Aaahh – I wonder what the poor people are doing?

Bob and I headed off from our friends in Vermont yesterday morning, stopping by a neighbours house to pick up a couple of pints of Maple Syrup (have sugar maple tree; wait until Spring; place tap in trunk; voila! Maple Syrup!) on the way.

We headed up to Montpelier, the capital of the state with it’s miniature version of the White House for the State legislature (looks like it was borrowed from Cockington Green), and a gleaming gilded dome on top. We filled up with petrol and got our bearings before hitting the back roads across the breadth of the state east towards New Hampshire. This most rural of the US States was breadthtaking in its pastoral autumn beauty – although many of the colours had been lost over the past cold snap, the rolling green hills with fat lazy dairy cows were framed at impossible intervals by creeks, brooks and rivers that wound their way through the landscape over water smoothed stones and under a thick canopy.

Barns were in various state of repair, from freshly painted russet red, adorned with Barn Stars, pumpkins and other decorations, through to barely there structures of weather beaten planks. It was not a quick route, but very beautiful. Before too long though we had made it to the border of Vermont and New Hampshire, and travelled along the River which formed it’s border.

Bob and I left David at the rail station at Syracuse, a large city (by our standards) in upstate New York, and once satisfied that he had a ticket for his train to Boston, we hit the road – Cruisin’ in our PT Cruiser.

With another spaghetti junction to negotiate, we headed north on Route 81 to Watertown, a distinctly un-Australian town on the edge of Lake Ontario, with rivers and smaller lakes everywhere around. We rang our friend just outside Burlington, Vermont to let them know our location and approximate ETA – they were surprised at our route, which would be slow across the Adirondack Mountains on the New York side of Lake Champlain.

Although we were keen for a coffee and lunch, Bob was particularly keen to get on the correct route out of town before we fuelled up. This led us out of town before we knew it, into a flat country of poor housing and sustenance agricultural farming. It was amazing to see the clutches of settlements of trailers and relocatable homes in this cold, cold climate with little or no effective insulation.

Soon we hit [insert town here] the gateway to the Adirondacks’, a glorious little town over running streams and rivers, sweet little Guesthouses next to the babbling brooks and a bakery. We took photos, but did not waste time investigating otherwise, hitting the road once more. The countryside grew increasingly interesting, although the options for food and coffee were non existent. We eventually stopped at a service station with an attached small supermarket, where we were so desperate we had a couple of Styrofoam (always Styrofoam) cups of vacuum pump coffee. The plainest version (the others were all flavoured), stil had an unpleasant sweetness and flavour to it as though a hazelnut blend was being used. This definitely was not what we were after! A loaf of very ordinary, too sweet ‘wholegrain’ bread was lunch spread with vegemite (yum) and some left over hoummous while we were driving.

We took a shortcut through an Army Base [Fort ?] to bypass the town of [insert name], which explained the plethora of ancient army trucks (WWII vintage from the looks of them) which passed us, and the bevy of camouflaged fatigue outfitted men that were congregating around the gas station.

The mountains grew increasingly beautiful, and the remnants of the Fall colours peppered the mountainside with rich burgundy, bright golds and the evergreen richness of pines. As the mountains climbed, the affluence of the district grew until we reached the winter playground of Lake Placid, were an annual Ironman Triathlon is held, and is the base of the US winter ski team. The GPS navigator had directed us onto secondary raods around the towns as a quicker route, and although twisting and turning, were completely quite and unimaginably beautiful. A small lake demanded that we stop alongside in an attempt to capture the beauty in a photo. [insert photo here] The picture cannot do it justice.

Soon, we were descending the mountain into the lakeside town of [insert name] where we were to decide whether to turn a little to the north and catch the car ferry across Lake Champlain into Vermont, or turn south to drive out of New York into Vegennes across a bridge. We calculated that we would just miss the ferry, so headed southwards along the edge of the lake as the most enormous hunter’s moon rose in the east. It was a gobsmacking sight.

Dusk fell as we rolled into Vegennes on the border, where we filled up with petrol at a small local gas station and were keen to hot foot it up the highway to our friends place. There was no mobile phone coverage, and keen to advise them of our delayed arrival time and for Bob to call his sister at the first available opportunity we kept our mobile phones at the ready and were checking constantly over the course of the journey. Turning from one monor road onto a major State and then Interstate road, and rolling through towns we were sure that it would pick up a signal somewhere; but no dice. I had checked on the mobile phone coverage with different carriers before I left Australia and remember that of those I looked at (Virgin,T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T) all were poor at best in Vermont. I didn’t expect it to be non-existant.

A warm welcome and great meal of salad and crab cakes, baked salmon and apple pastry awaited us when we eventually arrived. The bright red tones of the maples had already gone from the district when we arrived, but the blanket of autumnal leaves and the forest was still very beautiful. We were to be somewhat technologically challenged however, especially having been spoilt to date with widespread Free WiFi access on the bulk of our journey thus far. A shared dial-up access with a business phone limited our internet access to nil. No cell phone coverage has prevented communication, and our search around the Burlington (the most populous city) on a heavily raining afternoon on Saturday resulted in no luck in seeking a wireless spot, apart from Starbucks which associated expenses for a days access.

The 'gang' are all involved in their last minute race preparations,
briefings, rego & stuff, so I excused myself to do a bit of exploing.
I had thought that I would hit the Fine Arts Museum again - my first
attempt saw me huddling in the foyer of a Hospital, drenched, waiting
for a downpour to pass.

Just past the anti abortion canpaiger, picketing the Woman's Health
Centre was the Museum. Yay. Except that it was closed that day for
construction.

So today I have been exploing the Riverside paths, starting with the
less salubrious track along the top of the Flood Wall next to the
James River along to railyards and a paper factory.

I ended up walking alongside the tarted-up Canal District and onto the
fascinating Belle Island. Wow! Accessed by this amazing Pedestrian
Bridge suspended under the road deck of a squillion lane highway, its
concrete surface is entirely stable, and waves up and down along it's
length.

The island is fascinating, wooded trails & loads of amazing

--
Carolyne Kramar
carolyne.kramar@bigpond.com

God I love widespread WiFi!

The 'gang' are all involved in their last minute race preparations,
briefings, rego & stuff, so I excused myself to do a bit of exploing.
I had thought that I would hit the Fine Arts Museum again - my first
attempt saw me huddling in the foyer of a Hospital, drenched, waiting
for a downpour to pass.

Just past the anti abortion canpaiger, picketing the Woman's Health
Centre was the Museum. Yay. Except that it was closed that day for
construction.

So today I have been exploing the Riverside paths, starting with the
less salubrious track along the top of the Flood Wall next to the
James River along to railyards and a paper factory.

I ended up walking alongside the tarted-up Canal District and onto the
fascinating Belle Island. Wow! Accessed by this amazing Pedestrian
Bridge suspended under the road deck of a squillion lane highway, its
concrete surface is entirely stable, and waves up and down along it's
length.

The island is fascinating, wooded trails & loads of amazing history:
it was used as a POW camp during the Civil War (1860-65) for around
50,000 Union (northern) prisoners.
I will finish the cold drink then head back to the hotel and dump some
stuff before heading back to the Island for some more exercise &
exploing in the son. Picasso & Degas sound good, but I'm enjoying
thesc last throughs of warm fall weather.

--
Carolyne Kramar
carolyne.kramar@bigpond.com

--
Carolyne Kramar
carolyne.kramar@bigpond.com

Richmond to The Blue Ridge Parkway

There was meant to registration for the duathletes today, but it was in fact merely a sales pitch to sell gear. Bypassing the Parade of Nations, our motley crew rented a car, the smallest they had, and decided to have a day out of Richmond. At first we had thought that we would go to 'Colonial Williamsburg', and then lent towards the Pamplin Civil War Battlefields. A diversion before we departed Richmond to Relish, a deli & café- with great fresh food and seriously excellent coffee. Listed in the Athletes Handbook as one of 3 'Healthy Choice' options, this put it alongside McDonald's, so my expectations weren't enormous. More fresh food than seen in total in the rest of the City combined. We restricted ourselves to coffee and a couple of shared Pumpkin Muffins (huge, @ $1.50). Studying the map, we jointly made an executive decision to bypass the Theme Park Styled sites to drive to the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The GPS provided us with good advice about negotiating our way around Clover Leaf exits onto the westward bound I64. A typically boring road in most respects, the farther west we travelled, the more tall, thick and lush the Woods became, with the Fall trees displaying an increasingly brilliant display of Yellow, Cerise and Maroon autumnal colours.

Once we hit the edge of the mountains where we were looking to decide whether to drive north (on the Skyline Drive) or south (on the Blue Ridge Parkway) the fine rain which had accompanied us on the last half of the journey descended into a thick, southern gumbo of a fog which made any travelling - even a few metres almost impossible. We managed to pull into a clapped-out 1950's motel which now served as an information centre. A twang accented guy helped with advice, which was far from encouraging us to continue our journey. As usual, Bob's thoughts turned to lunch, and we headed into Waynesboro in search of some food other than the gleefully described KFC, Hardee's, Pizza Hut etc.

Another recommendation of "where the locals eat" was "Weasie's": Bob was particularly keen to try this. It would have been easy to miss, but we did find Weasie's and entered like a posie of aliens.

A whiteboard listed daily specials of Salmon Cakes with 2 vegetables and a Roast Beef Sandwich with mashed potato. Bob opted for the Salmon Cakes ($5.50), Lisa the Roast Beef Sandwich ($5.65), while David chose the typically American Tuna Salad on Rye (lots of Mayo is mandatory)($3.69), while I sought to have an authentic Diner experience by ordering a bowl of Chilli ($2.49 regular size), with Cornbread on the side ($0.50), and a Tossed Salad ($2.49) in an attempt to have something a little healthy.

Perhaps the bottles of ketchup, hot sauce and breakfast syrup on the table could have alerted us, but we were unprepared for what arrived. David's sandwich came accompanied by the obligatory potato crisps and pickle, Bob's Salmon Cakes were as expected, old style tinned-fish-with-breadcrumbs rissoles with 2 small dishes of the soggiest tiny anaemic Brussel sprouts and another of 'mixed greens' that seemed to be chopped Collard Greens.

I feel that my Chilli was the pick of the bunch. Not hot enough, it was a slightly soupy melange of red beans, beef, and a rich tomatoey sauce. The Cornbread failed to materialize, however the simple tossed salad came with l couple of tiny packets of salad crackers, while a few individually wrapped Saltines came with the Chilli.

For all the wonders of these dishes, Lisa's Sandwich left us all gobsmacked. A plate arrived swimming in dark gravy, a scoop of mashed potato standing like a grey dome to the side. If one looked carefully, slices of dark, fully cooked beef emerged from the sea of gravy. Underneath lay many more layers of beef, and, presumably, a slice of bread or two.

Weasie's Kitchen: Waynesboro VA

Tossed salad ($2.49)

Hot Roast Beef Sandwich w/ Mashed Potatoes ($5.65)

Tuna Salad on Rye ($3.69)

Salmon Cakes w/ 2 Vegetables ($5.50) Brussel Sprouts & Collard Greens

Chilli ($2.49)

Iced Tea ($1.10)

V8 ($1.89)

(Cornbread $0.50)

Richmond to The Blue Ridge Parkway