Wednesday morning we headed out early for New Hampshire. We stopped at a covered bridge – we saw several of them over the course of the trip, and every one was different, and I loved every one of them.

We stopped at an overlook on the Kancamagus Highway – absolutely beautiful views.

Loved seeing the white bark of the birch trees and the leaves changing colors more every day as we were traveling along.

The third day of our trip found us in New Hampshire, where we spent the morning exploring the Billings Farm & Museum in Woodstock. It was a huge farm originally belonging to Fredrick Billings, who bought the property in 1869. He was one of the first farmers in the country to study and practice land conservation and farming practices that supported that. His granddaughter Mary married Laurence Rockefeller, and eventually they donated the mansion they built there on the property and surrounding acreage to become Vermont’s first national park. There was a lot of interesting family history in that museum.

There was an entire floor dedicated to rural life in New Hampshire over the decades. Of course I loved reading about schooling over the years.

After visiting the museum we spent a couple of hours exploring downtown Woodstock. It was a beautiful little town, and of course the lunch we found to enjoy was delicious as always 🙂

Our day started with more beautiful views of the Vermont countryside. The leaves were just beginning to change so there wasn’t as much color as we had hoped, but it was still just lovely. We stopped at several overlooks along the way so we could get better pictures than driving by in the bus.

The highlight of the day was visiting Hildene, the home of Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s only child that survived to adulthood. I knew virtually nothing about him, but his story was very interesting. As it turned out, he was a lawyer like his father before him, and served in the cabinets of several different presidents. The house he built actually stayed in the family until 1975, when the granddaughter that lived there died. He does not have any known descendants still living. An interesting thing about the house, because it was in the family for so long, was that they showed different changes that were made over the decades with different generations living there. I loved that.

The view down on the farm from the backyard – I cannot remember how many hundreds of acres it was – that was part of Hildene. Just so pretty.

Two weeks ago today we boarded the plane early – eight of us from our church, with a tour group out of Rock Hill – and flew into Albany, New York. From there we boarded a bus and set off for Vermont. We spent the day driving around the beautiful countryside and sweet little towns of that state – so pretty. We stopped in some of the towns to walk around the lovely old downtowns, and ate lunch in Bennington at a place called the Angry Egg :-). I had a Monte Cristo sandwich, which was different from ones here, but still delicious – and about the biggest sandwich I had ever seen :-).

While we were in Bennington we visited the impressive Bennington Battle Monument, commemorating a huge Revolutionary War battle there, and then were off to Cavendish, where we spent a couple of nights at the beautiful Pointe Hotel at Castle Hill. I cannot remember the name of the restaurant where we ate that night, but it was different from the one that was originally on our itinerary, because they had so much flooding in that area over the summer that our original destination was completely flooded and not back in business yet. This place was so lovely and fun, though. I even had to take pictures of the cut fruit and vegetable decor on the serving tables.

I am way behind with posting, but am just now getting pictures downloaded from the past couple of weeks. A week ago this past Saturday we celebrated by dear, dear friend Charlotte’s husband Bob’s birthday with a party held at our church. I helped out in the kitchen, & got this picture of Char’s girls: granddaughter Brenna, daughter Carin, & soon-to-be daughter-in-law Nicole. They are all such great ladies.

Bob’s band was the entertainment for the day, and one of the real highlights was their grandson Aidan playing with them – his first time on stage. He did a great job, and it was just so special seeing them play together. That’s Aidan in the pink and Bob to his right.