Relax RV- S2- E68 New England 2.0

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Relax RV Podcast

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Season 2 Episode 689/23/21New England 2021 2.0Over 7,000 downloads ! Awesome, I hope you are enjoying it.We left you after we visited Mt Washington, NHWe drove 2.5 hrs to Newport Center, VT. Which is in the North East Kingdom. Yep. We are at a Boondockers Welcome location for 4 nights. A very nice host couple and also parked here are another nice couple who are F/T in a class B. That evening we all sat around a camp fire and had a nice conversation. We had very little signal there so it took a day to get the last episode uploaded. The next day we went to Derby Line, VT. What an interesting place ! This town borders Canada. There's yellow ribbon crossing over the street at the border border patrol was sitting in their car just watching and protecting. There's also a library and Opera House which is half in Canada and half in the us. The front doors to the library are in the US so you go in and walk about 10 ft and there's a black line across the floor and that's Canada. There's no back door so there's no way to leave the building into Canada so you can walk around the canvas side of the building. The books on the American side were in English while most of the books on the Canadian side were in French. We were talking to a volunteer and the librarian assistant and had a wonderful lengthy conversation about the borderline and etc. Heres a link to the Haskell Free Library and Opera House https://maps.app.goo.gl/GrJkJfrUR3sezMuf6 It seemed like it's a surreal little town being on the border like that. The only border we've ever been through is on the highway with the cars. Here's a link to our pictures of this town and library on Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/p/CTaoTCdsJ1z/?utm_medium=copy_link So apparently there's a lake here and half of it is in Canada and if you cross the border you have to have a float plan you have to have your boat inspected before leaving the dock. There's a bike trail that starts in the US and continues up into Canada and you need a passport and anything else that you would normally need to get into Canada while riding the bike. And is also snowmobile trails up here where I understand they set up trails with border crossings and they check passports and all of that. Are snowmobile that we ordered in the beginning of this year will hopefully come in next month if not November and we may be looking at the Canadian border this winter with the snowmobile which we will pull with the either the RV or our Subaru.Within wanted to get a little active so we hiked up Avril mountain it was only about a mile to the top but apparently Vermont does not believe in switchbacks. So it was straight up about 600 ft in elevation. But the view up there was definitely worth it. We met a woman at the top we shared some of our wine with her. We had a nice conversation about rving and it sounded like we waited her appetite for wanderlust. Hi Terry if you're listening. She is suggested us hiking up Brousseau Mtn. Which we did. This Trail was .8 MI to the top and again no switchbacks. At the top of these two mountains we also met a young lady who we had nice conversations with. We never exchanged names but if you're listening hey there. http://canaanvt.com/item/brousseau-mountain/ We then headed over to Jed's Maple store. Again our host suggested this place and again they were spot on. This place has so many different Maple infused items that we ended up having a nice conversation with the owner who by the way is not yet. And bought a bag full of their stuff. http://www.jedsmaple.com/ That evening hour host suggested eating at the East Side Restaurant, which we did. The food was reasonable and very good albeit the nachos with raw tuna is a little skimpy on the topping but nevertheless we would go back again if in the area. They had a lot of outdoor seating right on the lake. https://www.eastsiderestaurant.net/ The next day we took a ride down to Willoughby State Forest and Lake willoughby. For many many years I've been wanting to hike up Mount Pisgah. And today we did. So apparently there's two trails that take you to the top the South Trail is not a scenic but much more crowded much more popular cuz it's an easier trail. We chose the North Trail to the top and thankfully Vermont learned about switchbacks. This was 2 1/4 miles to the top but a 1200 FT elevation gain. Right near the top there is a viewpoint it's like a tenth of a mile off of the main trail and it was gorgeous looking over Lake Willoughby. It was a little too chilly to sit and relax there so we can continue to the top which gives you a southern view which was spansive but not as pretty. And that's where we sat and relaxed.Doing this hike with our appetites to return to Willoughby State Forest as there is a lot of mountains and hiking in the area. And again this is up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. LOL. Here are pics from our hike up Mt Pisgahhttps://www.instagram.com/p/CTe2noZMS7w/?utm_medium=copy_link This area of Vermont doesn't get a lot of tourism but apparently in the winter the snowmobiles take over. We were asked by a few people not to tell anyone about this area because it's so quiet and peaceful so please don't tell your friends LOL.Next day we took a ride South for about 45 minutes. To visit the Cabot cheese factory and Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Cabot was closed and Ben and Jerry's were not doing tours. Then the rain came in and we had 3 hours to kill before meeting our friends from our home town for dinner, so unfortunately we canceled our dinner plans and headed back up north. The weather up there was clearer so we did a nice little bike ride then got a couple of slices of pizza for dinner.The next day we packed up and dumped our tanks in Newport. The town has a free dump. We then drove South for about an hour and a half to Williston to another Boondockers Welcome location. We met our hosts got set up in a beautiful location nice and level next to a fire pit. And a really nice conversation with them. And we went for a two and a half mile hike on a local mountain.The next day we went to Philo Mt. and hiked to the top. The trail was new and in my opinion it was a tab over developed. Lots of stone steps and very wide. Great views of Lake Champlain. Then we hiked down on the Devil's Seat Trail which was more like a hiking trail. Pics of Mt Philo https://www.instagram.com/p/CTkeFfuFvZs/?utm_medium=copy_link We then went to Charlotte Village Winery and bought a bottle of wine and had a nice conversation with the sommelier.From there we visited Shelburne Farm. An interesting place. They gave no history of the farm, which was owned by the Vanderbilt's and was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who helped design NY City' central park. A beautiful barn ! And free to visit. Here are a few picshttps://www.instagram.com/p/CTmipC8MZb4/?utm_medium=copy_link From there we walked the Church St Market Place which was a couple of blocks of stores, mostly high end. And we ate at Leunig's Bistro. It was pricey but worth every penny ! It then poured rain, I rain and got the car and picked up Trish. We got back to the rig and found water coming in 2 of the frameless windows. I went up on the roof and saw a piece of seal from the slide was out about an inch. I slide it back and will glue it.The next day we went to Mud Pond Country park. We expected to do 2.5 miles of walking but the map wasn't clear so we ended up doing almost 5 miles But it was nice.https://maps.app.goo.gl/5dChCjcMhX6kMaEo8. We drove to a park and grab the bike and rode on lakefront bike trail up to the causeway it was a total of 14 mi round trip. The right across the causeway was beautiful you really feel like you're out in the middle of Lake Champlain at the end of The causeway there is a ferry that takes you across an Open water area of about 200 yards to causeway on an island. The ferry only runs during the summer and on the shoulder season for a month on each end but only on weekends. So that's where the bike ride ended. Here's pics from the causeway https://www.instagram.com/p/CTpKn-bFCEq/?utm_medium=copy_link We had found this causeway Trail a couple years ago and we marked it on our Google maps and we are so glad we did. Here's a video of how we plan our trips:https://youtu.be/m17giRxNVs0 The next day we said goodbye to our wonderful hosts and drove to the Lake Bomoseen KOA in VT. If you watched the video of our route planning you know KOAs are our last choice, but they were doing a promotion of BOGO this weekend. So we figured sure we'll take a free night lol. So we got to site and set up. We did laundry and such.The next day we went to Mt Moosalamoo and did a 5.5 mile beautiful hike. The next morning, we paddled on Lake Bomoseen for an hour or so. The campground had a launch so we took advantage of it. We then packed up and drove 1.5 hrs to Randolf, VT. to our next Boondockers Welcome location. We met our really welcoming hosts. They explained that Vermont has the 2nd lowest population of all the states, Wyoming has the lowest. We were very surprised by this. I had figured that Wyoming had the lowest population, there is only 1 area code for the whole state. We then plugged in to the 30amp and headed to Lucky Bugger winery which was 5 minutes away. We wanted to buy a bottle but the owner explained because if the type of license he had, we couldn't drink it there, very strange. So we enjoyed a glass of wine and their beautiful view. We then took a ride to the only floating bridge east of the Mississippi. It's located in Brookfield VT. Here are pics of it. https://www.instagram.com/p/CTvX445sao2/?utm_medium=copy_link It was pretty cool. The next day we went to Woodstock Vermont. We walked around the expensive stores for a couple of hours but more so enjoying the architecture. We then walked some of the trails over at the Billings Rockefeller property and trails for 2 hours.We got back to our rig and we sat on our