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| First Ice Cream of the day |
Stairs to room in Middlebury Inn |
The Maritime Museum in Vergennes | Lunch at Production Advantage |
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Cooking lunch | David | In line at Ben & Jerry's |
2nd Ice Cream today |
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| Mmmm...smoothies | Thumper's bike | Montpelier, VT | Fairbanks Museum St Johnsbury, VT |
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Day 4 dawned the same as days 2 & 3. Blue skies and cool temperatures. Another perfect day for riding.
Jim Dougherty, the guy who cooked dinner for us last night, joined us as one of our Day Trippers. With his addition, along with Mike Sapsis and Richard Gagliardi, we are now 19 bikes and a chase car. We make for a very impressive sight going down the road. We're loud too.
After bidding a reluctant goodbye to the Middlebury Inn (You really do want to stay here when you get a chance. Ask for a room in the main house or the Mansion.) the LRLR split into two groups. One group went north to the Maritime Museum in Vergennes and the other took the mountain road (Vt. Rte 17) though Waitesfield up to Waterbury. The mountain road lived up to expectations and provided an exhilarating ride up and over the notch. I didn't go to the museum but those that did enjoyed it a lot.
After the morning ride we all met up again in Williston for lunch. Today's lunch was hosted by Production Advantage. They did a barbecue on their loading dock and it was a lot of fun. They even had an ice cream truck stop by for dessert. How cool is that? Many thanks to David, Deb, Angie, Matt, Sally and the rest of the Production Advantage staff.
After lunch it was off to Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream in Waterbury. We gave out kazoos. We took the tour. We ate more ice cream. It was all good.
We couldn't pass up Montpelier, the smallest state capitol in the US. It was a short ride over from Waterbury and we stopped in front of the State House with it's lovely gold dome. We took some pictures, gave out some kazoos and generally behaved ourselves. Some went off on a walk in search of coffee while others took advantage of the grassy lawn and grabbed a short nap.
The last leg of the day had us riding east on Rte 2 to St. Johnsbury. There we split into two groups once again with some heading off to the hotel and the others going to the Fairbanks Museum. The museum was built in the 1890's and is a wonderful example of a Victorian Natural History Museum. It has everything from hummingbirds to moose to stuffed polar bears and an exhibit of Aleutian dolls. It also has the bug mosaics. These are mosaics of things like Washington Crossing the Delaware but instead of using ceramic tiles, the artist used bugs. Beetles. Moths. Lady Bugs. You name it, he used it like a tile. It is, to say the least, bizarre.
I spent some time visiting family in North Danville and rejoined the group at the hotel later that evening.
The weather was great. The roads were exciting and we got ice cream twice in one day. Not too shabby, eh?