Day-3 Sep-7-09

Today we covered about 230 miles and traveled from Kingston NY, to Bennington VT (not in a direct line mind you).

We left the hotel this morning, and Lennie wanted to stop back in Woodstock to do a little shopping. So, after a quick 11 mile jaunt, we were back in Woodstock. Parking was easier to find today, and we ended up parking in a pay lot for $5. The man who collected the money was a local, and I mean "local", he actually lived in his beat up RV, right there in the parking lot. He stumbled out of the RV to grab our cash, and it looked like we had just woken him up :)

After getting parked, we walked through the town and spent some time wandering through the various shops. Town was much less crowded than it was late yesterday afternoon. The sidewalks in the town are mostly put together using chunks of slate, which means they are irregular, full of cracks, and uneven. Put those characteristics together with Lennie's uncanny lack of balance, and you have a recipe for an incident :) Sure enough, within the first 15 minutes of walking through town, I could hear those famous words of Howard Cosell, "down goes Lennie, down goes Lennie". She ended up catching her foot on the edge of a slate piece, and fell onto all fours. Here are a couple shots of her boo-boos (a scraped hand and knee), nothing major, as the fall hurt mostly her pride.

After shopping, we got back on the road and headed through more of the Catskills State Park. As we saw yesterday, most of the roads in the park are free of traffic and well wooded.

We did travel through an interesting little ski town near the Hunter Mountain ski area. The ski area itself looks pretty small. It was interesting that the actual town at the base of the mountain was packed full of ski and snowboard shops!! Not just one or two shops, there were probably 20 ski shops in the town. Of course, at this time of the year, NONE of them were actually open doing any business! I guess no one told them that the ski season is fairly short in this area ??? Most ski locations in these types of areas went to a four seasons approach, by adding a golf course or some type of summer spa, but it seems this town just closes up for the summer? Here is a shot of the mountain as we drove by...

Our route today took us through tons of small, single intersection, towns, and we noticed the roads were often lined with these little yellow and white flowers/bushes. I am not sure what they are, but when seen in large fields, they were kind of pretty.

For those who might care, the new trailer is doing great, it has shown the characteristics that all good trailers should show, it has stayed attached to the bike, and followed us everywhere we have gone.

Oh, and having cruise control on the wing allows me to kick back and take a quick nap as we travel down the road at 60 mph :)

Tomorrow, we are headed up to the Rutland VT area, and will travel up Rt 100. Route 100 stretches pretty much the entire north/south length of Vermont, and is considered by many driving enthusiasts to be one of the 10 best driving roads in America. For tomorrow, we will pick up RT 100 near Whitingham, which is the birthplace of Brigham Young, the famous Mormon leader and founder of Salt Lake City. We will take 100 up to Rutland, near the Killington Ski Resort. Later in the week, we will take Rt 100 further north, and visit the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream factory (yum).