Kevin, a fourth-grade student from Massachusetts, and his family spent ten months on a travel trailer trip to explore the United States and find a suitable area for a new home, from October, 1998 to August, 1999. He kept this journal of his trip for his extended family, his classmates, and his friends in Cub Scouting.
We saw an Air Force freight plane doing touch-and-go landings at Westover. We saw a covered bridge in Brattleborough VT. Right now we are in Townshend VT at a trailer park. I saw some funny things here, like two wooden cowboys and a Rudolph reindeer.
There was a tree that had fruit that smelled like lime. Then there was a ledge of shale. I climbed it and everything under my feet fell when I walked on it. We cracked off pieces and looked for fossils, but we didn't find any.
We walked through a gorge and found a pool surrounded by cliffs. Our dog, Fergus, went happily bounding in to swim and fetch a stick. We started walking back when I picked up a pine branch and started picking off needles. I spotted a ladybug and we kept it. We were walking back to our truck when our dog noticed something in the forest. He stood on his back legs to get a better look and then trotted along with us. Who knows what he saw. When we got to the park office, I saw a red squirrel but he ran away.
We went to the Newfane covered bridge and it was really cool.
There was a path under it and the land under it was a really wide shore.
The water was so clear you could use it as tap water. The only problem would be germs.
I was skipping stones and one of them flew somewhere around four feet
before hitting again. It looked like it was flying.
As we were going home the ladybug flew out the window. We were riding home we saw a donkey so we kept on riding to see what we could see. Eventually we came upon some llamas: a brown, a black & white, and two whites.
We went to the American Precision Museum where there was some neat stuff. There was a bike with a wheel about four feet in diameter and the back wheel one foot. There were flintlocks in a glass case, some with hammers on the bottom and some on top. There were a couple whirligigs there.
You know how hunters use heads as trophies? At an arts and crafts center there was a fake stuffed bunny back end, tail included. There also was a corduroy-bottomed bear rug and a marbled glass pen holder on a paperweight.
We went to a glass factory and outlet where they blow glass and you can watch them do it. We also went to a brewery and there was a beer tasting.
Well that's all the good stuff. Other things we saw were the turntable up close, the Queechee Gorge, and an outdoor craft show.
I made up a joke:
Q: What do you call it when you walk illegally on a bridge?
A: Truss-passing!
We went on a guided tour of the factory. There was a lot of neat stuff there.
The only flavors of cheese they make are cheddar and mozzarella.
There were speed limit signs that said one hundred, but then again they use the metric system so it was kph (kilometers per hour.)
They even have one and two dollar coins. The one dollar is gold colored and the two dollar is silver and gold colored.
The border guards barely did anything.
Everyone there spoke French and all the signs were French. My parents translated all the French words to English for me, as if! I had to guess what they said and if I got them wrong then they got translated.
We entered at North Troy, left at Beebe and went as far north as Sherbrook.
We saw "the Old Man of the Mountain," which is a rock formation that looks like a person's face in Franconia Notch.
We saw yet another State House. This one was in Concord, New Hampshire. Its dome was also gold. I've seen three with the gold dome now: Boston, Concord, and Montpelier.
The dog just touched the mouse on my Macintosh PowerBook 170 and got me out of Microsoft Word and selected four folders. I didn't know you could do that!
Continue on to November.