Day 17 – Friday, September 19, 2014

Thanks to today’s technology, I could see what my daughter Christina posted on one of our Facebook photos: that my granddaughter Kingsley misses me, her Grand-Mere.

Woke up at 1 a.m. when Dean got up.  I needed to go too but was reluctant to get up.  Consequently I was awake for a long time my mind and body not letting me slip back into sleep.  I heard a metallic “pong” which I determined was the camp stove.  Maybe half an hour later, another pong from the camp stove.  And again, another pong, a little later on.  And another.  It was like listening to Dean’s grandfather’s clock ringing out the half hours.

Dean got up and made the campfire this morning before starting the camp stove. We packed up all our gear as we are leaving New Discovery State Park this morning.  We got going in good time.

We started the day with many layers on as it was 2 degrees Celsius.  Still I put my new glass bead bracelet on, the one with the large green heart, which I purchased last week in Isle La Motte.

Pauline and Dean find it funny & odd when I walk silently along for the first hour, I think it is an important thing for me to do, to focus on listening.

Granite, everywhere even hedging the sidewalks!  Having visited the quarries, I now understand why the prominence of granite.

We were happy to have the map that Mark, from Artesano Ice Cream, printed for us yesterday.  We were able to continue using the Vermont Cross-Trail and have minimal time along route 302. I found the swamp area beautiful.

Nevertheless, we got great views of the Wells River from the 302.  It was the first time, I felt really touched by the thought that Abigail actually walked here, by the Wells River.  I don’t know if it was because I could see sand and areas where one could actually stand at this time of the year.  Of course it would have looked different in March 1704.  Although paved roads have been added, I am grateful that the river remains.

At one point there was a falls and I wanted us to go down to the rocks to have our lunch/snack.  Pauline thought that it was too complicated to get down through the tall plants.  I could see a faint track down and so I went down.  Dean stayed up on top too.  I could see a man had joined them, so I took out my iphone and my native doll instead of starting to eat my snack.

Dean whistled and so I came back up to the roadside.  Paul Berlejung of The Bridge Weekly Sho-Case wanted to write about us and our project.

It was much later that we stopped at Big Cones in.  Dean chose Apple Pie Ice Cream, a fall flavour, in  a waffle cone (no charge for waffle.)  

Pauline stopped at local Pharmacy and lunch bar with red spinning tools and bought replacement sunglasses for the ones she'd lost the day before (likely at a pit stop.)  She got them for 50% off!:~)

A short street away and we were crossing a bridge over the Connecticut River taking us from Vermont to the state of New Hampshire.

The day grew warmer and as I walked I shed more clothes. First the top long sleeved black shirt.  Not much further, I was tired and still too warm.  So Pauline and I stopped and I unzipped and removed the lower portion of my black shorts.  That's when I realized my glass-bead bracelet was gone.

We needed to keep walking as we had a long way to go yet, having had unusual stops. Once done, we looked at Dean's photo of me with my ice cream and I did not have my bracelet at that point.  So we knew I didn't have to back track in New Hampshire.  So we filled the RAV with gas and went to look for supper at one of the Chinese restaurants.

Heading to our reserved Bed & Breakfast, we passed the site where I had rushed down the tall plants to get to the edge of Wells River, I pulled as far over as I could and once again trekked down carefully this time, looking to see if the bracelet had not gotten hooked onto something, the elastic broken and the beads fallen.  No such luck as far as I could tell.  Dean and Pauline were happy for me to start driving again as the RAV shook as a large truck had passed them.

It is only after leaving the New Discovery State Park that I started to read the pamphlet the ranger Donald O’Donnell had given me a couple of nights ago.  (I had used it to write the name of the ice cream place, Big Cones, that he recommended when we walked through the town of Wells River, and a Chinese restaurant, Summer Gardens, in Woodsville, New Hampshire.  We visited these two places which had great food, great value.)  The pamphlet starts with:

“Welcome to New Discovery State Park. As early as 1704, Native Americans and the French were using routes through Groton to reach Canada and Massachusetts.”

And we slept there four nights! How awesome!

We found our way to Janet's B&B in W. Barnet, VT. Our beautiful rooms are inside an old creamery.

Additions made October 19, 2014:

Native Doll was photographed twice on this day.  This is when I went down to the rocks on the Wells River at lunch time.

This is the first site of the Connecticut River.  It was just around the corner from The Big Cone ice cream place.  Standing on the bridge, looking at the river we are at the Vermont and New Hampshire boundary.  This was to be the first day we would walk on the New Hampshire side.  The captives, as I understand it, walked on the rivers where possible in March of 1704.