9/6/2011

We talked to the man when Camping World opened this morning and then took off for sight seeing. There is one national historic site in New Hampshire and one in Vermont. They are pretty close together. Near the first site we came across a covered bridge and stopped to take pictures. This is bridge #20, the Cornish-Windsor bridge. It is the longest covered bridge in the U.S. and the longest two span bridge in the world.

We drove to Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. This is the house of the famous sculptor, August Saint-Gaudens. He made sculptures of the heroes of the Civil War and was a master of bas-relief. He also was the first sculptor to fully design three coins for the U.S. Mint. One of them was the $20 double eagle gold piece, considered to be the most beautiful U.S. coin ever made. We toured his house, workshop and grounds. One of his workshops had a guest painter’s work displayed. It wasn’t my type of art but the colors were bright.

We left there and went into Vermont via the covered bridge and drove into Windsor. This town had a brewery called Harpoon. We had a beer and lunch then continued on to Woodstock (not the famous Woodstock where the concert was). When we entered Woodstock we began to see some of the river and creek flood damage in Vermont. We stopped to see Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park. This is a park about the environmental movement. After the Revolution settlers poured into Vermont and cut down nearly all the forest causing severe erosion and flooding. Billings bought a farm and developed one of the nation’s first programs of scientific forest management.

We left there and headed back to our Casita at Camping World. Just before we got to the New Hampshire state line we saw another covered bridge that had been cordoned off because it was undermined and unstable for traffic. We will be staying in Camping World parking lot again tonight because a part had to be ordered and won’t be here until Friday.