Vergennes

 After our stay in Converse Bay, the weather forecast showed a lot of doom and gloom heading our way for the following day - I've never actually seen a forecast with a 100% chance of thundershowers. We needed to find somewhere where we would be protected, no matter what came. The City of Vergennes, known as the smallest city in the US, seemed like the perfect place to hunker down through a storm. To get there from the lake, we had to follow the Otter Creek 7 miles inland, from the top left corner all the way down to Vergennes in the bottom right corner in the map below.

It was a beautiful ride, filled with anticipation. Our guide book described it as similar to the Lousiana bayou or the Florida Everglades, minus the alligators (lots of turtles though!).  We also saw a bunch of Great Blue Heron! You can sort of see it here:

We finally arrived in Vergennes to find that we were not the only ones to think Vergennes might be a safe spot to wait out the storm. There was no room at the public docks, so we had to anchor a bit further down by the waterfall and power station. Needless to say, there was no swimming while we were there. It was a pretty nice place to anchor, with the sound of the crashing waterfall, which was all lit up at night.

We had a delicious steak dinner on the boat that night, and invited our neighbours over for a drink, since for the first time ever, there was a smaller boat than ours!

 The next day was a very rainy day. For boaters in a safe, protected harbour, that meant a verrrrry lazy day. We slept in, had breakfast, I read, David scrubbed the decks, taking advantage of the already wet conditions, we watched a few episodes of Game of Thrones (thanks to Tara and Rob), then prepared to go out for dinner at Vergennes's nice restaurant. Now, I wish we'd taken a picture, because we got some looks when we entered this fancy French restaurant called the Black Sheep Bistro, dressed head to toe in soaking wet foulies, i.e. Rain gear, then once we were seated, proceeded to strip out of our foulies as if this were the most normal thing in the world. We then had a lovely dinner (lobster is in season in these parts, by the way, so I have been gorging on the delectable shellfish, while David has been favouring fish).

I should take a moment to comment on the food at this fine establishment. Being a French restaurant, they brought us freshly baked and surprisingly authentic baguette. We ordered a bottle of picpoul de pinet, a white from Languedoc. We started with duck cigar rolls (essentially spring rolls) and an apricot dipping sauce. I then ordered the lobster salad which came on a bed of julienned carrots and corn. David ordered the coconut curry haddock. All tables are served accoutrements consisting of a bowl of delicious garlic mashed potatoes and a cone of fries with various dipping sauces: ketchup, garlic mayo, and our favourite, pesto mayo. I ate most of the mashed potatoes because they were so good so didn't have room for dessert, but David managed to find room for a mixed berry sorbet served in a large parfait glass.

It had finally stopped raining when we got out of the restaurant, so once we were suited up once again in our rain gear, prepared for any new onslaught of precipation, we went for a walk about town, noticing that the sidewalks were very crooked and poorly maintained, or maybe it was the wine. We eventually made our way back to the boat, and turned in for an early night. 

This morning we had every intention of leaving Vergennes in good time. We made breakfast on the boat (flourless banana pancakes -yum) then walked into town for a quick coffee in a delicious French bakery called Laundry. This is likely where the authentic French baguette from last night's meal came from. We then walked a block over to the 3 Squares Cafe to buy sandwiches for lunch to be eaten later on the boat, which turned out to be a bit of a wait. We then got distracted by a book sale at the library, and came away with some historical fiction and a book on Bordeaux signed by Robert J. Parker, which could be worth something one day, and a Robert Ludlum book and the Duke Ellington biography for David. At this point it was 1 o'clock and we had to be at the Westport marina before 6, so we ran back down to the boat and took off on the 7-mile journey back to Lake Champlain.

The view in this section of Lake Champlain is pretty spectacular as we are right in between two mountain ranges: the Green mountains in Vermont and the Adirondacks on the New York side. The pictures unfortunately don't do it justice.

We arrived in Westport, New York by 4:30 and went for a walk around town before showering and doing some laundry. We then headed to the marina's restaurant, The Galley, for a delicious seafood dinner.

We've just spent the last hour tidying up the boat! Now we just have to decide where to go tomorrow, or whether to stay here and take advantage of having showers. Sweet, sweet showers....