New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont

15th - 23rd October, 2010

We spent just over a week exploring the beautiful New England area. Up until now, we had been noticing the colours of the leaves starting to slowly change, but it seemed that as soon as we headed north out of Boston the trees really started putting on the main show. The colours are just amazing ranging from green and yellow right through to orange, red and deep rusty brown. Very hard to capture in photos, but just spectacular to actually see.                                                                                                                                                              

We visited Acadia National Park, near Bar Harbor in Maine. The weather was great and the scenery lovely, although we only had a very short time there. We stayed nearby in a little cottage by the seaside. There we met a few really nice families that come the the cabins every year, so we enjoyed our stay there greatly! One of the families offered to let us stay in their log cabin in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. What a stroke of luck for us, the cabin was fantastic.

We had planned lots of exciting things to do while we we in the area, including gondola rides up mountains and then flying down again on the zipline. Unfortunately for us most things were now "closed for the season". This basically meant that the summer season was over and they were now getting prepared for ski season. We drove about halfway up Mt Washington (the road was closed to the top because of snow). So Natasha and Abbey got to see their first snow, although it was a very thin smattering and bit icy as far as we were allowed to go. They both commented how they thought it would be soft! Anyway, we had a great snowball fight before heading back down.

We also tried the cog railway to get to the top of Mt Washington. It was only going up about two thirds of the way to the top, so we saw a lot more snow, but were unable to get off the train to enjoy it!

We popped into the Mt Washington Hotel afterwards, just for a look at this amazing old place. It was built in 1903, has had past Presidents stay there and is the epitomy of old New Hampshire luxury. Amazing to walk through and imagine yourself there 100 years ago (fabulously rich of course!)

The Mount Washington Hotel, New Hampshire

Earlier as we passed through the coastal part of New Hampshire, Michael bought some fireworks (its legal in NH) so much to everyone's excitement we had our own private (and very short) fireworks show!

Next we headed towards Vermont where many things awaited. First we visited the Cabot Cheese Factory and did a tour to learn how cheese is made, and then of course got to taste some. They also make butter and yoghurt. The company is a Co-op, started in 1919 by 94 dairy farmers who paid $5 each to create what is now a huge company, still owned by farmers.
Next stop was a maple syrup farm, but as the syrup is harvested in spring when the sap begins to flow there wasn't much action going on. We also visited Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory (also including taste testing), before the much awaited Vermont Teddy Bear Factory where we got to see how the Bears are made. We now have two new additions to the family.