Focht Family Blog

Thursday night was spent at a Walmart in Batavia, NY. This was close enough to Nathan’s older sister that she came over to visit for awhile with her family. The kids were happy to see their cousin Alex again. The next morning my mom and I decided we wanted a hot breakfast so we walked for a little over a half mile to a McDonalds and brought breakfast back for everyone. I bought the kids hotcakes and when they were done eating they decided to create a turtle (Crush from Nemo) from the leftovers…

We spent the night on Monday in New Hampshire so Tuesday morning we decided to take a tour of Anheuser Busch in Merrimack on our way back to Vermont. The grounds were full of gorgeous flowers. Here are Samantha and Timmy on our way in to the tour…

All of the kids were enjoying making faces in the shiny tables because they could see their reflections. We tried to get a picture….

The beginning of the tour shows a garden of hops…

Next I got a nice picture of the main building before we went inside…

Once inside you can take whatever pictures you want but I wasn’t able to get any good ones. All of the tanks are just too BIG! :) Here is a side bin they had set up to show you the beechwood chips that they use in the bottom of the tanks to flavor the beer. The chips are used, cleaned, used once more, and then they are used for mulch around the grounds.

After the tour we walked to the stables to see the horses. Here is Samantha and Timmy standing by one of the wagons on display…

Here is a side view of the wagon…

And one last picture of the kids by the flowers in the middle of the stable area…

On Saturday we made reservations to come back to Apple Island Resort on Tuesday and then left to drive to Virginia to pick up mom’s trailer. Nathan decide that as long as we were driving we should add a couple more stickers. We started out the journey going north into Quebec and then driving into Ontario again entering back into the USA in New York.

Now we can say that Tinkerbell and Dory are international travelers! :) They were so excited!!…

I tried getting some pictures of the road signs in Quebec since everything is in French without translations. While getting one of my pictures I accidentally got a picture of the one building with a translation (for strippers.) So I stuck with putting the picture up of the sign pointing to Montreal…

Here is a picture of the St. Lawrence River looking into Montreal…

This is a picture of the bridge crossing back into New York…

I was driving and Nathan said he could see through the bridge into the St. Lawrence River. He tried to take a picture. It didn’t end up showing the river through the bridge but it ended up being an interesting picture…

This was the only time that we have gone into Canada and back into the US without anyone searching the RV or even coming into the RV. Going into Canada they asked each of the passengers to come to the driver’s window so they could compare them to the passport photos but that was it. Saturday night was spent in New York and we were in Winchester, VA by Sunday afternoon.

Nathan and Blake were doing business until Thursday. Thursday we headed up to Burlington and found a really nice campground on the Lake Champlain islands called Apple Island Resort. It is a beautiful campground that has a nice pool and jacuzzi, paved roads, lots of activities (although we haven’t done any of them). Blake got a park model for the night in the campground and we rented a minivan so we could go out and enjoy the day on Friday before Blake left. Since we couldn’t check-in until later we stopped at Lake Champlain Chocolates to take a tour. Unfortunately we found out the tour was sitting in one room and decided the kids would not enjoy it so my mom and I did some shopping and then we went to lunch. While there I bought some dark chocolate salted caramels and wished I had bought more.

On Friday morning we started out at Cold Hollow Cider Mill for cider donuts. The kids decided to pose in a sign…

After the cider mill we went shopping for cheese and chocolate at a shopping center down the road that had a Cabot Creamery store and a Lake Champlain Chocolate store. At the chocolate store I bought all of the dark chocolate salted caramels they had! :) Mom was thrilled that they had a Cabot store because she loved the Vintage Choice and Wicked Sharp cheeses that she bought at the Cabot tour and she hasn’t been able to find them in any of the stores.

The next stop was Ben & Jerry’s to take the tour again. Nathan loved the sample that day because it was his favorite flavor… Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Next we went to lunch and headed back to the campground to use the pool.

Saturday we decided to spend the night at Cabela’s. We had to pick up Nathan’s business partner in New Jersey on Sunday so we had time and Nathan wanted to do a little shopping. I actually ended up buying a pair of Hatley pajamas (I love the brand) because they had some on clearance for half price. :) Here are some of the pictures I took of the animals on display…

This was the Cabela’s in Hamburg, PA. One of the places we stopped to get a new water pump for the RV said it was the largest in the nation.