White River Junction, VT

Location: White River Junction, Vermont, USA
Visited: April 2012

I love the Main Street Museum, so it gets its own page. Not that more space would come any closer to explaining it. It's really something that must be experienced first hand. We were there to see a truly terrible movie. So wonderful.

The rest of WRJ is a nifty town. I'd read White River Junctions by Dave Norman since the last time I'd visited, so there were a few places I wanted to see, such as the Hotel Coolidge and Vermont Salvage. So fun!

Quechee, VT

Location: Quechee, Vermont, USA
Visited: April 2012

After taking a gander at the beautiful Quechee Gorge, we stopped by the antique mall and toy museum at Quechee Gorge Village where we found just all sorts of treasures. Inside was also a Cabot Cheese dealer with loads of yummy samples and the surprisingly refreshing Maple Soda. It's hard to see, but I included the ingredients on the left: all that's in there is carbonated water and maple syrup. It's a lot milder than you'd expect.

VINS nature center is another favorite. They're primarily a raptor rescue, so the birds on display are only those unfit to re-enter the wild (mostly due to diminished flight capacity). So you know the many (many!) other birds that come and go are healed and set free. The snowy owl there at the top was probably my favorite of the day. She sat in the far corner of her cage and peered around at us, making cute little noises from time to time. I love owls, and crabby owls are somehow even cuter.

Norwich, VT

Location: Norwich, Vermont, USA
Visited: April 2012

We visited here on two separate days, once for an afternoon at the Montshire Museum of Science (so fun!) and once for dinner at the Norwich Inn. At the latter I had eggplant fries, which were just strips of eggplant deep-fried to perfection. So tasty! After dinner we stopped at Dan and Whit's General Store next door. The title does not mislead: it looked like a gas station quickie mart out front, but inside was groceries, hardware, clothing, and much more. I suggested that whenever my sister gets married she should do her gift registry there. :)

Cornish, NH

Location: Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire, USA
Visited: April 2012

When the guy at the visitor's center said the name of this place, I seriously thought he said "Saint Gardens" with a thick Boston-ish accent. But no, it's really Gaudens.

Alas, none of the buildings were open yet (apparently New England as a whole is closed until late May) but we saw some lovely sculptures. I bet it's even more gorgeous when the flowers are in bloom. The sculpture at the bottom was originally in Rock Creek Park down in my neck of the woods.

Windsor, VT

Location: Windsor, Vermont, USA
Visited: April 2012

Check out that fold-out page! It's a beauty! Look how the front is a current shot of The Old Constitution House, and when you open it up you get an olde timey shot of it! Sheer genius, that's what that is.

Ahem. Windsor was lovely. We started the excursion with a bite at Harpoon Brewery (their cider was pretty good, though none of us tried their beer). It was quite cozy. Then we drove down to Windsor proper for a bit of snarfing, where we also saw the Windsor House, the Windsor visitor's center, and a really nifty dam.

Upper Valley, VT/NH

Location: Vermont and New Hampshire, USA
Visited: April 2012

We took another trip to visit my sister up in the great white north (seriously, we drove through a snowstorm on our way there!). These are actually the last two pages in my gluebook, but I thought it was fitting to post them first, to give you a bit of a flavor of the trip. I drove over my very first covered bridge, we played with watercolor pencils, and we generally had tons of fun.

The second page here depicts the two art exhibits we visited: "New!" at the Main Street Museum and the opening of shows by Richard Allen, Dave Laro, and Julie Püttgen at AVA. Good times!