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.

Quinn Fall Update

What a great weekend!  Conference was excellent, and it was nice to be snuggled up in the house with Anthony and Ira, eating cinnamon rolls and left overs. 

We're loving the beginning of Autumn.  The colors are turning to gold, and it’s started to get a little chilly.  

 Ira is as cute as ever.  After learning how to stand up, he’s finally figured out how to sit down from standing position.  I never thought about what a valuable life skill that is, until he spent a week panicking every time he stood.

He’s enjoying figuring out how to feed himself, and especially loves squeezing all the juice out of orange slices and rubbing it all of his hair.  This picture is just really exciting cereal though.

So, I’ve used all of my birthday money for an oil painting class and am really enjoying it.  After signing up, a huge wave of fear washed over me.  I hadn’t picked up a paint brush since high school!...that’s just about 10 years.  And just as I suspected, by talent is about where it was when I was 16, maybe a little worse.  But what do you expect when you bury any amount of talent you have? 

Anthony and I went to the Irish Festival last weekend, which made me reminiscent of my shortlived Irish dancing days.  The team here is a world class, award winning bunch of cute kids.  

Big news on the Ellsworth side of the fam, is that my sister Carolyn had her baby!  Hurray!  This is her 6^th son, and her husband made it back into town with just a few hours to spare.  What a blessing.  I know where to go with all of my raising boys questions. 

Anthony and I went to the dentist and eye doctor for the first time since 2007.  Is it a bad sign that I’ve made my contact supply last that long?  It feels like a luxury to get some of that stuff done, and my teeth feel sooo clean.  

So that's about how life is.  Love you guys!

  sharon

Manhattan Temple

We found a couple in the ward that has willing to teach us the ins and outs of a temple run in the city as well as do babysitting swaps with us, so with that we made our first trip down to the Manhattan Temple.

We learned where the good places to park are, including the garage we used which had this sign posted. We felt welcome despite the misspelled name.

The Temple was beautiful of course, but it was different because it didn't have the incredible landscaping and breathtaking/eye catching architecture as most other Temple's I've seen. It blends into the city well though. The church has definitely made good use of the real estate here as it is used for everything. The interior reminded me of 1920's city style. Efficient use of space in good taste would my summation of it.

It was a beautiful day and  Central Park is only a few blocks away so while we were babysitting all we had to do was go into the park and let the kids play. We'll have to get more creative as it gets cooler.

Eating Apples

As I've mentioned before, Ira is loving the idea of feeding himself. Enjoy the short clip we threw together. I love to watch him exploring the world and see him learning.

The only downside with him trying to be more involved with the feeding process is the mess afterwards. I guess it's a small price to pay in the end.

Bluegrass, Water Falls, and Stone Sculptures

Labor day marks the unofficial end of summer and the beginning of fall. We are now mostly settled in as you can tell from Sharon's video tour of our new place and so we start the New England chapter of our life. We are looking forward to getting to know the surrounding area better and have a good start on it. We visited Maine last week and loved it. This weekend we have been exploring areas closer to us as the roads are busy with all of the holiday travelers. We started out at a little State Park where there is a series of small water falls that cascade down the mountain side called, Kent Falls. It was a beautiful day and as you can see in the pictures below the park was pleasant.

The park below the falls was busy with people picnicking and playing frisbee. The hike up to see the other parts of the falls wasn't as busy, which was nice.

I loved this cute little covered bridge. There are supposedly a lot of covered bridges still in use in the area, I'm hoping to get around to seeing some of them.

Ira feeding himself, he's really getting into this. We'll post some video of him later.

Kent Falls is about a quarter mile of stream cascading down the limestone rock through potholes and down slippery slopes. It reminded me of some of the canyons I've hiked in Southern Utah, just in limestone surrounded by forest instead of in desert sandstone.

We discovered a side trail that took us through this amazing stone sculpture garden, I guess you could call them karen's(trail markers) but they were the most elaborate ones I've ever seen and were everywhere, but the trail.

 How many can you count in the background?

And these were some of the simpler ones...

Some were small, others were quite tall.

After the park we headed over to Sherman, one of the small downs just outside of Danbury, to enjoy some bluegrass/folk music. The music and atmosphere were wonderful. It was put on in a small 'clubhouse' (really more of a barn/cabin) by an excellent group of musicians next to a beautiful lake. The music was cheerful with the audience clapping along enjoying in the marry tunes. The musicians told how a few of them meet riding the trains into New York City to play on Broadway for shows like The Jersey Boys and The Color Purple.

Our drive back took us along a twisty tree covered road I can't wait to go back to when the leaves start to change colors.

Tour of the New Place.

For those of you who've been asking about the place, here it is.  Come visit!
p.s.  Sorry for my "talking to Ira" tone of voice.  Just pretend that you're Ira and you won't feel condescended.  :)

Portland, ME

There are a lot of places that we want to go to in close proximity to Danbury. One of my best friend, Dave Sutherland, was finishing a short medical stint in Portland, Maine so we decided to make our first trip up there to see him. It was great to visit with Dave and explore a little piece of the eastern most state. The weather was beautiful and the food was wonderful. The pictures below tells our story well.

We drove half way up Thursday evening and stayed the night in Massachusetts. The campground was nice, I think we missed all the summer traffic. We stayed in this one room cabin for the night, it made things easier with Ira.

Friday we finished our drive up and meet Dave on the Eastern Promenade. Ira was a good sport, so was Dave. We were happy the got along so well.

We took a ferry to Peaks Island to explore the Island life of the Northeastern United States. Ira was cute on the boat and maybe a little sea sick...

There were these cool scooner boats you could get rides on, we didn't do it this time around.

Dave was our Portland, ME expert tour guide. I really enjoyed hanging out with him.

After about three years of searching for a good sun hat, Sharon finally found one on the island.  It turns out to be the old lady hat of choice there. 

The guys exploring the Island coast.

The ferocious coastal wildlife. Don't be deceived.

Saturday morning we headed out to the Bradbury State Park and did this grueling .3 mile and couple hundred foot elevation hike to the top of Bradbury Peak. Okay, so it wasn't all that scary, just Dave at the top. You could see the ocean off in the distance.

Fate would have it that on our way to Bradbury we discovered a little community celebration of Fun Day! That's right, Fun Day. We couldn't help but humor fate by stopping in to get in on the fun. The main(e) event was the local dog show complete with course. We enjoyed the fire departments juicy hamburgers and I quote, their "wicked good, fresh, dug up three days ago from a local farm" french fries. I might be biased as an Idahoan, but they weren't all they were hyped up to be. The hamburger and root beer float were excellent.

 I do have to insert the irony of the state of ice cream in Maine. While on the Island the day before we got some great fresh fruit pies 'a la mode' (with ice cream) however, the ice cream was more...I mean all cream and no ice. We decided later that night to try again at the famous Friendly's restaurant, but to our great astonishment the ice cream didn't make it intact yet again. The irony of the story comes in at Fun Day. The ice cream in our root beer floats was solid and as icy as ice cream comes, the one ice cream dessert where you really just want the cream to make your root beer more tasty.

A trip to Maine wouldn't be complete without a visit to a lighthouse. This one is the most picturesque in all of Maine. It was very scenic. It was also nice to sit next to the ocean and listen to the waves crashing on the jagged shore.