Vermont

Vermont Day 2 - more leaves and boats - and we've figured out (I hope) how to put pictures on the blog - so we'll try. John has so far taken about 400 pictures (and I'm NOT exaggerating!) and after he had weeded through them, I pruned excessively so we are down to 4 - a beautiful old covered bridge (that was for sale!), a replica of a gunboat on Lake Champlain and 2 leaf pictures. We've put the leaf pictures on this post and will (try!) to put the other two on yesterday's. We are learning as we go - and when I say we, I really mean John - I just push the buttons he tells m
me to. What amazes me about the leaves is how one tree can be completely green in places, but have patches of crimson, yellow and orange. Sometimes the trees look as though they have hats on when only the top has started to turn. The hillsides are amazing to see and the photographs don't do them justice - plus the fact that the weather hasn't been great. We had lots of rain yesterday - not so much today but still cloudy and not much sun. When the sun does come out, the colours just sing. And as you'll see from one picture, not only does a tree change in clumps, but individual leaves are also a mixture of colours.
We went to the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum today - lots of interesting stuff about Benedict Arnold who I really knew nothing about before - as well as general boaty things. Mark - there were all kinds of canoes with sails that you might want to invest in!
We are getting into the swing of this travelling thing. We went down to the exercise room this morning to check out the stair master etc. We are already eating far too much so felt that we needed to work some of it off. We are really enjoying ourselves and have discovered the joys of wearing the same clothes for many consecutive days rather than unpack a beautifully ordered suitcase! And this message is for my kids - Mr. Tilley lied - his famous overnight-drying underwear DOESN'T!!!
I'll be back tomorrow and then there will be a hiatus as we leave for Edinburgh on Thursday morning.

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!