Family Fall Visit

Grandma and Grandpa Quinn came and visited a few weeks ago. We had a lot of fun showing them around the area, especially with the fall colors starting to emerge.

Kent Falls with the family

 While I was working on Friday Sharon took the family apple picking. Yum.

 We made a random last minute stop at this old machinery museum. Kind of random, but they had a lot of old trucks. My grandpa's would have loved this place.

 The fall colors have been wonderful this year, especially when the sun comes out.

 Ira loved seeing Grandma and Grandpa

Ira's starting to figure out he's dad is kind of crazy.

We did a bunch of hiking and Ira spent a lot of time in the backpack chill'n. He was a good sport about it.

Pilgrimages

We love ice-cream and so we made our pilgrimage to Ben & Jerry's original factory in Northern Vermont.

Getting There

 We left a warm blue sky Connecticut with our hopes high and camp ground reserved. Just before pulling into camp at 9:30pm the rain started to come down hard. Upon arrival we opted to transform our little 2-door Honda Civic into a bed instead of putting up a tent on the already wet ground in the pouring rain. It was an interesting night.... Sharon says that she felt just like the Princess and the Pea, only the pea was a spare tire and the 100 mattresses was a skinny piece of foam. 

But I think Ira loved it. He is such a good traveling kid.

Fall Colors, local farms, and Applefest

Before visiting the factory we took some back roads and visited a small cheese shop, sooo good. The owner told us about a local 'Applefest' going on up the hill, to the right, and the third 'driveway' to the left. We  checked it out.

 They were making some Apple Cider. You can see the apple dicer in the background and the apple 'musher' or three garbage disposals mounted on a table

They poured the mush onto a press and squeezed the apple juice out for the cider.  They used the cider to make some amazing donuts and cider syrup.  We also got some local goat milk caramel sauce.  Yum.

The fall colors were great even though the peak was a week earlier and the storms during the week had brought a lot of the leaves down.

Some creative Grafiti out in the middle of nowhere VT. We thought it was funny though. 

Ben & Jerry's Factory

 Ben & Jerry's had a cow directing parking traffic, perfect.

The weather was a little brisk, but it's never too cold for ice-cream, right? The tour was pretty fun, the best part was the free samples at the end. The flavor of the day was Chocowlate Chip. Vanille Ice-cream with fudge bits shaped like cows, pretty tasty.

 Father and Son pose in sheer happiness.

Sharon, VT

We drove right by Sharon, VT on our way to Ben & Jerry's so on our way home we decided to stop by, not because Sharon shares it's name.

 It is the birth place of Joseph Smith, Jr. A man we believe to be called of God to be a prophet in these modern times; given authority to speak and reveal the will of God and to bring men closer to Christ.

 There is a nice visitors center, this monument, and a few old remnants of the houses his parents and grandparents lived in.