Rick’s Rants and Raves

See also Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

• Friday we took a road trip to visit St. Johnsbury, where Steve, Margi and Jessie used to live. We immediately fell in love with the towns classic New England architecture, and riverside views.
• While in St. Johnsbury, we visited the Fairbanks Museum of Natural History. I found the exterior architecture to be just as interesting as the interior displays. Margi described the museum quite well as a “wealthy gentleman’s attic”. It quite clearly started as a collection of interesting nic-nacs adorning some mansion. There are a large number of stuffed birds and other animals, as well as Native American artwork, Far East carvings, and 18th century bug art–e.g. portraits of Lincoln made from thousands of beetles and butterflies. My favorite was the Bennett’s Bird of Paradise.
• We also visited Caplan’s Army Store in St. Johnsbury. Don’t let the “Army” in the name fool you–it was all about outfitting the outdoorsman. (erm, outdoorsperson?). It had hundreds of gloves and vests and coats and hats and boots.  There were so many things to keep a person warm in the wilderness it made me want to move to Vermont and live in a wood-fire heated shack.
• We finished Friday with a dip in Margi’s hot tub with some light flurries falling. Anne and I relaxed as much as we could while the kids were playing right next to us.
• We departed Saturday morning ahead of schedule thanks in part to Fluffy yowling from bedroom to bedroom around 6:50AM. It was a picturesque drive. We started with a trip to King Arthur Flour, then stopped at Vermont Country Store.
• We ate a late lunch at the Manchester Bar and Grill in Machester, VT. It was only a couple of miles from several ski resorts, and looked like a rustic ski lodge. I worried as we walked in that they would confirm my prejudice against tourist-focused restaurants. I’ve found quite frequently that tourist-focused restaurants typically suck, and so I try to avoid them if I can. MB&G was quite nice, had excellent food, quick service, and was reasonably priced.
• We finally crossed the Vermont state line into New York at 3PM, with a good bit of sadness all around the van.
• We stopped in Batavia, NY for the night. The AAA guide book mentioned Miss Batavia’s Family Restaurant. It was a great not-a-chain-restaurant diner serving American family cooking. The food was reasonably priced, and came to us quickly. It was a decent dinner at the end of a long day.
• At our hotel, we let the kids splash in the pool as Anne and I enjoyed the hot tub. We enjoyed it a little more than Margi’s precisely because the kids were in the pool, not with us .
• We left the hotel just before 9AM (we’re not early movers or shakers), had a few stops along the way, and arrived home around 3:30PM. The last two hours were incredibly busy with occasional accidents and serious slow-downs due to construction. It pretty well sucked.

Some final random thoughts (yes, I know they nearly all have been random):

• Total miles traveled: 1645
• Highest price paid for gas: 2.44/gallon along I-90
• Lowest price paid for gas: 1.61/gallon, just as we left home.
• We saw trails for VAST which Margi explained. I thought it sounded absolutely fascinating.
• We also passed near the headquarters for the American Society of Dowsers, whom Margi said “were a little squirrely”.