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A lot of sitting in the car today - a fairly long run north west to St Johnsbury, up in the northern part of Vermont.
Didn't start like that, though.At 9 this morning, while Chloe enjoyed a bit of a lie-in, I was one of the first through the doors at L.L. Bean's flagship store in Freeport, Maine, and quickly spent $140 on trousers and a jumper that would probably have cost 50% more by mail order from the UK.
Encouraged by this good business, a particularly good breakfast and a bright and mild, if not exactly warm, day, I set out in good spirits.It looked as if these were going to be dampened when we were pulled over by the Yarmouth flics, only a few miles into our journey, for daring to go nearly 10mph over their 25mph speed limit.But in fact Officer Vogel kindly let me off with a warning, so good spirits prevailed.
After that, lots of driving for me and a fair bit of sleeping for CC as we tried our hardest to get out of built-up suburbia and into the wide open spaces.
This isn't easy.Although northern Vermont is mountainous, snowy and quite dramatic, it's hard to find more than a few miles at a stretch where the roadside isn't lined with hairdressers (Curl Up & Die), car exhaust suppliers (Mr Muffler) or pet-training establishments (Telling Tails).
One area where the roadside jumble did thin out for a bit was around a huge and slightly spooky hotel, set among mountains a bit like Jack Nicholson's in The Shining.This turned out to be Bretton Woods, where the post-WW2 financial system was created complete with IMF and World Bank (at the instigation of FDR, naturally, with a year of the war still to go).You can se the hotel in the picture, with the 6,000-odd ft Mount Washington, the highest peak in New England, behind.
Tonight we're staying in a Comfort Inn, which is basically exactly the same as all the other motels we've stayed in, and we've just come back from a very acceptable dinner at a little restaurant in St Johnsbury which you'd say, judging by the fact that we were the second-last group to leave at five past nine on a Saturday evening, is probably hanging on by a thread.
Anyway, it means I'm back here in my room by 9.30, which doesn't exactly contribute to my dangerous reputation but does mean there's plenty of time to sort out those photo albums on this blog. I think there are two there now.
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