The Green Mountain State

After driving through new hampshire, we crossed over into vermont and headed west toward the capital, montpelier. First on our list of things to do was to see maple syrup made at maple grove farms, but unfortunately, syrup making occurs mostly in the spring. Oh well, we did get some great maple foods like syrup (find out about the different grades of maple syrup), granulated maple sugar, candy, and maple cream!

Next we headed into downtown montpelier for dinner. The capital city is perhaps the smallest capital in the country, consisting of two main streets with commercial buildings, with everything else residential. We found an interesting restaurant, the main street grill, operated by the new england culinary institute, which meant that students ran the place. It was excellent.

In the morning we headed to burlington up on lake champlain, which is the state's largest city. We had breakfast at henry's diner, where they served pure maple syrup on the waffles! We made a quick stop at ben & jerry's ice cream factory and took the $3 tour, but they weren't actually making any ice cream on the saturday after thanksgiving. Nevertheless, they showed some videos of the ice cream making process, and we got some samples too!

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to sample any genuine vermont cheddar cheese at the nearby cabot dairy farm, but we at least drove past killington. We don't ski much, but we took a quick look. It was so unseasonably mild that not much skiing was going on. We got back on the road and took the 4 hour drive down vermont, through massachusetts, and toward mystic connecticut …