I wanted to believe

NOTE: this has bugger all to do with living in Vermont. I just fancied a rant.

Mouse in the house

Yay, we caught one! 

The quest for fire

It looks like the warm and sunny autumn days we've been having since moving to Vermont are coming to a rapid close. Today it's cold, about 47 degrees, and pouring with rain. Snow is forecast for Friday night so we'll probably be lighting the fire for the first time. Can two muppets who are used to October being sunny and warm survive?

Robert Frost Trail and Lake Paran

It was another warm (seriously, 51 degrees is warmer than you think) and sunny Sunday morning, so why not get off our arses and go do something less boring instead?

Rexleigh Bridge

After two days of rain we thought we'd get out of the house (and away from the dogs) and go take a look at the covered bridges around Bennington. It wasn't until we were on the road that I remembered I don't actually know where they are, and before we knew it we were in New York.

Visiting the Batten Kill River

We woke up to another beautiful Vermont morning and Alicia, who loves rivers, announced that she'd like to go see one. After checking the map she decided on the Batten Kill River, which flows from the Green Mountain State into New York. "Kill" is a Dutch word that means "creek," in case you were wondering.

Frosty morning

The one kind of British weather I've missed over the past 16 years is the frosty morning. I love it when there's a crystal clear sky, bright sunshine and a frost on the ground that leaves everything sparkling in the bright light.

Christmas Days

We've passed Christmas Days in Sunderland a few times now and the other day we finally decided to pay it a visit. If you're short on things or ideas to decorate your Christmas tree — or if you just need a tree — you're in luck as they have everything you'd need. And I mean everything.

Hogback Mountain

I was chatting to the bloke who cuts the grass at our rented house last week about how beautiful Vermont is and he suggested we check out Hogback Mountain if we wanted something with a view. And he wasn't wrong.

The Publyk House

We've passed The Publyk House several times over the past 10 days and tonight we finally decided to try it out. A major factor in our decision was being done with making crap from whatever we find in the fridge. We ordered the food online, and I went to pick it up.

Trash, houses, food and effing Xfinity

We've been building up a decent collection of trash since we arrived a week ago. As we're used to simply chucking bags of rubbish down the chute at our old apartment complex it didn't occur to either of us that we'd have to actually sort something out here to get rid of all the crap, and after checking with our landlord he told us to take it to the dump, or as it's called, the Transfer Station.

Lake Shaftsbury

We haven't really done too much since getting to Vermont. This is partly due to sheer exhaustion after driving across the country, partly to a sort of fug as we unpack our stuff and get used to a new place and partly to not really knowing what to do. So today we decided to get out of the house for a bit and go somewhere that isn't bloody Walmart: Lake Shaftsbury.

Settling in

Today we said farewell to the RV with a six-hour round trip to Connecticut.  We are very happy sad to see the back of HMS Dreambreaker, as I christened it, and if I never have to drive an RV 3,000 miles again it'll be too soon. We hired a car for the drive back to Vermont even though my new Subaru is sitting in the garage; we didn't think it fair that one of us would have to suffer driving the RV around New England roads on his/her own.

Day 6: New York to Vermont

WE MADE IT YAAAAAAYYY!!!1!!1!

Days 4 and 5: Iowa to Indiana, Indiana to New York

Traffic and road noise and cars and petrol stations and driving and endless NPR and more bloody driving OH WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!

Days 2 and 3: Utah to Colorado, Colorado to Iowa

We were hoping to get a photo of the "Welcome to Colorful Colorado" sign but Alicia got up to sort something out at the back of the RV and she we missed it, so here's the boring Welcome Centre sign instead. Please accept our apologies. And a word of caution: Rant ahead.

Day 1: California to Utah

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the cats began to yowl.

Two days to go

The movers have been and gone, leaving us with a mostly empty apartment that, thanks to its 30-foot ceiling, now has more reverb than a Slowdive performance.

Four days to go

This photo doesn't do justice to the number of boxes in our living room, which is my own fault for using the wide-angle mode on my new phone. It's like a mini-Manhattan against the wall next to our telly. 

The long road ahead

Alicia's planned out our route for the trip. According to the google, it's a total of 2,940 miles and would take 45 hours to drive if we did it non-stop. We could knock an hour off by going through Canada but we're worried that we'd be seduced by free healthcare and something called Tim Horton's.

So done with Wordpress

Caution: Rant ahead.

I've had it with Wordpress. I've spent hours trying to get the blog to look the way I want, and at every turn I'm frustrated by the new way Wordpress allows you (that's using the word "allows" in its loosest possible sense) to customize the look of the site.

Boxes everywhere, and other ramblings

There’s nothing like packing your stuff to make you realise how much crap you’ve accumulated down the years. We keep finding items that we either didn’t know we had or can’t remember buying. Well, I say “we,” it’s mostly been Alicia doing the packing so far as she has more stuff, and I always leave important things like this till the last minute.

We’re not there yet…

We haven’t even left. But it’s coming closer: in 3½ weeks we’ll be making a 2,900-mile journey across 11 states to where we’ve been planning to live for the past three years: Vermont, the Green Mountain State.