Wow! What a day!! We awoke around 5:30 this morning. With the sun shining in all the truck windows. There was no sleeping in today. That worked well for us though because we had a long fun filled day of bridge hunting.
Our first stop was back in Middlebury to take pictures of the Newhart Bed and Breakfast. (The front of the building was all that was used. The rest was a set.) I also checked to see if Pine Tree, VT really existed, so we could visit the location of White Christmas, but it, like WKRP in Cincinnati, was a fictitious locations.
Again we took in the sights of beautiful houses in VT, NH, and ME, but we also added a covered bridge hunt to our itinerary. We have a VT map that showed the basic locations of all the covered bridges, (There are about 100 in VT alone.) but they were not always so easy to find. We managed to scope out a total of 11 in VT, NH, and ME. I have to say NH and ME are a lot more helpful with the placement of signs to direct you to these hidden treasures.
Our first big stop of the day was in Rutland, VT. My great-grandfather settled here with his parents after arriving from Ireland. We were unable to access the local cemetery because it was closed with no trespassing signs, but we did drive through the entire area and take in the sights and historic buildings - certainly a beautiful place to settle!
One of the most interesting bridges that we crossed was the Cornish-Windsor Bridge. It is the longest covered bridge in the U.S. and the longest two-span bridge in the world. It was built in 1866 and warned that "you must walk your horses or pay two dollars fine." This bridge crosses the Connecticut River and connects VT and NH.
We began seeing signs in NH warning about moose. We were sad to not see any today; what a tease! I had commented that traveling east was not proving to be near the safari type trip that our trips out west have been. At one point, we veered off the GPS route to chase down another bridge. Our helpful lady spoke up and said bear right. When she says this the kids perk up and say moose left. This time, however, when she said bear right, I interrupted her and said, "No, bear left!!" A black bear was crossing the road right in front of us!! What fun! We also saw a raccoon making his way across the road this evening.
We went about a mile further down the road and visited our last bridge of the day in ME. We all piled out and went to walk across this bridge and view the sights below. How I wish we had had the camera ready when Caleb started down a steep rock and found a slick spot. He created his own slip and slide. He managed to stay on his feet all the way down, teeter at the bottom and catch himself before going completely in. After the initial shock, he looked like he thought it was great fun! Not five minutes later, Samuel and Taylor were precariously working their was across the rocks in the stream when Samuel too lost his footing. He wasn't able to make quite the save Caleb had. He ended up with a soaked shirt and pants. (The temps. around here have been in the mid 60's to low 70's, so he got to change clothes before getting on the road again.)
We arrived in Skowhegan, ME around 9:30 and found a nice little motel. The boys were thrilled to stop, though they have been being great travelers and even had the giggles a good bit of the day. There was enough time for them to get in a little bit of a swim. We have now traveled between 1850-1900 miles. We passed through Mexico and considered driving through Peru. The drive today was long with out as many miles covered, partly because of all the little stops we made but also because we weren't on interstates. Our speed ranged from 25-55 mph on the smaller state highways, but this is the way to truly see America. Grand sights can be seen of the mountains from the interstates, but the character and details of America are off the beaten paths. We should be on the coast by tomorrow. We only show that we have about 100 miles to go, but the GPS tells us that it will take us at least another two hours.
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