May 23 – Around Quechee

Sort of a blah day weather wise. Cloudy with predicted thunderstorms later in the afternoon. Since we are leaving tomorrow we did a few of the touristy things today.

First was a walk across the highway to the Quechee Gorge Village which is just a collection of shops.

The main store sells all the Vermont staples such as cheese and maple syrup.

The feeding station were you could sample all the cheese. We actually bought some this time.

Downstairs was a model train and old furniture museum.

Interesting but all I could think about when I was down there was how much the floor above me was creaking. The joists looked fairly new but every step someone took on the old floor just echoed around downstairs.

Upstairs from the main floor was a toy museum.

The ceiling was covered in old games.

Back on the main floor, the next place over was a huge “Antiques Market” with a bunch of consignment booths.

Heading back to the campsite, it seemed this old bear had seen better days.

Next we hit a short nature walk called Eshqua Bog. The description said we should see Lady Slippers, Pitcher plants and Sundews but I think we were too early in the year for most of them.

I think this was the remains of an old bulrush.

Next we headed to the Simon Pierce Glassblowing factory with their restaurant overlooking the falls.

Downstairs you can watch them doing the glass blowing.

They warm the ends of the blowing tubes in this flame.

Grab a blob of glass from the huge furnace at the back.

And then take to there own station to work on it.

This guy was working on what he said was a paper weight.

He left it to cool on a rack that keeps it spinning. I guess it cooled too fast because it exploded in front of us.

They even have their own hydroelectric generator since I imagine all those ovens use a lot of power.

Back upstairs is the store and restaurant.

We fleetingly thought about going to the restaurant but it was around 3 pm and it had closed for lunch. Dinner didn’t begin until 6 and mains were in the $30-$40 range so no loss.

It has just started sprinkling around dinner time.