Middlebury Vermont with Don and Barb

Noonies Deli

It is Saturday and our last day in the Vermont area. We are to meet up with good friends Don and Barb Wood who live in Glens Falls, New York where Peg and I built our broadcast TV station several years ago. It was another delightful drive to Middlebury and we met up with the Wood's in a shopping center.

Falls in the Town of Middlebury

Texas Falls

First order of business was lunch. We found a quaint little sandwich shop called Noonies. It doesn't look like much but it was packed with people and we had some great sandwiches, made to order, there. The deli was located near some falls in town and an area called Marble Square. There were not too many shops open today so we decided to head out of town to look at a National Forest called, of all things, Texas Falls. We drove along some rocky creeks, steep grades and typical Vermont scenery to finally get there. Texas Falls is located in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

Peg, Barb and Don

The falls were very nice and we noticed a bunch of butterflies were hanging around a newly built bridge at the falls. The water looked cool and refreshing and we got some nice photos of the area and our friends. It was really good to see them again. Like with many of our friends, we don't see them as often as we would like.

Little did we know, our flight out of Burlington the next day was cancelled. Do you see any pattern here? This time the airlines did put us up in a hotel for the night and gave us food vouchers (to use at the airport) so we spent another night in Vermont. The next day we got up at 3:30 am, took the shuttle back to the airport and did fly out at 6 am. Made it back to Dallas with no further problems.

End of the Newmar Rally Week-Ben & Jerry's

Ben & Jerry's Factory

It is Friday and we began packing up the MCD booth. We drove the packed shipping boxes to the main office at the Expo Center and had them hold the items for Fed-Ex shipping. Since we were then officially done at the rally, we decided to drive to Waterbury, Vermont and to the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory. 
 

The factory is as colorful as Ben and Jerry themselves. We took the tour of the plant and Jim was singled out to ring the bell for the start of the tour. At the end of the tour, we all received a free tasting of that great ice cream. After the tour, we looked around the gift shop and Jim had to buy a tie dyed Ben & Jerry's T-shirt. We also purchased some "half baked" ice cream.

The factory had a lot of memorabilia we looked at and some pretty cool areas with bright colors for kids and adults alike. It is located in a rural area (where else?) in the hills of Vermont. It was such a nice day and the drive through the hills was great after a long week of being inside as vendors.

Tomorrow we meet old friends Barb and Don Woods in Middlebury, Vermont for a quick get together before we leave the area.

Flight to Vermont for the Newmar Rally

Since it is a long way from Texas to Vermont, MCD decided to fly us to the Newmar Rally in Essex Junction, Vermont. I was kind of familiar with the area since my sister, Phyl, went to college at St. Michael's about a mile or so down the road from the Expo Center. We were booked at the Roadway Inn in South Burlington. It was a 15 minute drive (on a good day) to the Expo Center. Here is a photo of our "home away from home" for the week!

We got the MCD booth set-up in record time (1 hour) since the display was shipped and limited to one display tower instead of our usual three. The display shipment was waiting for us at the MCD booth when we arrived.

One thing I neglected to mention was that it took us 24 hours to get to the Burlington, Vermont airport from Dallas. We arrived in Chicago and less than an hour before our boarding time, the connecting flight was cancelled after several delays. It was about 9 pm and one other plane going to Burlington was totally booked. If we stayed there, there were no other flights out to Vermont until the next night. We chose to fly to Newark, New Jersey as we could get an earlier flight out to Burlington the next day. Of course, when we arrived in New Jersey, we had to get a hotel for the night. Their advertised $59 hotels actually cost $115 for the night. The airlines would not give us vouchers for food or the hotel since they claimed our flight cancellation was "weather related"! We did get a flight out the next morning and finally made it to Burlington. Good thing we left a day early for the event or we would have been in trouble.

View of Lake Champlain

After we set up the MCD booth, we ventured into downtown Burlington in the rain. We found a great place to eat overlooking Lake Champlain called Salty's. We had clam chowder, lobster bisque and for the entré, we had shrimp and scallops. It was so good! We drove around and ended up at the Champlain Valley Chocolate Company for, you guessed it, chocolate. This was on a Sunday.

Downtown Burlington

Monday the show opened and we spent the day in the MCD vendor booth. We talked to a lot of RVer's interested in MCD Shades. After the show, we went to Archie's Burgers, a small place we heard of a little ways out of town. we had an artichoke burger and a portabella mushroom burger. Very good!

The temperature was very nice (compared to Texas) and we looked forward to the rest of the week with the Newmar folks.

The World's Best Fried Chicken...At Gus's-Beale St. and Graceland

We got out of work at 4:00pm and decided to go back into downtown Memphis for dinner. We were told by our friends, Lew and Dottie, that we have to eat at Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken. It is one of those hole in the wall places that has great food. It is a real local place to eat and certainly nothing fancy. We walked in, sat down and ordered drinks and our fried chicken meals. The drinks came out and a few minutes later, out came our meals. The pieces of chicken were big and GOOD! Remember, I am not a big fan of chicken either. After dinner, we decided to head back to Beale St. since it was a nice day and we needed to take a short walk to settle our meal.

Things were different downtown today. People were out, musicians were playing and the street was busy. We walked the length of Beale St. and checked out all the restaurants, bars and the Pepsi Cola Pavilion. A band was playing at the outdoor pavilion and we listened to a song or two. We then made our way back up the street and back to the car.

Since we were so close to Graceland and it was still nice out, we headed for the home of Elvis. Of course Graceland was closed for the day but we searched the grounds for a few photos opportunities. We saw the gate to Graceland and even got a shot of one of the houses on the grounds. The Elvis auto museum is also near the grounds (actually across the street) and it would have been fun to go in and see some of the cars on display. Maybe next time.

Peg got into the act as she presents a couple of photos and the neon signature of Elvis on the side of one of the Graceland buildings.

 We had a good time as we became "accidental tourists," as Peg commented. We had Graceland all to ourselves, but you know...Elvis had left the building!

The Crystal Shrine Grotto - Memorial Park Cemetary

Monday morning the rally vendors (like us) were starting at 12 noon, so we had a little time to explore Memphis a little. We headed to the Crystal Shrine Grotto. Peg did some research on this grotto and though it would be interesting to see. We used our new GPS sent to us by Rand McNally to test and evaluate for our American RVer show. It is working much better than our old Garmin. It lead us straight to the Crystal Shrine Grotto.

The first thing you see is a small pond and a covered bridge carved out of a large tree. Pretty cool! The grotto or cave was constructed by Memorial Park founder E. Clovis Hinds and Mexican artist Dioñicio Rodriguez in 1935-38. Natural rock and quartz crystal collected from the Ozarks for the background of the nine scenes of the life of Christ. The cave was built of concrete in imitation of rocks, boulders and trees. The entrance is quite impressive and made us feel like we were in a section of "middle earth".

Peg and I checked out all the scenes and I was especially interested in the huge quartz crystals used in the walls of the cave. With the lighting inside the grotto and the reflective crystals the interior looked quite mystic.

Even through the weather was still overcast, this little diversion was a nice departure from work...at least for this morning...

We're Walking in Memphis - Our First Day Here...

We are on the road and now in Memphis, Tennessee after traveling Rt. 40 near the Mississippi flood waters. We made it to the American Coach Association Rally at the Ag Center just outside of Memphis. 

We set up the MCD booth on Sunday morning and had brunch with Peg's nephew, James, who was traveling through Memphis on his way back from a wedding in Nashville with three other people. He lives in Ft. Worth, so it was ironic that we were all up in Memphis together. We ate at The Grove Inn and the food was very good. One of the women that was traveling with James knew the owner/chef and suggested we all meet there. It was a nice time and after the meal, we all headed downtown to check out the river and Beale St. It was cold and windy but Peg and I did walk a little ways on the river walk to see how high the Mississippi river was. There was still evidence of the water that had flooded that area only days before.

We then headed towards Beale St. and took a few photos of the "birthplace of Rock N Roll" in downtown Memphis. Not too many people hanging around on the street because of the weather so we decided to come back here at a later date in better weather.

Back on the Road Again-Monaco Pre-rally in Moultrie, Georgia

We left McKinney, TX Thursday morning and headed east. We are going to our second rally of this year which is the Monaco Pre-rally being held this year in Moultrie, Georgia. We were here two years ago as participants and this time we are working the MCD Innovations booth at the rally. 

We are looking forward to seeing many friends. We arrived about 4:30pm (EST) at the Moultrie RV Park after driving several days in the rain. That in itself is not so bad but having windshield wipers that are stripped and when one uses them while traveling over 40 mph they tend to swing off the windshield and become non-functional. I then have to stop, remove them, tighten them back on, and continue down the road. I used a little Rain-X to try and see a little better on my side of the windshield and that helped. Since we are at the Monaco rally, I will try to buy a couple of wiper arms from them...We'll see if that works out.

Hopefully I will have some photos for the next post. Too tired to shoot anything tonight. Tomorrow we set up the booth. We have to tote all the booth parts to the venue from the coach with the car so that should be fun!!! We'll see how many trips we have to take. I'll report more as the week goes on.