Parlez-vous Francais?

Our wanderings this past week took us through the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the beautiful hills of Vermont, and even out of the country to a very foreign land, Quebec Canada. Even though officially fall does not start until the upcoming weekend, it felt very “fallish” outside. The trees must have felt the same way because many have begun to change their colors already. There was enough to cause more than one oooh or aaahh as we traveled through this beautiful countryside of New England.

New Hampshire White Mountains - From old carriage roads to timeless paths over the high peaks of the Presidential Range, the New Hampshire White Mountains have it all. Nowhere is autumn more enjoyable than here off the beaten path on a glorious fall day with the roads blaze with rich colors. This use to be home of the famous “Man of the Mountain” a rock formation on Cannon Mountain that resembled the craggy profile of a man until it fell in May 2003. . It must have been devastating to the locals seeing this rock formation crumble and fall. What to do with the thousands of Old Man of the Mountain trinkets ordered from China? No problem they still sell them in the stores and shops…. Whatever, it remains the state symbol of New Hampshire.

The Flume Gorge - A flume is a deep and narrow chute that is used to divert water from streams to transport logs down steep mountains or sometimes power mills. When this occurs naturally it is often referred to as a gorge. Instead of the deep chasm being formed with wooden planks they are formed with rock walls. This particular Flume is naturally occurring but was used as a log transport and power resource. It is called The Flume because those that found it were used to seeing the artificial flumes and thus referred to this natural wonder by the name they were familiar with. This was a beautiful 2 hour walk through the forest next to water falls, huge rock formations and amazing vistas of the surrounding mountains.

Vermont - Nearly a million and a half acres of Vermont land are in agriculture, sustaining the pastoral landscape that has made Vermont famous. Dairying is the primary farm industry in Vermont, producing approximately half the milk consumed in New England and home to companies like Ben & Jerry’s (makers of that famous ice cream). Vermont is America's largest producer of maple syrup and also produces substantial crops of Macintosh apples, potatoes, eggs, honey, vegetables, Christmas trees, lumber, pulp wood, and green house nursery products. If that isn’t enough it has down right beautiful scenery. As we drove though the state, it became clear that we would have to come back to this beautiful place.

Quebec, Oh Canada… After driving though Vermont we thought it would be fun to go over the US/ Canadian border into Quebec. At least that is what we thought. Oh the border crossing went smoothly (you know we have done this drill before). But instantly we are in a foreign land where we not only cannot understand what anyone is saying but to our horror all of the signs are in French, only French! The landscape was not much different from Vermont and New Hampshire and the trees are at about the same fall colors so after having a picnic lunch we turned the truck around and headed back to the good ole US. It was so nice to hear the US Customs official respond when we told him we had only been out of the US for a couple of hours “well, welcome home!”. Thanks we needed that.

Road Revelation #16 – Expect communication difficulties if you leave the home land. Now don’t get me wrong, I have traveled the world but was still taken aback by the lack of English in Quebec. I knew they spoke French but I thought it was Canadian law that everything was labeled in both French and English. Am I wrong? Or maybe that only applies to the other provinces and Quebec is immune to this law? Maybe my Canadian friends can help explain this “two faced, double standard” of theirs.