JULY 13, 2007,,,IN PORT...Burlington

Being Friday the 13th we decided not to travel. We awoke to slapping of waves on the bow as the wind and the rain came in overnight. However, by 9:00am it had cleared and the sun was out. Temperature was in the low 70's.

We picked up our Enterprise rent a car and headed for Waterbury, VT., home of Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory. We took the tour and had a free sample of their new flavor cinnamon buns. It was a little to sweet for ML, so I had to finish hers. There is no bad ice cream. They produce 125,000 pints each of two flavors each day during their two shifts. A second factory produces 750,000 pints per day and they are building a new factory in Nevada to serve the west coast. Overseas production is outsourced with three plants. Ben and Jerry sold out about five years ago and are running their foundations. This was about 15 years after they took a $5 correspondence course from Penn State on how to make ice cream. Price tag...$350m.

From there we went to Stowe , VT, had lunch at the Green Mtn Inn downtown ( don't recommend it) and visited the shops untill it began to rain. The ski sloops were about 7 miles away and when arrived it was still raining. The pictures didn't turn out very good. The sloopes look shorter than those in the Rookies, but steeper. There is a new lodge going up at Mtn. Mansfield...hugh. However, most of the accomendations seem to be B&B's or Inns along the road to the sloops. There also is a golg course at the new lodge...mtn. goat steep. As we were returning to Stowe, we stopped at the Fed. Cup tennis tournment, but due to rain nothing was going on. Seems both Williams sisters cancelled and people who purchased tickets for the matches between US and Russia are not very happy. No names replaced the sisters on the US team.

As the rain let up we returned to Burlington and the boat, about 30 miles. The evening was a combination of sun and showers, as the picture shows. Dinner on the boat, a vdeo and off to bed.

Tomorrow promises better weather, then rain on Sunday. The locals say this is like a spring weather pattern.