Our evening at Camp Lac Frontiere was perfect, the insects not too bothersome, and the shower in the morning was hot. Even though it was "backward" compared to most so I waited for what seemed like forever and it just stayed cold. Cold showers are fine when it is hot but not when it is cool!! I tried shifting the knob a bit and alleluehua the warm, then too hot started! Campgrounds are such amazing places, especially those that offer seasonal accommodations. RVs and campers of all different sizes pull in and don't leave. Some look like maybe they never leave; I guess if they pay their fees, they are good to camp. The additions they add to make it more "homey" are quite logical and also the other extreme. One this morning had TONS of yard statues, and artifical flowers, and fairy lights. Some have just their wooden decks, maybe a few pieces of furniture. Some built roofs over theirs! It is a little deceiving when you pull into a campground and see so many RVs and campers but don't see too many people! Upon closer inspection, you notice they are in it for the long haul!!
We had a short drive to the most amazing place on the planet, at least to some of us. The Haskell Free Library and Opera House. Yes. Why is it so amazing? Well, it was deliberately built straddling both the United States and Canada! A young Canadian met and married a young American and thought building a library with an opera house upstairs would be a perfect addition to the area. The Haskells wanted Canadians and Americans to have equal access to the Library and Opera House and so they chose to build on the border. The library has two different addresses: 93 Caswell Avenue, Derby Line, Vermont, and 1 rue Church (Church Street), Stanstead, Quebec. Construction started in 1901 and the opera house opened in 1904 and the library in 1905. Almost all of the furniture in the library, including the checkout station is original. The tin ceiling tiles, the fireplaces, the wood floor! They were hoping that the opera house admissions would pay for the library but motions pictures were "invented" soon after so the library paid for the opera house! It is still a theater to this day even though the staff shared the building had to be shut down for a time to bring the theater up to code, add an elevator, etc. Entry to the library is on the USA side, and we had to stay on the sidewalk! Staff told us if we would have ventured out into the parking lot, the border agents would have been on us in a hurry!! Yikes, but wow. There is a black line down the middle of the building, not to be prejudice, but for responsiblity purposes. There was a small incident (fire, I think?) years back and each country balked at who hsould pay for the damages, so the line is there to ensure the right party pays if needed!
There are large boulders on the street marking USA 's and Canada's sides as well as rows of flower pots!! Lovely. Their main librarian just recently retired! Hmmmm. Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont, is pretty isolated and not everyone gets excited about libraries, but she said they are actually quite busy with tourists.
Another short drive took us to the Trapp Family lodge. If you've ever seen The Sound of Music, this place is where they landed up! The movie itself was a fictionalized version of a biography written by Maria. They did leave everything behind in Austria but didn't climb any mountains. They landed in Pennsylvania first and toured the world as the Trapp Family Singers and eventually retired from that in Stowe, Vermont. They liked that Vermont reminded them of Austria, and it sort of does! Once the family retired, they pretty well did their own things. One became a doctor, one moved back to Austria, etc. Maria and Geoff actually had 3 children and the youngest, Johannes, and his son, Sam, run the enterprise now. The lodge burned down in the 1980s but rebuilt to be bigger and better. The started in the brewing business not long ago. We had a beer or two at the brewery and a cheese and meat board. Andrew loved his "flat" of beer and Cheryl's ginger beer (local ginger ale) was really really good!
Due to our predisposition of finding the graves of famous singers, we headed back to the lodge and paid our respects to Geoff and Maria and a few of their children that are buried in their family plot next to the lodge.
We then drove a bit further down the road to check out Ben & Jerry. Ben & Jerry's ice cream was "invented" in nearby Burlington, Vermont. Ben and his friend Jerry (they met during 7th grade gym class and were the two slowest!!) spend $5 to learn how to make ice cream from a correspondence course offered from Penn State. They took a risk and renovated an old gas station, and had three flavors: strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate! On their one year anniversary, since they were still in business, they offered all customers a free cone! That tradition is continued even today.
Someone suggested they should add cookie dough. They thought that was a good idea! Ben has a "condition" where he can't smell or taste anything but he can feel. So he decided how chunky the ice cream ingredients have to be! The first flavors included Cherry Garcia, Chubby Hubby, and Chunky Monkey! They are also very community driven, making sure local cows are used, organic ingredients, etc. and give back to the communities they serve. We got a quick tour of how they make it and a free sample of Triple Caramel Chunk. It was GOOD! We then got a couple of scoops (Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and P.B. Doughable Chocolate). Sigh. Ice cream is bliss.
Interesting sign in the restroom: How blue is your loo? I wondered about that when I went in, how could a company that cares so much for the environment use chemicals to keep their toilets clean??!! But I read on:
It's ever-so-blue so the message is clear:
The water you're flushing with here
Is a wastewater reuse solution
That reduces pollution
& conserves a half-million gallons each year!
Gotta love that!
We went back into the main town of Stowe, and wandered around. We like to wander and wonder. :) It is a charming place, full of old homes, and businesses, new businesses designed to look old (also gotta love that!!), and lots of people. Stowe is renowned for skiing in the winter but it boasts some pretty good hiking this time of year.
Cheryl drove for the next part and turned her GPS to get us to Lake Placid. That puts us within a few hours of Montreal. The road wound this way and that, and then an Interstate. Then it turned us down "ferry road" and instructed us to get on the ferry! We had the timing perfect as the ferry just pulled in and we got in line and pulled on. The trip was short so no one got out of their cars. The GPS showed the little car icon in the water, then crossing Vermont into New York and then, as we touched the shore, instructed us to take a left and then a right, right on cue, she didn't miss a beat!
Driving through the Adirondacks was beautiful. It was rainy at this point, and the fog settled down and hid the tops of some of the mountains, "crawling" over some mountains, and we drove up and down and around.
Lake Placid is the "site" of a famous monster horror comedy movie released in 1999. However, its bigger claim to fame is that Lake Placid hosted TWO Winter Olympics, one in 1932 and the other in 1980. Quite often you hear what happens to cities that host Olympics, they have all these empty buildings, those eyesores forever. Lake Placid had a plan and made sure everything that was built would be utilized again. Some things were still in good condition from the Olympics 50 years prior!! One of the biggest controversies was the building of the athletes' housing. The Munich games some years before required that future games would require security for all the athletes, so the town thought, Hmmm, if they have to be secure anyway, why not build the accommodations to the right specifications and turn the buildings into a minimum security prison after the Olympics are over. And that is what they did! Brilliant!! Even though some athletes thought it was pretty weird and got their own rooms elsewhere.
It is still a functional prison to this day and employs 250+ people! The few escapees figure out escaping isn't' worth it as it is really located "out of town" a bit and trying to make it through the remote wilderness was very challenging! This area is quite busy with Olympic training facilities (the height of the ski jumps as we drove in, OMG!), horse shows, sports competitions, and tons of other things keeps this town pretty busy.
We couldn't decide to camp or get a cheap room. It was raining pretty hard and that makes camping cold and wet. :) We are heading home for a long weekend for a wedding and other things and didn't want to leave wet things in a truck at an airport. Imagine that smell? :O
We popped into a restaurant for an appetizer (German onion soup--using a pretzel bun and a little different spices--it was quite tasty--- and a small flatbread buffalo chicken pizza, which was also tasty), and waited forever!! We aren't sure what happened but it got later and later and people around us were getting their food. I personally think our waiter just forgot, but we finally did get it and it was on the house. Side note: When your food is delayed, you get lots of time to watch people. One table was full of young people and one was wearing a sweatshirt referencing horses so we assumed they were part of the big horse event. Another table had the most polite young person, "Do you have lemonade? Yes? Then, I would love some lemonade, thank you." AND watching your waiter "mess" with or "adjust" his nose ring. We don't have any issues with personal statements regarding tattoos, piercings, etc. but you wander if he even realized he was doing it.
While we were driving we saw a reference to John Brown. It turns out that THE John Brown, the abolitionist, bought acreage near Lake Placid and eventually it became known as the "Freed Slave Utopian Experiment." Shortly before he was executed, he asked to be buried on his farm here.
We opted to stay in a motel on the edge of town as the rain picked up and was really coming down. The hotel, since it isn't a chain, had a room and it was cheap. The parking lot was fuller when I last checked so that is good for them.
It was like stepping back in time. The pattern of the wallpaper in the room and the bathroom, the wood trim, the desk, the air conditioner in the wall, the mirrored medicine cabinet in the bathroom, the bulky TV, and telephone, feels like a 1970 time warp, or maybe a little earlier. It is interesting as everything is super clean and it doesn't stink! So, how has that wallpaper stayed so nice all these years? My guess is quality at that time kept it looking in good condition all these years later. Unless, someone recently decorated it this way on purpose? Could be!!
No comments:
Post a Comment