Friday, October 2

We are staying in the Bates Motel. It has been a long, crazy, yet beautifully colored day. Sunny. Gorgeous mountain drives. However, yet again we have had several small crises. Nothing to dampen our sense of humor. Nothing to discourage our sense of adventure.

The first little boo-boo occurred when Chuck locked the doors of our still running rental car when we got out at a visitor center at Woodstock, VT, just after we had driven the Kancamagus Highway. When your main car is a Prius, there is a tendency to think all cars are like Priuses and have that keyless entry and ignition. We lost an hour and a bit of gas waiting for the AAA service car to let us into the car. We were both pretty quiet about that one. Easy mistake to make, so we are being super careful now.

The second was finding this motel. We had been on the road since 9 am, and we had hoped to find a motel in Bennington. (And look up Robert Frost in the graveyard there.) However, they were having a Moose Fest. Main street was a pasture full of life size moose statues that had been decorated and dressed to be auctioned off at the end of the festival. A bookstore manager who surely was a Chamber of Commerce bigwig tried to sell one to me, claiming that people came from as far as the West Coast to purchase one of the big cuties. But the real impact was there was no room in the Inn. Not unless we wanted to pay $149 for the Hampton Inn or one of the high end motels. I would also compare Bennington to a beautiful girl who was a little stuck on herself. And it was after 5 pm. So we started toward Troy hoping this bedroom community to Albany would have a roo9m. We tried several highways leaving Troy, but no motels except for a Hilton on a hill that said $$$$. By this time it was nearly dark and Chuck was weary, but it was just a few miles to I-87, and I had a book listing many motels there. (And why wasn't I using my GPS to find motels? Because it was dead. And why wasn't I calling for reservations? Because my cell phone battery was dead too.) So we forged on. Finally we were moving on I-87 and yes, there were motels. After getting on the service road, we missed the Holicay Express by not being in the right lane. We pulled into the next motel after noting it had a clean exterior. Just $65 later, we were in a room. And then I noticed the mouse. And Chuck, never particularly worried about mice, noticed the TV didn't work. Did I say that by this time it is almost 8 pm. We called the manager in, and he agreed to give us another room because he was unable to refund our money. (He had no way to reverse a credit card charge.) The room he found for us had clean sheets and pillowcases, but needed the spread and blanket from the other room. I made the bed. Then I took my hand disinfectant and did a bit of sprucing up in the bathroom. I decided it was a bit chilly, and then I realized the heating-cooling unit was a plastic case only. I am hoping this first floor unit will not get too nippy tonight. We were really breaking up about that one. But Chuck was much too tired to drive somewhere else, and we would have lost our money.

On the positive side, the White Mountains were full of every fall color. There were lots of trails and Overlooks so we could photograph the valleys and streams with their hillsides sparkling in the sun. Fall color and fellow leaf peepers were everywhere. I suspect this was very close to peak color here because leaves were already starting to fall. I am sure that my photography didn't picture half of the splendor before me. Beside highway 112 beginning with the Kancamagus Mountains and stops for historic farms, the Quechee Gorge was a breath-taking sight.