2012 Summer Vacation- Part 2

The second part of our vacation took us across the Canadian border to Ottawa, Ontario.  Josh was speaking at a conference there, so Mom and I dropped him off and then spent the night in Montreal.  It was fun using kilometers instead of miles and trying to figure out all the french signs.  We didn't do any sightseeing stuff in Canada at that point because we knew we would be back later to get Josh.
Mom and I reentered the US and drove through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York over the course of a few days.  Here are some highlights from our little road trip.

We visited the LL Bean flagship store and outlet malls in Maine.

Capitol building in Concord, New Hampshire

Capitol building in Concord, New Hampshire

The drive was so pretty and green, but sometimes I wished we could see farther than just a few feet off in the distance.

Lots of green, curvy roads.  There were cities out there somewhere, but we couldn't see them.

Capitol building in Montpelier, VT

Montpelier, VT- pretty setting for the capitol building, don't you think?

Montpelier, VT- only a town of 8000 people

While we were in Vermont, one of our main goals was to get some real maple syrup.  We found Morse Maple Farm that has been in operation for 8 generations.  They no longer hang buckets from the trees to collect sap.  Now they use a more efficient system of tubing that connects all the trees and feeds sap directly into a large tank without any manual labor.   

You can see some of the tubing running between the trees and large pipes that carry sap down the hill.

Sap collecting tank outside the sugar house.  Again, notice all the pipes running to this area.  The condenser is inside the building.

More maple trees with tubing and pipes

More maple trees with tubing and pipes

A close up of 1 maple tree.  The little clear part at the end of the dark blue tube will be inserted into the tiny hole in the tree at the top right of the picture whenever it's sap collecting time.

The sugar house.  The tall chimneys are connected to the condenser inside.  Big clouds of steam come from these chimneys when the syrup is being made.

Another necessary stop in Vermont was the Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory.  We toured the factory and then had ice cream for brunch.  Mmm mmm! 

From Vermont, we headed west through New York so we could eventually get back to Ottawa.  We took a ferry across Lake Champlain and drove through the Adirondacks stopping in Lake Placid along the way.

Lake Champlain- waiting for the ferry to arrive

There's the ferry!

The views from the ferry weren't too bad

Our car on the ferry- we're to the right of the blue kayaks

We got to see a few Olympic areas in Lake Placid

The ski jumps at the top of a hill

The ski jumps at the top of a hill

One of the ice rinks- I think this one was used in the 1932 Olympics

At one point this was the speed skating rink.  Now it's more of a track area for the local high school.

Another ice rink- I think this one was from the 1980 Olympic games

"It's No Miracle- It's Real Snow"  Real snow trucked in from?