First, those pictures from Niagara I promised. I also forgot to mention that for some reason, they call Bloody Marys "Caesars" in Canada. I can think of no suitable explanation for this. We left Canada this morning after a stop at the dollar store for Canadian koozies and another unsuccessful trip to Mickey D's for gravy fries (this time, it was too early and apparently gravy fries are not part of the breakfast menu). Our travel took up most of the day today. We had beautiful views of the Adirondacks and no particularly amusing stops along the way; however I did see Yuengling (one of the best beers EVER) at a gas station so I'm pretty excited about encountering that later. The most amusing part of the trip to Vermont occurred about an hour and a half before we reached our destination. I consulted our Google directions on my phone, looked ahead to what we would be doing in a little while, and saw the words "take the Essex ferry to Vermont." Ferry?! We had no idea that a ferry would be part of our journey. The ferry ride itself was not too exciting (although we did exclaim, "I'm on a boat!" many more times than necessary), but it was kind of cool to be in a car that was not moving on top of a boat that was moving.
We made it to Vermont just in time to get on the last guided tour of the Magic Hat brewery, a very cool spot that is now the 10th biggest brewing company in the U.S. This place was very laidback and featured a movie about the beauty of independent beer companies. They also offered free samples of all their brews, which was very exciting. A note on Vermont residents: Brian thinks that Vermont has the most man ponytails per capita in the United States. There were many, many hippies and yuppies out and about in Burlington today. After a stop at our hotel (the clerk's name was "Zacklin," I'm not sure of the origin of that moniker), we went downtown for some much needed dinner. Downtown Burlington was a beautiful area of shops, restaurants, brick-lined streets, and the occasional unsupervised child. We went for dinner at the Vermont Brewery & Pub, which featured some wonderful beers (Brian had one called "Beetlejuice" and I had one called "Forbidden Fruit") and the most amazing display ever of cheese-related food. I'm sure there were many cheese free options on the menu, but we wanted nothing to do with them, instead trying nachos, a plate with a selection of breads, Vermont cheese, and apple chutney, and. . .gravy fries. Yes, we finally found them, and they were as wonderful as we could have possibly imagined. I don't even like gravy that much, but I loved these fries. We considered checking out another small brewery after dinner, but it didn't look too exciting and we were pretty tired from our travels, so we stopped by "Al's Frys" near the hotel to get ice cream (note: Al apparently never got the "y to ie" plural lesson in third grade, I should have brought him a worksheet) and went back to watch some TV. Tomorrow: Ben & Jerry's factory and we're off to Maine (with a possible New Hampshire side trip on the way)!
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