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We moved campgrounds further North into the heart of Vermont, so as to be in position to explore central Vermont and New Hampshire. Vermont is an utterly gorgeous state; heavily wooded, with gently rolling hills and bubbling brooks throughout. 35 years ago, the wise people of Vermont outlawed billboards, so that a drive through this state provides green, tranquil views uninterrupted by Madison Avenue's madness. Even more enchanting, Vermont has little or no 'heavy industry'. Instead, small cottage businesses are everywhere, operated from the owner's homes, selling or making all sorts of hand crafted products. It was idyllic; Vermont quickly became Jody's favorite state of the 24 we have visited to date. Joya took and processed yet another excellent picture of Jordan, the most photographed girl in the known universe. 
While we were sitting around sipping our coffee this day's morning, we heard an odd 'whooshing' sound, which I initially ignored. Upon hearing it again, I remarked to Jody "that sounds like the burner of a hot air balloon". It appeared among the trees almost immediately, moving silently except for the periodic burst of sound from its propane burners.
There was a famous glassblower in nearby Queechee that Jody's friend Mina had mentioned that we should visit. So, we did. Simon Pearce is a venerable old glassworks situated on a beautiful riverside site. They still make all of their glass by hand. You can watch the glassblowers at work from an observation area, which we did for more than 30 minutes. Below are some pictures we took while there. This photo show a master re-heating his blob of glass, which is protruding into the hot open oven that you see. He must slowly rotate the blob as it heats in order to keep it round.
This gentleman is forming a blob prior to blowing it into a square mold. You can see here that he is rounding this blob of glass using a wet wooden mold, and (Joya loves this part) the glass never touches the wood because of the steam! The molten glass always stays a fraction of an inch away from the wood.
And here a large bowl is being hand-shaped -- again, by slowly spinning the metal rod.
On the back balcony of the glassworks, the girls were fascinated by the covered bridge, and by what was going on there; a young man (barely visible left of Jordan's head) was swinging hand-over-hand under the bridge, until he reached the center, at which time he dropped into the river. Joya immediately said "I want to do that!". We managed to dissuade her, but only because she did not have her bathing suit at hand.
Afterwards, we walked over to a nearby deli and lunched by the river. This shot shows our lunchtime location, courtesy of Joya, of course.
And this is the view we had while lunching. See why we love this state so much? Another Joya shot.
After the glassworks, we drove North, to make our pilgrimage and pay our respects to one of Vermont's largest employers -- certainly their best-known. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield began "Ben & Jerry's" ice cream in the 70s. They now have 3 or 4 different ice cream factories all over Vermont, using only Vermont dairy farm milk and cream. The tour was fun and informative, but of course the highlight was the ice cream tasting, followed by the ice cream buying, and then the ice cream eating. The girls mugged for this "Pint lid photo op", as the sign said.
On the way back to the parking lot, they found an irresistible stair railing they HAD to slide down, which I barely managed to capture before they hit bottom.
On the way back -- indeed, through most of the state -- we followed the 'scenic route' indicators in our map book, coming across gorgeous rivers and covered bridges like the one below.
That evening we enjoyed a campfire, some respite from the mosquitoes who don't much seem to like hot fires and smoke, and a bit of reading.
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