9/12 Vermont

 On Tuesday, we had a factory tour scheduled at Ben & Jerry's at 1:00, and they were very clear about not giving refunds if we missed our tour time, so we wanted to be out of our campsite by 9:00 in the morning.  We streamlined our breakfast and unhooking and hitching back up and drove away almost on time, which was a big accomplishment for us!  

The U.S. border crossing was a little interesting, because the trailer didn't fit very well through the narrow passageway for cars and they didn't have a section open for RVs.  I held up the line for a minute or two while I maneuvered around the obstacles.  When we got to the front, the customs agent asked if we had any food we bought from Canada, and we remembered that we had some leftovers.  He asked if we had any citrus fruit, and I said yes, I thought we might have some cut blood orange left over, and he wasn't very happy with me!  ("You THINK?  You don't KNOW if you have it?")  I had to get out and unlock the RV for him so he could go in and look in our refrigerator.  I don't think he looked very carefully, though, because when I checked our leftovers box on the other side of the border, we did have two small slices of blood orange tucked underneath our leftover cantaloupe slices.  Apparently we smuggled some illegal citrus fruit into the United States from Canada!  But I was completely honest about it!

We made it to Ben & Jerry's in plenty of time to eat lunch in the RV before 1:00.  The factory tour was fun, although they were having technical issues, so we didn't get to watch them actually making the ice cream.  They did have videos about the process, and we got to eat free samples.  Afterward we bought cones, saw the flavor graveyard, and enjoyed the playground for a while.

Posing at a photo spot at Ben & Jerry's.

Our plan for the night was to try dispersed camping in Vermont.  The state put out a list of lots of areas where camping was allowed, but we were trying to find something appropriate for our large RV.  At one point, we unhitched and scouted ahead down a gravel road with the SUV.  We found a large dirt turnoff by a stream that looked big enough and was in a beautiful, forested area.  We took the RV down there and camped for the night.  We had a fun evening playing in the stream and enjoying nature.  Little did we know what awaited us the next day...

Summer and Sierra enjoying the beauty of our campsite.