Day Thirty: Back on the mooove.

Our first day back on the road after a refreshing multiple-day oasis, Day Thirty was exciting and rejuvenating even as it was blearily sad to put a place with family and familiarity into our rearview mirror. We started out the day with a delicious breakfast at Seven Stars Bakery, a delightful Providence favorite stocked with locally roasted coffee and freshly crafted artisan pastries. Stephen purchased two sourdough baguettes for our trip (something which, I'd like to point out, my mother once refused to do, even though I was starving to death in a dream I once had). We had put 6,749 miles on ol' Blue Hornet since March 31st, which meant we had a third thing to look forward to that day: hitting seven thousand miles since we first turned left on Los Coyotes Diagonal.

The other two items on our list for Day Thirty? Well, the first proved to be a milestone in itself, because it was where Mike and I learned just how much ice cream was, you know, probably enough for today. We drove through Massachusetts, cut through New Hampshire, and found ourselves in Waterbury, Vermont just a few minutes before the start of the half-hourly tour of the Ben & Jerry's factory. Oh, and it was much awesomer than you might think. The only damper on the fantastic was a mother who could not keep her three-year-old from bashing into everything and everyone around, and who could not keep his poopy pants from wafting through the observation deck and mingling forever in association with Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Karamel Sutra. But it was nothing a few samples of Strawberry Cheesecake couldn't fix. And, when you throw in a couple scoops of our favorite flavors from the adjoining shop and a jaunt through the third- or fourth-coolest graveyard we've seen so far, it was all in all pretty darn cool. Hehe.

As we left Ben & Jerry's, we achieved our second objective for the day, one that, I'll admit, got us a little emotional. We started our long southwest diagonal towards home. Driving through the gorgeousness of Vermont, it was hard to take road pictures because the setting sun was illuminating all the bug splatters on the windshield for the first time in a really, really long time. And, when we unpacked our bags in the parking lot of our hotel in Rome, NY, we imagined that maybe we could kinda sorta see the Pacific Coast in the horizon. Of course, this was just the lingering effects of that famous Vermont sugar high, but we had a bounce in our steps nonetheless. It's like Ryan Poohausen's ringtone says: "California, here we come!"

We heard with our ears: "Wagon Wheel" (twice), The Cool (Lupe Fiasco), The Great Gatsby, Death to the Pixies (Pixies), and the assertion, from our B&J's tour guide, that milk stools have only three legs because AND I QUOTE: "Someone stole the udder."

Mystery words: "Horse and Buggy Xing"

Mike is hungry for ice cream again at: astoriedyear.blogspot.com