In addition to visiting Montpelier, the other “must do” item on my to-do list for Vermont was to visit the Ben & Jerry’s factory and take the factory tour . We made an afternoon out of this adventure!

We took a day to explore Montpelier (map )! Definitely the most intriguingly named capital city of any state. The city feels kind of like a quirky college town. Almost all of the businesses downtown are locally owned and operated, and there is not much in the way of “chains”.

No trip to Vermont is complete without a visit to a local maple farm. Upon advice of several folks as to where to get the best Maple Creemee , we ventured to Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks (map ).

We drove down to Burlington for an afternoon to check out the largest city in Vermont (map ). We were a bit underwhelmed by the city itself, but there is definitely a great public art scene. We walked about 1.5 miles to see and take photos of several of the murals in the city. We also drove to the south side to see the “world’s tallest filing cabinet ”.

The route leaving the 1000 Islands is taking us as close as we’ll get to Canada this year! We were maybe 50 yards from the border.

We really enjoyed our stay at 1000 Islands Campground . It’s basically central to both Alexandria Bay and Clayton, so being right in the middle allowed us to plan activities along the river without having to worry about being gone too long from the dogs. It also has a market and ice cream shop right at the front of the park - you know we had to go try that!!

Boldt Castle was a real treat. On our Two Nations Tour , we stopped off here for about 90 minutes. I wish we had longer to explore the history. There is an app that you can use for an audio tour and enjoy some of the history of Heart Island and the castle. The castle has a very sad story.

There are a number of tour companies that will take you on a cruise of the St Lawrence River with a stop at Boldt Castle . The campground we’re staying in had negotiated a discount with Clayton Island Tours , so this is the one we purchased. We opted for a “Two Nations Tour” with lunch. The sandwich lunches were a good value for the price and our tour was well planned and narrated. The only criticism we have is the allotment of time at Boldt Castle was not quite enough to fully see the property.

Another town near to where we are staying is Clayton, NY (map ). Clayton is where the railroads stopped in the late 1800s and early 1900s, bringing up to 30,000 tourists a week to the Thousands Islands . There is a very large hotel right along the riverfront called 1000 Islands Harbor Hotel, which is on the land where the ship harbor was located during that time. Motorized ships would take visitors out to the islands - several islands had hotels and large homes. In our afternoon here in Clayton, we walked around looking at murals, historic buildings, and reading about tourism in the 1000 Islands.