What do you do with rotten pumpkins?

Wait's River....postcard scene...but the lovely leaves have fallen.

Bath, New Hampshire...covered bridge, white church building and the brick store.

Round Barn near Newbury, Vermont

Catapult and pumpkins

(That is the "engineer" working on "improving" his design.)

As we left the condo this morning (after scraping ice off the car windows in 26 degree weather) Jack commented, “We’ve never met a trip we didn’t like,” and that about sums it all up. As we spent our last full day in Vermont, we agreed that this was, indeed, a wonderful trip…just like all the others we have shared.


The air was clear, and we could see for miles. We decided to head southeast toward the Connecticut River that separates Vermont from New Hampshire to see if the foliage might be better in the area down by the river. It was definitely past peek in that area also, but still a bright spot here and there.


We made several stops along the way. One stop was in Wait’s River and another in Bath, New Hampshire. In Bath we stopped to photograph the Old Brick Store, the oldest general store in the United States, and the covered bridge beside it. The covered bridge was built in 1834 and is one of the oldest in the United States. At 400 feet long, it is also the longest covered bridge in New Hampshire.


Somehow (good planning?) we ended up in the area of Wells River, Vermont about lunchtime, so we sampled the gourmet fare at the P & H Truck Stop once again. On down the road on the Vermont side of the river we stopped to photograph a farm with a round barn. Interesting.


In the “only in Vermont” category: We stopped at the “1782 Settlement Farm” in Middlesex. They were selling pumpkins (39 cents a pound). Some of the pumpkins rotted before they could sell them, so a creative young man had invented a large wooden catapult. He set it up beside the pumpkins for sale, and when a rotten pumpkin was discovered, he set it aside for his “launch”. Using a 500-pound counterweight, his record distance from the pumpkin area to the adjacent field was 250 feet. He had plans for trying a thousand-pound counter-weight and challenging other pumpkin farms in the area to launching contests. We stopped and talked to him, but unfortunately his catapult was non-functioning at the time we were there. He had done some “re-construction” and “improvements” on his design, and after the upgrade it failed to work completely. (Typical engineer…improve it until it does not work!) Not to worry. He has plans to get it up and working again and post a video on “You Tube”. He told us to look for “1782 Settlement Farm”.


This is our last night in our lovely condo at Smuggler’s Notch. Tomorrow morning we pack the car, head to Milton to worship service, and then to Albany, New York to spend the night and catch the plane back to Alabama on Monday.



It isn’t over yet, but we can see the end of this wonderful trip fast approaching.