Vermont's Green Mountains

On Sunday after having coffee in Rutland, Vermont, we decided not to hurry through Vermont.  It was raining and supposed to rain all day and into the next morning so we booked a hotel.  On Monday October 1, we headed out for a scenic drive that looped around and through the Green Mountains National Forest.  Our first stop was at Gill's Delicatessen in Rutland for an Italian grinder sandwich.  A grinder is a sub sandwich.  Their hot Italian grinder was supposed to be incredible.  It was covered in cabbage and we were less than impressed.  Our next stop was much better.  We stopped at a pumpkin patch with an incredible view of the mountains.  We didn't need a pumpkin but enjoyed visiting with the farmer.  We sure wished our pumpkin patch group of Betty, Patty, Wendy and the family could have been with us. 

We made a stop at the Maple Syrup museum and learned a lot about maple syrup from their incredibly cheesy dioramas.  However, we did get to taste all the grades of maple syrup multiple times.  They shouldn't have left us alone in the tasting room.  We made a stop for an americano in a town named Brandon.  We noticed that the building next to the coffee shop had a foundation problem. 

Why would you build a building over a waterfall?

We headed into the Green Mountain National Forest at Brandon.  As we crossed the Brandon Pass, the foliage was just beautiful.

For about half of our drive, we drove beside this pretty mountain stream.

All the views were so pretty we finally decided that we were going to have to quit telling each other to look.  There was something pretty around every bend in the road.  We kept watching for moose and black bears but  never saw any.

This sculpture was the only moose we saw.

We drove up to the Killington ski area to ride one of the ski gondolas up the mountain.  We thought the view would be incredible.  When we arrived at the mountain, the wind picked up and the clouds came in and covered most of the mountain so the gondola was not running. The trees near the bottom of the ski runs were absolutely incredible so we really didn't feel like we missed much. 

Coming down off the mountain, we made one last stop at an Irish Pub and Inn.  The building was very unique.  They had built it around the rocks jutting out of the mountain.  As you walked through the Pub and Inn, there were big rocks jutting out into rooms.  We found out the Pub was built at the end of the Long Trail hiking trail by the people that built and maintained the trail.  We sampled the local brew, Long Trail Ale.  

We had a wonderful day of leaf peeping.  All of the views were incredible.  It is hard to describe how pretty the trees are.  We were amazed at all the different color ranges.