Magic Wings

Lois and I went to the Magic Wings Butterfly Museum in Deerfield, MA yesterday. Not much to say, just lots of pictures. As is my usual action, I forgot my camera. All pictures were taken with my iPhone. They came out OK, but many are a touch blurry.

A walking leaf -- for real. I thought it was just some weird item to collect on Animal Crossing.

This is a frog:

Not sure what these guys to the right are doing. Procreating?

This one is my favorite:

What a pose:                                                                                            I think this one is a moth:

The picture on the right (open wings) is the same butterfly as the one on the left (closed wings).

Lois' admission stamp. Hers came out better than mine. And she had to show off her butterfly nail painting. It is supposed to be a flower, but it looks more like a butterfly.

Pictures from the end of the day. This is a lighthouse that is just down the road from the butterfly museum. It would have been a much nicer picture if the quad wasn't in front of it. The last picture is Hope relaxing in Lois' garden.

Cabot

This week has turned into the Factory Tour trip. Sandy, Darlene, and I were caravaning across VT and NH. I was in the lead, so anything that we came across that looked interesting, I slammed on the brakes to investigate.

This is a covered bridge that we stopped at:

Continuing on our journey, I saw a sign for Cabot Cheese Factory:

This was another tour that cost just a couple o' bucks and lasted less than an hour. At this factory, they make yogurt, cottage cheese, and dips. Cabot has two other production facilities where they make the aged cheddar cheeses and butter. Cabot also makes products for Hood and Trader Joe's.

The milk is brought into this factory and processed by separating the curds from the whey. The whey (liquid) is sprayed onto the fields as fertilizer. The curds are then either pressed and packed in 42 lb blocks and sent to the other factories or used in this one for their yogurt and cottage cheese production.

The tour was interesting, but it was the sample area and store that destroyed all three of us. I did well with only purchasing a pound of butter and a brick of hand-rubbed Tuscan cheese. Darlene walked out with three grocery bags full of every product they had out on their shelves. I was thereon not allowed to stop anywhere else that sold food.  :o)

The butter I bought can only be purchased at their factory stores. It is an English Style and still contains some of the whey. Other than containing some extra liquid, there is no difference between it and the americanized style of butter.

After the Cabot tour, we crossed over into New Hampshire. Somewhere between the Cabot factory and Littleton, NH.  Darlene's refrigerator door fell off.  We were originally planning on stopping in the Franconia area. Instead, we ended up driving an hour or so further to North Conway so that Darlene could bring her rig to an RV repair place. It took the serviceman more than an hour to piece her door back together. It is only a temporary fix until she can get a new door from the factory, but it got her back on the road again with a working refrigerator.

In North Conway, we stayed at the Saco River Camping Area. I camped here 35 years ago with Vanessa. Much has changed in North Conway in the last 35 years, and according to Sandy, even the last 10 years. Many of the outlet stores are gone. Traffic, other than downtown North Conway, was practically non-existent. It used to take an hour to go from one end of town to the other.

I walked around and around and around the campground to find the beach and finally found it just before dark. I wanted to try to take Hope in the river again, but they didn't allow dogs on their beach. It was just as well. The Saco River was much colder than the river we swam in the night before.

Without any rain for the last week, everything was dusty dry. Here's a picture of my dirty-assed dog:

Ben &Jerry's Ice Cream Factory

Sandy, Darlene, and I left Essex Junction, VT and headed over to the Ben and Jerry's factory. The tour was only $2.00 and took about half an hour. At the end of the tour, everyone got a sample of ice cream. Today's flavor was Boston Cream Pie. It was a good size helping, too, not just one of those little spoons for tasting; but do you think that was enough??? NOOOOO, of course not. You can never have enough ice cream, so I stood in line and got a small serving of Oatmeal Cookie Chunk.

Being the brainless wonder that I am, I could not remember what flavor ice cream I had, so I went to Ben and Jerry's Website. Do you know what I found???? A Ben and Jerry's app for the iPhone. It will keep you up-to-date on their newest flavors and has a feature to find the nearest B&J store. Oh, man; am I in trouble now. It even has a feature called, "Learn the ingredients and nutrition info of each flavor." Do you think I care? Do you think that's going to keep me from eating ice cream three times a week? I think not.

Here are a few pictures I took at Ben & Jerry's:

After visiting Ben & Jerry's, we went to the Trapp Family Lodge -- you know, the Von Trapp family -- the Sound of Music family. From what we could see, there wasn't much to see. It was an Inn, so if you were a guest, there was probably lots of stuff to do. For us, we just walked through the main lobby of the lodge and I went to the bakery down the road.

This is the view from the base of the Lodge and a picture of the front of the Lodge:

The library:

That night, we stayed in a campground in Marshfield, VT. It was a very small campground but the amenities were the best I've ever experienced. The campground was bordered by a large river that had a small beach so you could go swimming. In addition, they had two pools and a hot tub. I soooo miss my hot tub. After I took a dip in the river, I later sat in the hot tub. It was over 90 degrees outside; you'd think that it was too hot to be lounging around in a hot tub, but it felt sooooooo goooood!!!

I took Hope in the river with me. I was very, very proud of her. She took some coaxing before getting in over her knees and she did well until she lost footing and had to actually swim. The poor thing completely panicked and ran back in to shore. We tried three times and each time she got a touch better. I figured three was enough, though, so I let her be after that and gave her the ol' towel treatment. She doesn't like water and she doesn't like being brushed, but she sure does like being rubbed all over with a towel. Silly dog!

Vermont Teddy Bear Factory

Sandy and I took off from the FMCA rally for a few hours and went to downtown Burlington and also the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory.

This is a short post and there isn't much to tell. It didn't have anything to do with the rally, so I decided to make it a separate entry.

It was hotter than H* this day. We took a walk down the boardwalk along the shore of Lake Champlain and even though it was right by the water, there was no relief. The sky was clear so the only relief we could get was from an occasional shadow.

The Teddy Bear factory tour was cute. They gave us all a sample of the fabric along with a button.

 
As is usual Diane style, I FORGOT MY CAMERA. Not only did I forget to bring my camera with me, I also left my cell phone in Sandy's van as I figured there was no reason to carry it around with me. The only picture I have is this one that I asked Sandy to take for me. This is the hospital section where they repair returned bears. Note the IV bottle: