Touring the NEK

Oddly, my son assured me that he had never actually visited the Northeast King during the fifteen years we've lived in Vermont.  Of course, I don't believe him, but last Sunday we decided to take advantage of a beautiful day and head north.  We were positive that we were going to see moose along the way, but I'm always positive that I'm going to see a moose, and I never do.  We cruised around with no particular goal in mind, but ended up stop in Newport and spent a couple hours soaking up Lake Memphremagog.  We didn't see the famous lake monster Memphre - or maybe it's just an evil spirit (I forget) - but it was a lovely place just to relax.  We also took a run up to Derby Line.  In the happier pre 9/11 days you used to be able to walk through the library from one side of the border to the other, since the building was built square on top of it, but those days are long past - I still wanted to swing by and check it out, but it was last Sunday.  On the way back we stopped in Lowell, Vermont to grab a snack, which turned out to be a pleasant, if long-delayed, time.  Gary kept threatening to ask people where the baseball stadium was, pretending that the Lowell Spinners, a Red Sox minor league affiliate (from Lowell, Massachusetts), and long-time rival of the Lake Monsters, played in tiny Lowell, VT.  He's always causing mischief, which I'm sure he gets from his mother.

Lake Memphremagog.  We didn't pick up any evil vibes that day.

The Boy resting at the shore.

When Gary was much, much younger his nickname was Little G, but at a certain point he definitively stated that he didn't like the name, so he just became G, and I lost my nickname, and simply because Scudder.

One of my general rules of thumb is that you don't order food out of its natural boundaries, but we decided to visit Cajun's Snack Bar anyway.  We especially liked all the alligator signs.

Gary starting to fade.  The place was packed, which might explain why it took an hour to get hot dogs.

Still, they were good hot dogs.