The best-laid travel plans of this middle-aged, do-our-best-to-be-competent couple occasionally lead to disappointments when we're on the road. First, it was not at all nice to find that over the winter, a mouse/mice invaded the Buglet and ate our store of toilet paper and paper towels (feathering a nest?), and that's not the worst of it - while preparing to wash dishes our first evening at the campground, Jacquie reached into the dark closet cupboard for dishcloths, and drew out remnants of fabric amidst a hail of tiny mice turds. Ugh.
Also, while staying at Half Moon State Park, which has no plug-ins for the Airstream, we've found its battery has grown very, very weak, leading to some funny/frustrating attempts to race showers and Buglet chores in the hour we're allowed to run the generator each morning. We're in a rural area of Vermont, with no phone or Internet service at our site, so finding an RV distributor would become a matter of driving around seeking cell service, and then running google searches and praying someone would be open on Memorial Day weekend, within oh, a hundred miles of us!
Finally, The Man hurt his back gardening the week before our trip, and the long drive from Maine to Vermont didn't help it, so he's been hobbling some, wishing he felt better in order to indulge his love of climbing over fences, hopping over rocks, inching much too close to mountain precipices for just the right photos...
This is how we began our Memorial Day: mulling just where on the Buglet's body the mouse invasion began, so we can stave off another attack next winter; seeking out RV batteries in Vermont's quiet vastness, and hopping into the first pharmacy we came across (open!) to get Dave's usual sore-back OTC cocktail mix.
But the good news is that it turned out to be a pretty good day.
We
found a new battery not too far from our campground; Dave swallowed down his OTC's, and then we made our way to our intended Memorial Day destination: Hildene, the Manchester, VT home of Abe Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln. He was the only of Abe's children to reach adulthood, and he rose to some prominence, attending Princeton and Harvard, studying law and eventually becoming president of the Pullman Company. He'd visited Manchester as a young boy, fell in love with the area, and once he'd made his fortune, bought a piece of land here for a "summer house."
Hildene is an elegant estate nestled into a mountain valley with stunning views of the hills to either side. We toured the home, which is lovely in a somewhat non-ostentatious way, given the family's wealth, but the grounds were really the highlight of the visit. The kitchen and formal gardens are beautiful.
Unfortunately, the hundreds of peonies everywhere weren't yet blossomed - what a show they will make when they do! We took our time walking the grounds, sitting on benches to enjoy the cooling breezes on this hot day.
This particular day, there was also an exhibit relating to President Lincoln's second inaugural address, the famous "With malice toward none..." speech. It included the blackest of his remaining hats. (It turns out he had seven, and five are known still to be in existence.)
From there,
we drove into Manchester's town center, clearly a tourist haven as there are many outlet stores, but the area has also mostly maintained its old-fashioned feel. A good sandwich and Italian sodas and some lazy browsing at the North Shire Bookstore & Cafe left us sated and happy. With this, back through Vermont's farm country to the campground to switch over the Buglet's battery, fix The Hobbling Man another cocktail, and settle in for the night.
Comments