Trip to Vermont: Final entry

Wednesday - September 15
After superb Eggs Benedict, Dan & I bid our goodbyes at Moose Meadow Lodge and drove to Shelburne to tour the Vermont Teddy Bear company. I remember hearing their ads on the radio in the 1980s, and I’ve seen their website, but I’d never been there before. The tour was lead by a long haired British gentleman. As we’d planned, after the tour we selected two Groom bears.

Then we headed to Burlington, which I’d visited with my father in 1992. It hasn’t changed much since then, a liberal college town - rather like a more urbanized Oberlin. Church Street has recently been closed to traffic and is an open pedestrian way - making it a sort of outdoor mall. The stores are more corporate than in the smaller towns, with a Borders that had a very ordinary selection. We didn’t stay long, driving to the edge of town to get a view of Lake Champlain.


Then I did something stupid: knowing that we planned to stop overnight, I programmed the GPS to take us back without using highways. Unfortunately, it took us on a route which had extensive roadwork being done, so that after two hours, I reprogrammed it to take us back to the highways. We made it to Seneca Falls, New York by 9pm and bunked in at a Microtel. Despite the cheap cost, the dreary, barren room made me pine for the Lodge.
Thursday - September 16
We were up by 6:30am, ate Microtel’s poor excuse for a Continental breakfast, and were on our way by 7:15. Save for some rain and construction, the drive from Seneca Falls to South Euclid was uneventful, and we were home before 12:30. After unpacking, we headed over to the West Side to get Mason, who greeted us with frantic high pitched whimpers. He loves his two daddies.
Later that night, we opened the registry presents we received. One was from a high school friend, the other from my older brother, Rob.
After being back in Ohio for a few days, my emotions tailspun into a depression. I have long said that the worst factor of Cleveland is that it’s in Ohio. The state in which I was born combines the worst aspects of small and large states: unfriendly, inconsiderate people, bad drivers with no respect for pedestrians, political ignorance.
Dan shares my feelings. We’ve settled for living here because it’s cheap, we have rather lucrative jobs and friends here, and Cleveland has a lot to offer culturally for a town of its size. But symphony orchestras and art museums will only get you so far.