Focht Family Blog

While Nathan was at work the kids were at play! :) We were actually getting a lot of schoolwork done but after school was done each day the kids wanted to go to the pool. Here is a view of Lake Champlain from the pool…

The kids were all over the place so this is the best picture I got with all three of them in the same frame…

Samantha and Timmy were determined to figure out how to do a hand stand in the water. This was the best that I could get of Samantha. She isn’t having a lot of luck figuring it out because she is trying to do it one handed so she can plug her nose with the other hand…

Timmy was having a bit more success…

One of the wonders of nature that Timmy found going to the pool one day was a snake. We still aren’t sure where his home was although Timmy did later find a small hole near the back of our RV…

I don’t think it was poisonous at least. Samantha and I studied plants in science this week so we were also able to find examples of each of the types of plants we studied while walking throughout the campground. It is so nice to be able to show her what we learn about because it really reinforces the lessons. :)

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…

Sunday night I was able to visit with a friend of mine from high school days. She had moved near to where my mom’s camper was being worked on so that was wonderful. Her name is Kim and she does reenactments of the French and Indian War so we are going to try to go to one of the reenactments next year so the kids can watch and learn. :)

Monday morning we picked up my mom’s camper. It is better than new. They fortified the area that broke with steel and also the other side so it wouldn’t happen again. Here is a picture of the same area that was broken…

The gentleman who was working on the repairs also noticed that my mom had a large gap where her water heater is instead of the compartment being flush with the camper so he repaired that as well…

After we picked it up we were back on the road again. We drove through Rhode Island on the way back to Vermont so we could check off another state and we had ice cream for dinner at Kimball’s! :) LOVE that ice cream!!

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.