2023 Summer Road Trip – Day 6, On To Vermont

Monday, July 10, 2023

We awoke to a misty, foggy, cooler morning.  We finally needed our lightweight jackets.  Before getting on the road, we looked out the window and saw some sled dogs harnessed in front of a 4-wheeler.    Our host had forewarned us that we might see a dog sled team during our stay and this morning we did.  The 4-wheeler was doing the work but the dogs seemed to really be enjoying the run.  They are elderly, retired, sled dogs that are living out their lives in rural NY. (Previously lived in Alaska.)

The rural countryside of New York is beautiful.  We began our road trip today driving through another rural area for about 30 minutes until we arrived in Oneonta.  Oneonta, NY, the sister city of Oneonta, AL.  We stopped at one of the several parks and green spaces and got our steps in for the day because the forecast was for rain most of the day and it wasn’t raining yet. Nice park and good walk.    We also visited the Chamber of Commerce and met the director who gave us some suggestions on things to do.  It was a quick but fun visit and discussions about the two Oneontas.  Then we were on our way to Cooperstown, NY, an interesting and quaint little village and the home of the MLB Hall of Fame and Museum.  It is definitely a community of all things baseball.

Then we were on to our Harvest Host site for the night.  It started raining again and is still raining.  Suppose to rain all night. We received a text from a friend this morning asking if it was flooding near where we were.  It wasn’t, but now it is.  We didn’t realize how bad the flooding had become until we stopped at the Vermont welcome center.  They started telling us of all the closed roads.  Anyway, we are now completely weather aware, and no roads are closed yet in the area we plan to travel tomorrow but…we will check everything again in the morning and may alter our route a little to get further away from the problem areas.

Our host for tonight is a maple syrup enterprise – Mom and Pop’s World’s Best Vermont Maple Syrup.  We met “Mom” today and learned they made over 24,000 gallons of maple syrup last year.  They tap around 20,000 trees each year.  Due to the weather, we couldn’t go outside and look at the trees, but they had a mockup of trees with the taps and lines in their cooking building. Big operation and wonderful maple syrup.