Up around 8am for a quick bite for breakfast and we said farewell to the Holiday Inn Express at North Conway and hit the road yet again. One thing about our Chrysler 300S is that it vibrates so badly at speeds of 40 mph, 55 mph and over 65 mph so Im guessing it needs a wheel alignment or something and is so annoying I have just adjusted to drive at a speed where it is not so annoying but its always there and its not just the steering wheel where you feel it as we have a dozen water bottles on the floor of the back seat and they just shake rattle and roll all day long ! We just did not have any time in our schedule to consider going to Avis to swap it.
I originally planned to head west along the Kancamangus Highway so we could see it from both directions but after yesterdays traffic I thought it best to avoid this road just in case the same issue arose (it is peak foliage and Columbus Day holiday Google maps is normally really good at showing the traffic but so much of
this area has no phone reception so google maps cant get the feedback on how bad the traffic is so we headed north towards Littleton again on the same road we had travelled on yesterday for the first half an hour. The weather today is really cold again (around 4 degrees) and maximum will only be about 9 degrees but there is no wind so it does not feel quite that cold.
Its been a cloudy day with the odd shower and it was not long after going passed Littleton that we crossed the Connecticut River and we were in Vermont our 50th state (and state number 10 on this trip). Not long after crossing the state line I pulled into the Vermont centre and asked the chap where can I find Moose ? and he opened up his filing cabinet and gave me a map of a moose road trip he with no guarantees (he said had not seen a moose for almost 3 months now !). The best option he presented was a bit further north towards Canada and not really on the route where we are heading but thanked him anyway and
As we approached the town of St Johnsbury I noticed a sign saying gift shop so I hit the brakes not knowing what to expect. The entrance looked a little creepy and we slowly opened the front door and we are not sure what to find and inside was a really nice and in fact quite a large gift store. Turns out we were at the gift shop for the Maple Grove plant which is the worlds largest maple syrup farm and we bought some blueberry jam, maple syrup (in a bottle that was the shape of a maple leaf) and a big box of maple syrup cream cookies (it had 18 that should last us a couple of weeks). Its hard to believe that we are only an hour from the Canadian border which probably explains why its so damn cold here. The lady that served us said it was snowing back in Littleton last night so it is definitely cold !
We asked google maps to find us a diner and it sent us to Anthonys Diner at a town called Waterford and first we made sure it
was not behind us this time ! Again we had a slight wait for a booth seat and the hostess made us wait outside in the entry area where it was freezing cold, especially whenever someone opened the door in or go out. Kerry ordered the last available supply of the meatball vegetable soup and I was going for the same so instead I ordered a burger and some potato skins to share which were good but not as good as we had at Rumford Falls.
Before we reached our destination we also drive past Montpelier which is the state capital but did not bump into former governor Bernie Sanders anywhere. This looked to be a very small town to be a state capital.
We arrived at our hotel the Green Mountain Suites in Burlington around 3pm and there was some roadworks happening around the hotel so it was a little tricky with some road closures and detours going on. The hotel has an amazing lobby with a huge fireplace that was on and looked really and looked exactly like the photos we saw online.
