Homeward Bound

June 29-July 5

We got to Park Woodyatt in Drummondville. It wasn’t as extensive as the map had led me to expect, but we spent the best part of an hour there. It’s on the St. Francis River.

The point, quite a few miles downstream to the north, where the St. Francis meets the St. Lawrence is where Spencer Tracy took Robert Young to attack the Indians in “Northwest Passage.”

We went to dinner at a restaurant called Le Globe-Trotter, which is in a hotel called Le Dauphin. 

I wanted to take Joanna there because the menu included duck confit. We both had plates of that, after we polished off a dish of snails. We paired all that with a good cheap bottle of French wine, called simply Les Trois Grappes, from a Pays d’Oc winery called Laroche. 

The grapes were Syrah, Grenache, and either Mourvedre or Merlot. (Sorry, I didn’t write it down.)

Saturday we drove to Coventry, Vt.

The Canadian border guard noticed the plate on the car. 

You’re from New Jersey? 

Yes.

What exit?

151.

I guess if you say you’re from Jersey and can’t answer that question, you have to be an imposter.

We had Google Maps directions, but Philomena and Jeff had e-mailed that part of the route from I-91 would be blocked for a centennial observance at Newport, the next town north of Coventry. 

They said to take the next exit south, which is the one to take when you approach town from the south. So far, so good.

We tried to follow the Google directions from I-91 in reverse. When we got as far as the closed section of road in Newport, we knew we had come too far.

We wound up stopping at a pull-off on the highway to ask directions from a couple of locals.

One, who was in a pickup truck, told us to follow him. So we did.

When I saw the old village church in Coventry, I almost knew where I was.

The weather has turned very warm, especially by Vermont standards. Temperatures are in the high 80s and low 90s.

We didn’t spend too much time outside except to sit in the shade and drink a beer. 

I took a nap in an easy chair.

Several neighbors came to the house later on their way to Kingdom Brewing, a local craft brewery in Newport.

The pub at the brewery had a band playing country music. They serve beer there in flights. I had a double IPA, an imperial IPA, and a red ale with a rich, nutty flavor, all of them excellent. 

I had to try one other because it sounded so strange, spruce saison. It is made with spruce needles.

Jeff said the recipe came from an old British ship. Spruce adds vitamin C. I guess taking a pint or two of spruce ale beats hell out of sucking a lemon to fight scurvy.

Jeff filled growlers with the red and the imperial IPA.

The red went very well with dinner. There was a roasted rack of ribs, terrific potato salad, and some leafy greens.

Joanna and I had been planning to leave Monday morning, but then found that Philomena had the holiday week off, so we decided to stay on till the Fourth.

Joanna and I took Philomena, Jeff, and Ian to dinner on Sunday at an Austrian themed restaurant called the Derby Line Village Inn. The “Line” in Derby Line is the U.S.-Canadian border, and I think you can see the customs houses from the front yard of the inn.

The border in this area is on or very near the 45th parallel. I know this only because I saw a sign announcing the fact right outside the restaurant.

So here we were, eating schnitzel and potato dumplings halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. The bar served some interesting craft beers. I had two IPAs, both good. 

One I had before and have enjoyed in the can. Like most brews it is even better on draft. 

It’s called Conehead, and whenever I drink it, I can only think about Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin playing Family Feud.

The big activity on Monday was to book rooms for our next trip—Zurich, Lucerne, Geneva, and Bern. So I took care of that. 

Ian received an e-mail from Dave next door. He wanted company to sit in the breeze under the willow and drink beer.

Dave, Jeff’s brother, splits his year between Florida and Vermont. He was back in the “brown house,” so called because it’s covered in silvery-brown Shaker shingles.

The oldest part of the house was put up in the first decade of the 19th century when an ancestor several generations great of the Kemps started the farm here. He got about 120 acres for his service in the Continental Army.

The larger house, where Jeff, Philomena, and Ian live, is built around an original core that dates back to the 1830s or ’40s.

Tuesday Ian rode shotgun and guided me to Price Chopper to pick up some craft brew. I got more Conehead and Shed Mountain IPA.

Both are local. Conehead comes from Zero Gravity Craft Brewery in Burlington, and the Shed from Otter Creek Brewery in Middlebury.

It’s a good thing that I stocked up. Four of us were celebrating the holiday eve. Jeff, Ian, Dave, and I sat up till all hours telling stories and sharing drinks.

It is so much fun to sit with a bunch of guys bull-shitting and getting loaded.

I remember interrupting the flow of ale at one point with a cup of Irish coffee.

Joanna and I left Coventry around 10:30 Wednesday. Traffic was very light, as we had hoped. I expect most drivers had already gotten where they were going on Tuesday.

We stopped at a welcome center in Massachusetts. It was off the highway and hard to find, but when we got there, we found a Department of Transportation office masquerading as a rest stop. It’s only open 9 to 5 on weekdays.

This was a holiday. You know, the time when rest rooms and welcome centers are needed the most. 

Welcome to Massachusetts. Nobody home.

We wound up going to Applebee’s next door. 

We have been eating some great food for the past three and half weeks. I just wasn’t in the mood for this.

I had a cup of coffee, and we shared a plate of chicken wings.

Even the usually congested corridor of the New York Thruway near Suffern was moving efficiently. A couple of sections of the highway had flooded down to one lane, but even that obstruction meant slowing down but not stopping.

It has been my habit to take N.J. 17 to the Garden State Parkway to get home from the Thruway. Jeff suggested I take I-287 to N.J. 23.

I tried it and it works. Fewer traffic lights, no endless mall traffic in Paramus. Come to think of it, Route 17 in Paramus is a bitch even on Sunday, when all the stores in town are closed.

We got back to Montclair around 6 p.m.

To my distress, Egan’s was closed for the holiday. We tried Calandra’s in Caldwell and found that the kitchen had closed early.

There was a place nearby called Forte that looked promising. It was open, so we stopped there. 

It’s the first place in a while where I’ve seen tripe on the menu, so I had that. Joanna had a veal dish new to me, listed on the menu as veal reggina.

It takes the usual very thin Italian cut of veal and covers it with eggplant, toasted mozzarella, and a brandy sauce with mushrooms. 

It could be that we were very hungry. Or it could be that the food was indeed terrific.

In any event, we’ll probably go back there again. We just have to remember to take our own bottle of wine.

Today’s the fifth. We leave for Switzerland in exactly one month. 

Be well, all. And may all your rest stops be better than Applebee’s.

Harry