we would have been hard-put to finish one each. This afternoon we drove to Stowe (north-east of Burlington) where we had been told we would see lots of colour. We drove to Stowe on the Interstate - yes there was lots of colour, but you couldn't stop to enjoy it. So once we were in Stowe, we struck off the beaten track and found some wonderful "photographic opportunities". I'm sure we pulled way more than our fair share of 180s as we turned around to get just the right shot. We stopped at the obligatory covered bridge (I'd never seen one before) and at a wonderful old mill where there was a display of photographs taken by "Snowflake Bentley" (I'm not sure I have the name right - but it's close). He was a rather weird duck in the early 1900s who spent vast amounts of time collecting snowflakes and taking photographs of them. They really are quite beautiful. I have to tell my kids that we have used the GPS lady a lot already (they gave it to John for Christmas last year and I thought she was going to drive me crazy while he practiced using her to direct us to Elbow all summer ......!!) Anyway, she certainly knows her way around and it really is great to be able to put the name of the hotel in and tell her to take it on home. I'll get John to post some of his "leaf" photos tomorrow - he's sleeping right now!