Happy National Lobster Day everyone! We celebrated by having fresh lobster for brunch. Before our feast though, we got our blood pumping with an early morning hike to see Sabbaday Falls. We have driven by this waterfall several times over the last few days and the parking lot is always packed, so we decided to hit it up early this morning to have the trail to ourselves. It was worth it. It was a short hike but had a beautiful boardwalk and a lovely waterfall that was still flowing despite the time of year. We learned about both the history and the geology of the area from educational placards along the trail. The basalt dikes are interesting, we saw those yesterday at Flume Gorge as well.
Now that we had worked up an appetite, we headed back to our cabin to steam up yesterday’s lobsters. First, we sexed them - because, why not, since we now know how - and then into the pot they went! We named the lobsters Lester, Fester, Hester, Jester and Coobie. They were four males and a female. They were delicious. It turns out that Ali, who doesn’t really like most seafood, LOVES lobster. He got every bit of meat out of Cobie and sucked the seawater out of each of his legs. He is considering having a lobster fest party for his next birthday, lol.
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| Male lobsters have small straight parallel bits near the last set of legs before their swimmer feet start. |
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| Female lobsters have small feathery bits that lay in an X shape between their last set of legs. Remember X for X chromosome aka female. Neat huh? |
After brunch we packed up, said goodbye to the Radeke Cabin, and were off. We crossed the state line into Vermont to visit the Great Vermont Corn Maze near Danville. This maze was nuts. It was enormous and very challenging. It took us 3h45min to complete and we were pretty exhausted by the end. The maze creator was on hand and kept popping up in various places to check in on us. He was a bit like a leprechaun - we’d turn a corner and there he’d be. We have never spent so much time in a cornfield nor walked in so many circles. It was certainly a unique and very memorable experience.
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| Inside the maze we were surrounded by endless cornfields in all directions. |
To celebrate our victory conquering the maze we travelled to Waterbury to visit the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory. Turns out that we weren’t the only ones with this idea - the place was hopping! The factory tours were sold out but, thank goodness, we’d had a stroke of luck yesterday and had been able to prebook tour tickets online. The moo-vie was fun and we enjoyed seeing the ice cream making process. The factory runs 24/7 so the production line was operating; they were making cookie dough ice cream when we were there. We were able to sample their new limited edition raspberry ice cream at the end of the tour and picked up pints of their specialty sundae ice cream. To the boys’ delight, it was ice cream for supper tonight - there has to be a first time for everything!
After visiting my favourite ice cream, Bovinity Divinity, in the Ben & Jerry’s graveyard (cry), it was back in the truck and off to check in to our campground in Ticonderoga, NY. We were treated to a gorgeous sunset over the mountain range as we drove. We checked in just after 8 pm, had showers (the first in several days) and it was off to bed. Alistair remembered to put the tooth he lost yesterday under his pillow tonight so we are eagerly awaiting a visit from the tooth fairy.
