This past week, my wife and I visited the following states:
- Pennsylvania
- New Jersey
- Connecticut
- New Hampshire
- Maine
- New York
- Vermont
If you ever get to visit these places, I highly recommend it. We started out last Sunday night and drove to 
Connecticut after church and spent the night. The next day was a long drive to Bangor, ME. The natives say Bangor like it’s two words: Bang or. Interesting…
On the way we stopped at the LL Bean outlet mall and the LL Bean retail store in Freeport, ME, the corporate headquarters. You can see my lovely wife standing next to the boot for their 95th anniversary. The retail store was HUGE, and didn’t include hunting and fishing or boats and bikes. They have their own stores! We didn’t buy anything here, though there were several things that really looked interesting. It was just too early in the trip to load up on stuff!
From Bangor, we launched out to Bar Harbor, ME. This was an incredible place. It’s on Mt. Desert (pronounced dessert) Island and we took a trolley to the top of Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the island. That’s my wife and I there on top of Cadillac 
Mountain. It’s also the home to the Acadian National Park. There’s a ton of bike and hiking trails there. It’s also where the weathly and rich of the past and present have made a summer home. One current celeb you may have heard of that has a “summer cottage” there, is Martha Stewart. We also enjoyed time at the United States Coast Guard lighthouse at Bass Harbor. See the pictures I took from my 
rock climbing excursion, just to get to these pictures.
From Maine, we left and drove through New Hampshire to Killington, VT. This is a ski resort area and it is beautiful. We stayed at Cortina Inn. This is a wonderful place to stay if you are in that part of the world. They had gourmet meals for dinner – it was just delicious. They also have local artist’s artwork on the wall that can be purchased. We bought a really nice piece for a great price. The next morning, we headed off to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory where we got the tour and bought a really cute bear. Then we went to Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream factory where we got the tour, samples, and of course, some wonderful ice cream. Then we left for the Cabot Cheese Factory and tour. If you’re not on the East coast, you might not have heard of Cabot Cheese, but it’s wonderful. Their cheddar has been named world’s best twice. We got some chipotle cheddar and jalepeno cheddar. Man, it’s tasty! When we got back to the Cortina Inn, I was able to fit in a one hour massage. I’ve never had one before, so this was something new. It was great! I recommend it highly. Thankfully, I wasn’t too tight, according to the massous. It really helped my back, which was tight from all the driving we had done.
On our way out of Vermont, we stopped at Sugar Bush Farms. This is a real working farm and they collect sap from over 6000 maple trees each season to make their own Maple Syrup. And man is it dandy. It’s the pure stuff. I have the equivilant of about 1 ounce of the stuff and I got a headache. But it was good! They also make their own cheee, and we picked up, get this…habenero and jalepeno cheddar. I’m telling you now, it burns 3 ways, but it is good.
After departing Vermont, we drove down to Connecticut to the town of New Haven. You know, that’s the home of Yale University. We drove around, found the bookstore where we picked up a couple of shirts, and then found the divinity school. We spent the night there, and got up the next morning and drove to Princeton, NJ, the home of Princeton University. Again, a trip to the school store for shirts and stuff, and a drive around brought us to the Princeton Theological Seminary. We have now visited Harvard, Brown, Cornell, Princeton, and Yale, as well as Oxford. We have only to visit Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn to have made it to all the Ivy League Schools. Quite honestly, that’s the only way Brenna and I will ever see these places – we can’t get in on academic prowess!
We then settled home after a long and enjoyable vacation. But it’s good to be back!
From this area, a great place on earth.
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