VERMONT: JOSEPH, BEN, AND JERRY

What do Joseph Smith and Ben & Jerry's ice cream have in common?  They were both born in Vermont, and on our recent trip, we stopped at both places.

Joseph was born in Sharon, now a booming city of about 1400. 

There was a fairly long drive from the highway to the actual monument . . .

. . . and along the way was a cemetery unrelated to the Smith family.  I especially loved this stone with its numerous "typos" and corrections:

 Some guy surely got in trouble when he reunited with "Elizabe Chuch."  I wonder who made the corrections--Saml or someone else?

Just a bit farther up the road, we came upon the monument, which would be pretty hard to miss.  I was surprised to learn that it was dedicated way back in 1905 on the 100th anniversary of Joseph's birth.  The obelisk is exactly 38 1/2 feet tall, one foot for every year of the Prophet's life.  (With the base included, however, it stands 50 feet tall.)

 The area includes a nice Visitor Center and a church building closer to the main road.  Everything is beautifully landscaped and tenderly cared for, just like all of the Church history sites we have visited.

 The large slab of cement on the left is the original hearthstone of the Smith Family cabin:

 The home was pretty modest, but probably just a bit larger than this replica:

 I always like a good Avard Fairbanks sculpture. It just doesn't seem like a true Church site without one:

It seemed a bit heretical to rush through the Joseph Smith Birthplace so that we would have plenty of time at the Ben & Jerry's factory, but (gulp) I must confess that is what we did.

It was pretty fun to see the birthplace of an important food item:

Pretty much it was a day that went from the sublime to the ridiculous, but we had an awful lot of fun on that downward slope.

A DETOUR TO NEW ENGLAND: NEW HAMPSHIRE

Bob and I happened to have a free companion fare plane ticket good for anywhere in the continental United States, and we happened to have a few free hotel rooms coming through Hotels.com, and these two things happened to be coinciding with our 32nd wedding anniversary, so . . .

We flew to New England.

Bob is obsessed with crossing things off his list: Fourteeners to climb, foods to eat, countries to visit, and states in the United States to at least put his foot in.  (He once drove to the Tennessee-Arkansas border after dropping Rachael and me off to tour Graceland just so he could say he'd been to Arkansas.)  Neither Bob nor I had been anywhere in New England, so that's where we went.  He could cross off three states AND a Canadian province in one blow!

We flew in to Manchester, New Hampshire. (Did you KNOW there was a Manchester, New Hampshire? I didn't.)  Our first stop was Canterbury, a Shaker-town-turned-tourist-site about an hour north of Manchester.

Back in the mid-19th century, about 300 Shakers lived and worked here. There are no Shakers left in this particular community, but the site has been wonderfully preserved and we had a very knowledgeable, enthusiastic (non-Shaker) guide who obviously had great respect for this community.

The building below is the church, with one door for the women and one for the men.  The Shakers believed in total celibacy, and they worshiped seated apart.

The Shakers had a wonderful outreach program for orphans, and when a new child arrived in the community, he or she was assigned to care for one of these trees, which gave the child both a responsibility and a sense of belonging:

The Shakers are known for their gardens and spices:

Behind the village are eight beautiful man-made ponds like this one:

The path leading from the village to the ponds:

Of course, we had to find some "native" food.  I wouldn't recommend either one of these drinks:

We also visited the New Hampshire state capital, Concord.  With a population of about 42,000 (just a little more than half the size of the city I currently live in), it has to be the smallest state capital I have ever visited.  It's amazing that it carries so much clout.

We did find a lovely church across the street from the State Capitol, St. Paul's Episcopal Church.  It was built in the 1800s, but gutted by an arsonist's fire in 1984.  The Gothic interior was replaced with more modern decor:

 Awesome lectern:

Beautiful, vibrant windows made by a local craftsman:

This painting and its window-like framing was my favorite thing about St. Paul's:

On our way north, we made a stop in Lebanon and scouted out the approximate site of the Smith family cabin in 1813, the year Joseph had his leg operated on.  The property, which now boasts a gas station and convenience store, was next to this beautiful section of the Connecticut River:

See Bob's post here for much more detail on the site.

Finally, we stopped in Hanover to take a quick look at Dartmouth College and check another one of the Ivies off another one of Bob's Lists. The smallest school in the Ivy League, it was charming and relatively peaceful the afternoon we were there:

More to come: Vermont, Montreal, and Maine.