No. Not that kind…

The kind where you and your new neighbor speed around on one of those 4-wheel thingies for an afternoon. (“Eh, Teevees,” I’m told they’re called.)

Now I’ll level with you. This is not a thing I saw myself doing.
Ever.

And after about 10 minutes of riding, when I’d wrenched the right tire into a log and flew head first off the 4-wheeler into some tall grass (and had to “catch” the thing with my feet to stop it from rolling on top of me), I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue doing it.

But…

Those who know me are shaking their heads sadly right about now, because they’re well aware of my blind arrogance in the face of adversity. And crashing only made me want to master the infernal machine all the more. Yes, sometimes pride cometh after the fall.

My neighbor and his daughter did have to come around and rescue me, though, and used a winch to pull the toppled ATV out of the ditch and get it back up on the trail.

And I’m happy to say that was the only time I wrecked the thing. The rest of the afternoon was spent zooming along miles of beautiful trails deep in the Vermont woods:

And learning about some really interesting sites that are hidden back there. Like, for example, a graveyard from the early 1800’s:

A bit macabre, sure, but someone cares enough about this place to maintain it, keeping it mowed and edged…and I found that to be a lovely sentiment. There was also this beautiful paddock behind the graveyard where we stopped for a rest.

As we turned and headed back home, the sky absolutely opened up on us. Each and every raindrop becoming a 35mph bee sting on my face and arms for the last 15 minutes of the drive.

But, totally worth it.

So much so, in fact, that I want to figure out a way to bring Daph and Jen along to see how beautiful these trails are up there. So I’m currently formulating a plan to procure a 4-seater version of one of these things. A “Ewe TV” I believe they’re called.

We shall see if that actually happens…

Also, as I threatened in my last post, we did go back to Burtt’s Orchard to pick some McIntosh apples. And we stopped off for a picture at one of the most Vermont scenes ever on the way home…

Again. Ridiculously beautiful.
The scenery is quite nice too.

And finally, we did quite a bit of upgrading to the ol’ chicken coop this weekend…

So they’ll have plenty of room when they eventually move out and get jobs making breakfast for us in a few weeks.

I’m not quite sure Jen is ready to be an empty nester yet, though…

See you soon.