Animals, Eats, and Teddy Bears

We left Maine and drove through the woods of New Hampshire to Concord.  There we bought new tires for the car, and relaxed for a couple of days.  It was a nice break.

Once we were on our way again, we headed to the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center.  It was a lot of fun to see the animals of New Hampshire in their natural settings.   There were many hands-on activities.  We enjoyed the play time learning they provided!

red fox

mountain lion

white tail deer

We stopped at the Rock of Ages Quarry for a tour there.  It was very interesting to see the granite being cut and removed from the quarry in gigantic blocks, their inventory piles, their discarded mountainous piles of rocks, and their factory where they polish and make the granite into monuments and things.  We were able to take home some sample pieces of the white, black, pink, and gray colors. They also had an outdoor granite bowling alley where we both had fun bowling.

We headed on to Vermont next, to spend a day sampling Vermont's finest foods!  First we went to Ben & Jerry's for their factory tour where we learned the history of their company,  their ice cream making process, sampled ice cream and visited the flavor graveyard too. 

Then we went down the road to the Cold Hollow Cider Mill.  They make their cider from Vermont Macintosh apples, it was cold, and refreshingly delicious! This is also the home of the famous donuts from the Curious George story, and Henry Huggins' donut machine.  Their cider donuts were quite good! We also sampled other apple products, as well as flavored butters, mustards, and relishes. 

Our next stop was the New England Maple Museum, where we learned all about the history of maple sugaring and making maple syrup.  We tasted different grades of syrup, maple sugar, relishes, butters, salsas, jams and more. 

brand name syrups with little to no real maple in them

Then we headed up to the Dakin Farm, where we tasted samples of all kinds of sausages, cheeses, and more jams, jellies, preserves, cremes, honey, and salsas.  We got some sausage and cheese to enjoy for lunch.

We toured the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory.  They showed us how they make their teddy bears, and what makes them unique. They guarantee their bears for the life of the bear!  We had fun looking at all the different outfits for the bears too.  They had political people, sports, careers, princess, special occasion like birthdays and weddings, and just fun outfits.  The building was very colorful, and they had a room full of chalk where we got to write on the walls.  It was pretty cool!