Vermont

7-20-09 (14:18)

  • we left midday on thursday for the airport. the first flight was from oakland to las vegas and we didn't get to sit together, but our connecting flight to manchester worked out fine and that was the longer one so all was okay. the flights were long, but not unbearable. we caught up on reading, though, in retrospect, we should have planned out the weekend with our time.
  • got into the hotel around midnight that night and, after checking in, looked for a place to eat. no one was open so we ended up having to go to burger king.
  • next morning we hit the road towards waterbury which is where our next hotel was. it's also the site of the ben and jerry's hq. they have a factory there which produces about 25% of the ben and jerry's ice cream in the world. the other vermont plant does about twice that, in total 80% of the ben and jerry's stuff you see comes from those two places in vermont. remarkable. more on that later.
  • along the way to waterbury we stopped by the american precision museum and took a look at the info they had on old lathes and machining devices. they also had some information on the building which was the manufacturing site of guns in its earlier days. there are a lot of brick buildings back east so it's interesting to change my thinking as an engineer of stick built buildings in the west where we think about earthquakes as the primary consideration outside of making sure the building stands up straight. back east they have to worry much more about frost levels and heaving as a result of the freeze/thaw cycle. it was an old building, too, which means that they used a lime-based mortar for the bricks so repairs need to be done sans portland cement. this old house, once again, providing a good deal of background for my knowledge of building practices in the northeast.

  • one display featured dozens of small machines that were made by hand by a local craftsman. they took about 40k hours to create, which is something like 20 years of full time work. they are remarkably detailed for their size and it's crazy that he did it all from scratch.

  • after visiting the museum we hit the road for marsh-billings-rockefeller national historical park. we were unable to find it, though, so we moved on.
  • next stop was hanover where we visited the dartmouth campus. dartmouth wasn't overwhelming in any respect. it was nice, but not great. the college seemed to be the center of the town and the town seemed to be more upscale than most college towns. we were on a schedule and didn't see anything amazing to eat so we hit the road again.

  • sometime in the afternoon we made it to the ben and jerry's hq. we got tickets for a tour later in the night and then went to stowe for an early dinner.
  • the ben and jerry's tour was short but sweet. you watch a video and then watch them making ice cream. it's not an incredibly involved process from what we saw. there were about 10 workers there getting everything done and the room they do it in is fairly small. i imagine that most of the real ice cream making happens elsewhere. at the end of the tour we got a sneak taste of their new flavor - orange and cream, which i thought was good, but needed more tang in the orange swirl. cherry garcia is the #1 selling pint and the first flavor i remember tasting. i've never liked it.

  • one thing that they try to convey is the social consciousness of the company. they work with local farmers and try to do as much as possible to be organic and good for the environment. after the tour we visited the flavor graveyard where they have tombstones of old ice cream flavors that they discontinued for one reason or another. it's nice to see them embrace their failures in a humorous way.

  • after the tour we checked into the hotel in waterbury and took a breather. we checked the local theater times and decided to drive to burlington (vermont's largest city at just under 40k) to watch whatever works. burlington is a small town by most accounts (davis is 50% larger), but it was fairly vibrant. there are a couple colleges in town so the downtown area has plenty of bars and a good night life. there are some good shops and it's next to lake champlain so it has a good setting as well. after the movie we walked around the town a bit more and then went home.
  • the next morning we went to check out the waterbury flea market. when we got there only a few booths were set up so we ditched it. perhaps they were just getting started or were scared off by the rain. montpelier was next. it's the capital of vermont and only has 9k people, but it's a nice town. we went to the farmers' market and looked at the local produce, meat and art. there was a band and plenty of people. it was every bit as lively as many of the farmers' markets we have in the bay area, though a bit smaller.

  • inspired by the farmer's market we went to an actual farm. morse farm is outside of montpelier and seemed to be a pretty good sized farm. it has been family owned for over 200 years, something like 9 generations i believe. we watched a video on their practices which was informative. being around all these farms really made me want to have one of my own. self-reliance has been a wish of mine for a long time, and i think having a farm is a good step towards that. i like it because you can have some self subsistence while also engaging in the traditional economy by having tourism. it's also nice because you can potentially be very diverse in your income streams - i imagine a long-term plot of land with a tree grove, some land set aside for livestock, some for small level crops, etc. if you have enough land you can have an area for mountain bikers and cross-country skiers (part of the tourism). the trick is to have enough money and skill to be able to go from being a pathetically insufficient city person who relies on others for everything else to one who can make their own food and fix their own house and small engines and everything else. the house fixing part i'm confident i could figure out, but i need to improve my ag and small engine repair skills before i could really make the jump skill-wise. money-wise you would be best off if you could have some part-time job that you could do from any location to earn some cash while everything else is getting set.

  • at any rate, morse farm is a nice place and they have an amazing soft-serve maple ice cream that they dip in maple sugar. it was great.
  • after morse farm we went to the state house for a tour there. it's a pretty good state house, probably in the upper half of state houses. most state houses are pretty average and if you've seen one you feel like you've seen them all. pennsylvania's is one of the nicest. we learned a bit about the history of the state house (this is actually the third). the first was torn down to build something better and the second burned down in the 1850s. the woman who gave us the tour was good enough. she worked for the sergeant at arms for a few years. she told us that the state senators make something like $600/week and don't get paid when not in session. vermont citizens also have their home numbers, apparently. all this got me thinking about california (the largest state population-wise) vs. vermont (the 2nd smallest pop-wise. wy is 50th). both are big into agriculture. vermont is liberal relative to the rest of the country, as is california. i think the biggest difference can be summed up by: 600k vs. 37mil. i used to feel that california was the best state, but lately i've been feeling that we've gotten too damn big and crowed. it has led to so many problems and i just can't imagine living here the rest of my life. i feel like being a citizen in a state like vermont must be much more empowering than being a part of a juggernaut like california. you can't really get anything done in a state this size. your representatives are so far removed here, but there it seems as though there is more interaction with the people. i think a lot of politicians lose their way, even when they were well-intentioned, in part because they don't know their constituents and they exist in an ivory tower removed from the people. it's been said that all politics are local. i don't really know what the intention is behind that, but i do feel like local politics get more done in a lot of ways.


  • after montpelier we went to the rock of ages granite quarry. the quarry is in barre (pronounced like the name) and is the largest "deep-hole dimension granite quarry" in the world. when you first walk up to it the 600' depth is a bit surprising. it's no grand canyon, but it's man made and very steep. it's also remarkable because it's been in service for so long (130+ years) and yet, really, not that much has been taken out. it's a very slow process and they don't work for two months in the winter so...

  • after checking out the granite quarry we left for burlington again. we had a small snack and then went to the grand isle area. there are 3-4 islands in a row on lake champlain which divides vermont and new york. the islands are really nice with great views of both states. oddly, the build up there is very minimal. there aren't a lot of great houses like in most of the rest of vermont, but there also aren't as many houses as you would expect. i guarantee that an area like that, if it were in california, would have million dollar homes every 100 feet. i'm very curious about the history of the islands because it would seem as though someone would have come along by now to whore the area out, but somehow that hasn't happened. thankfully.

  • we drove back to montpelier via i-87 in new york. upstate new york is nice and the mountains there are taller than they are in vermont. in vermont the mountains are more like hills. there's a lot of rolling hills and trees and water. upstate new york looks more like the parts of canada that i'm familiar with. we had some pizza from montpelier and called it a night.
  • the next morning was the beginning of the last full day of the trip. we checked out of the hotel and got some breakfast at a good pancakes place. they serve dutch style pancakes which means big and thin. my grandma serves them small and thin and i still consider them the best in the world. these cakes were good, though. had mine with apples and blueberries. meryl went with chocolate and whipped cream which is pretty crazy if you ask me.

  • started the long drive towards augusta, maine after breakfast. saw a 5 or 10k in stowe as we were leaving; pretty good turn out considering the size of the town. along the way we had planned on going to a corn maze that also had a mini golf course. along the way it occurred to me that corn wasn't in full bloom yet, but we were almost at the farm so we went anyway. turns out that the corn hadn't grown past about 30" and the farm wasn't really open for business yet. so we went on to augusta to see yet another capital.

  • only realized this today, but missed an opportunity to visit another johnny cash place - waterville, maine which is pretty close to augusta. damn. augusta itself was pretty uninteresting. it's a city that has clearly seen better days, but wasn't a complete wasteland. the downtown area is pretty empty these days and the city seems to have succumbed to sprawl like most cities have. the riverfront area is nice because it is a window to a bygone era when america was the best country in the world. oh well.
  • after augusta we went to portland. portland is a pretty nice city and another new city for me. i had be to all these states before, but it's been 8 years and i hadn't been to many of the parts that we explored on this trip. we had a big lobster dinner which was a first in maine for me. i've only had lobster once before and it was only the tail and i don't know whether it was maine lobster or not. lobster is good and a little better for you than crab and shrimp, i think, though it still is high in cholesterol. still, i think i like shrimp and crab more than lobster. they're all probably endangered so eating them should probably be kept to a minimum either way. we walked around portland a bit and then left for kennebunkport.


  • kennebunkport is famous for being the town where the bushes live. we went there to check it out and because it was on the way. it's basically what you would expect: really nice houses, seaside commerce, lots of rich people. surprisingly, though, some of the houses for sale in the town were downright reasonable - you could actually get in the town for 200k. the nicer places by the ocean are undoubtedly in the millions, though. we accidentally chanced upon the bush compound and stopped to take pictures. assholes.


  • after getting some ben and jerry's in kennebunkport we left for concord which we had missed the first time. we arrived in concord around 10p. we went straight to the capital building and took some pictures. we didn't dilly dally too much because we had to wake up before 5a the next day to catch a flight out of paradise.

  • woke up at 4:40a monday (1:40a our time) and left for the airport. got breakfast at the chicago airport, but meryl didn't get her bagel and was sad the rest of the day. the trip is over.
  • in sum, trips are great and i wish we had the money and time to do more of them. i don't like california like i used to and i want to live in a small town away from people and stress.
  • read shop class as soulcraft (thanks tamara) during the trip and finished it before touchdown in oakland. had heard about it from a ny times article a while back and it's gotten some press on npr lately. it also feeds into the mike rowe speech that i linked to a week or so ago. this recent train of thought coupled with this trip gives me a new direction towards self-reliance and getting out of a place where pissing on the street is a not uncommon sight.