September 7, 2018 Quechee, VT (Day 4)

It was a cool morning.  Auggie wanted to come into bed with us in the wee hours of the morning. His ears were cold.  We brought him up into bed with us and he snuggled right in.  I got up a little earlier than Bob and turned on the fireplace to take the chill out of the air.  It was nice and toasty by the time Bob got up.  We ate breakfast and got ready to hike the Quechee Gorge.  We left at 10:00 to drive the 3 miles to the Quechee Gorge Visitor Center.  
We picked up a map and began our walk to the bottom of the Gorge. Locals think of the Quechee Gorge as “Vermont’s Grand Canyon”.  It is 165 feet deep and is the deepest gorge in Vermont.
In reading the reviews of the Gorge, many people talked about the hike down and back up as strenuous.  It was nothing of the sort.

It was a wide, slowly descending, flat path that brought us to the bottom at the Ottauquechee River.
We walked down a few steps that took us to the rocky river bed.
The rocks were sloped in such a way as to cause a very interesting pattern.
There must have been quite an upheaval of the surface at one point in time.  Standing near the middle of the gorge, we could see all the way down to the highway bridge that
crosses the gorge.
We played around on the rocks for awhile before starting our climb back up.  It might be strenuous to some, but we took our time and there were always benches to sit on if one got winded.  Back at the start, we proceeded in the other direction to the top of the falls.  The path took us parallel to the top of the cliff and to the dam at Dewey’s Mill Pond.
The falls there fell quite a long ways to the river bed.  The roar of the falls was loud, but we couldn’t see the bottom.  From there, we walked to where we started at the base of the bridge.  
Bob and I climbed the stairs back up to the street level.  Bob walked back to the Visitor’s Center while I walked up on the bridge.  The bridge is very high over the Gorge and the view down is not for the faint of heart.  We were told that the best view of the Gorge is from the bridge, so I had to check it out.  There is a nice sidewalk on each side of the bridge with a different view in each direction.  I walked on one side and then crossed the street to walk on the other side.

Unfortunately, we heard there have been some recent suicides off of this bridge and the city is planning to put up some barricades for prevention later this month.  Someone had put up about 20 signs on the railing of the bridge that had encouraging words or phrases written on them, along with suicide prevention stickers.
It was a sad reminder of what has happened there.  I met Bob back at the truck and we drove back to the campground.  On the way in, we stopped at the camp store to check it out.  Bob had seen that they were having an “end of the season” 20% off sale and I wanted to see what they had.  We had lunch and then went off in different directions.  Bob took the truck to the car wash in White River Junction and then drove across the Conneticut River into New Hampshire to Price Choppers grocery store for a few groceries.  He also filled up the truck with gas in New Hampshire because it was cheaper.  I, on the other hand, stayed in the campground to give Auggie a bath and a haircut.  He was such a good boy and stood on the picnic table perfectly still while I gave him a haircut, even when other dogs walked by our campsite with their owners.  After his haircut, he got to relax in the sun while I unpacked some of our warmer clothes and vacuumed the trailer.  When Bob got back, he and I finished Auggie’s haircut.  Then Bob vacuumed out the truck and I organized the storage compartment under the bed.  After 6 weeks on the road, things get a little out of place and the trailer needs a little tidying up.  Bob picked up some great shish kabobs at the store, marinated in bourbon glaze, for dinner.  
We ate a later dinner and took our evening walk with Auggie.   I mentioned that we could use a folding step, for those times (like now) where the first step of the camper is too high off of the ground.  We stopped in the camp store and picked one up.  It was a good buy and worked out great.  We could have used it a few times on this trip already.
We returned to the trailer and turned on the fireplace for a cozy night of watching some TV. Tomorrow we leave for the White Mountains in New Hampshire and to meet our friends, Mike and Patti, who brought their camper up from Rochester, NH to camp a few days with us.  We are looking forward to it!