A week in the rain forest

We had a nice cool week with the temperatures between 63-70 all week long. We really enjoy this kind of temperature, but we have also had rain every day. Most of the time it doesn't last long, but other times it rains several hours. Our furnace comes on at night which helps keep things drier on the inside. We worked Tuesday through Thursday this week. I worked in the office on Tuesday night and the rest of the week we worked on the lean-tos preparing them for painting, if it ever dries out.

Today we took an excursion to the north central area of Vermont, near Montpelier. We first stopped at Rock of Ages which is a big granite quarry where we went on a tour. The quarry was up to 600 feet deep. They had four huge cranes that would lift out slabs of granite after they were cut. They used drills, diamond wire saws and primer cord explosives to separate the slabs. These were used mostly for memorials such as head stones, mausoleums and monuments. We saw them cutting, grinding, and polishing along with engraving and sculpturing the granite. Next we visited Cabot Creamery. It was very interesting to watch them make the cheese from start to finish. Different types of cheese were on the sample table for us to try. Yummy. We learned that cheddar cheese is actually white, but they add color to some of it for the people who do not live in the northeast and assume that it is suppose to be colored. We bought a few flavors to take home along with some butter. We went to Ben and Jerrys for dessert today. We took a factory tour and saw how they processed the ice cream and packaged it. We got a sample. Of course, the sample was not enough so we had to purchase some more ice cream. We visited the grave yard where they have markers for the different flavors of ice cream that they no longer produce. (the deceased). Allan got a picture of a replica of the bus they started out with. The original burned to the ground. It produced baked Alaska. One of our benefits of working at the state park is free admission to many attractions like those we visited today.

The scenery on our trip was very spectacular. Most everything we saw today was covered in forest. We were later in returning home tonight but still no moose sightings. We did see a double rainbow. Hope you can see them both on the picture. We love the way the clouds were hanging in the mountains and down in the valleys. It looked like smoke rising from the trees.