We are back from vacation and I have tons to write about. I suffered mightily during our time in Canada- no internets? no twitter? no phone calls that don’t cost 79 cents a minute? I wish I had thought about what roaming in Canada would mean with a smartphone but I did not. THEN, we get to Waitsfield and I remembered what I forgot from last year. The Mad River Valley is not real big on cell phones, particularly Verizon phones. Someone told us last year that you could get coverage from one carrier but I don’t remember who. It was not Verizon. So, we had no cell service (and internet/twitter/etc) for 3 more days. There were so many times I wanted to send something on the fly and could not. I might have a problem.
After a bit though, I decided to be easy and enjoy the distance from technology. This part of Vermont (probably like most of Vermont) is very green, very local-centric and organic. It seems only fitting that I detach from the world and focus on the right here, right now.
After a few days in the Mad River, it was time to move on. We were really banking on some sunset views over Lake Champlain, much like that one pictured in my last post. We headed up to Burlington for phase 2 of vacation. Since it was rainy, I insisted we stay someplace with a jacuzzi. And a fireplace. It was damned expensive but so very worth it. Especially after we got to Burlington, reconnected with television and news media to learn that tropical storm Nicole was going to rain on our parade for the remainder of our time in Vermont. We did get some adventuring in but it wasn’t until we were on our way home that I finally got a few glimpses of blue sky suitable for photography that doesn’t require complex math to determine exposure settings (despite the calculations, I was able to get a few awesome shots during the ‘fall color’ part of the trip).
We made use of the fireplace and jacuzzi and the internet connection. If we’d still been in Waitsfield, I would have missed some really big happenings in another small town 1/2 way across the country. On the evening of September 30, a wee little baby decided to make his/her impending arrival known. Waters were spilled, pains were had. Mom and Dad-to-be headed off to the hospital. Despite hopes to the contrary, this baby was ready to make her debut, four weeks early. In the wee small hours of the morning, a wee small Little Miss A got her first view of the life on the outside*. My brother tells me ‘she screamed, boy did she scream’ and I said ‘wouldn’t you? It was warm and cuddly and dark a minute ago, now its bright and cold and people are poking and prodding you!’
After a fitful night of waiting for the a-ok text message, we packed up our things on Friday late-morning and prepared for the long haul back to Michigan. In the rain. First, though I dragged Chris in to his second yarn shop of the trip. Then we headed west. Took a car ferry across the lake and decided to do the scenic route via Lake Placid. It was sorely tempting to stop here because it finally stopped raining but was too dark to see the lake(s). Unfortunately, 12 hours of driving plus stops on Saturday to get us home that night was just not feasible.
Instead, we pushed on through to make it to the outskirts of Rochester, NY where we overpaid for a hotel room to sleep in for 6 hours. That left us with 7 hours of drive time on Saturday. We crossed in to Canada at Saint Catherine’s to avoid the traffic at Buffalo. Not to worry though, the back-ups were all for getting in to the US. The border crossing at Port Huron/Sarnia was a bit slow but she only asked us two questions: citizenship and did we buy anything? I don’t totally get the citizenship thing since I used a passport from the United States of America as my ID and we didn’t buy anything of substance during either Canadian portion. There was a bag full of McMinis on the seat between us but I decided that didn’t count (McMini defined coming soon).
*Official time of birth was just shy of 1 AM. Little brother says he asked if they could wait until 1:10 AM so he could have a binary baby. I wonder if 1:01 would have worked too?
Good Food Hunting 