Bev and Bubby Irick Cater to their early morning customers
at the last diner on the 45th Parallel where Vermont meets New York.

Day 19: Alburg, Vermont

There's a bridge dedication today over at Rouses Point, the bridge that crosses from Vermont to New York. But first we stop for breakfast at Kay's Restaurant.

It's a small restaurant where a cup of coffee is a quarter, but the owners of the place manage to go through six pounds of butter a day and a lot of home fries. It's run by Bev and Bubby Irick.

"Bubby gets up at 3:00 every morning to go to work," says Bev. "That's when he starts to think about the menu."

Most of the regulars are truck drivers, "My truck drivers," says Bubby.

And as for the bridge being dedicated, Bubby and Bev will miss the friends they've made the past couple of years -- "regulars" who have worked on the bridge construction. But in many ways Bev and Bubby are as responsible for the bridge being dedicated today as the engineers.

"I guess you could say the workers provided the know-how, and we provided the calories."

The bridge ceremony provides another insight to boundaries and imaginary lines. The Governor of Vermont, Madeline Kunin, had to attend the ceremony on the New York side of the bridge because New York Governor Mario Cuomo was out of the country (New York law wouldn't allow the Lt. Governor of New York, Stan Ludine, to leave New York State when acting as governor).

The Rouses Point Bridge, connecting Vermont and New York,
spans Lake Champlain where it empties into the Richelieu River.

Day 20: Back at the office, New Hampshire

There's a package waiting for me from the U.S. Geological Survey Library. The parcel has copies of documents written on the 45th parallel and how it was surveyed. It seems the parallel was surveyed easterly from Lake Champlain by two men named Smith and Collins. They submitted a bill for their services in 1766 -- one group of items on their bill caught my eye:

Quarter cask of Madeira: 16 pounds
Rum and Wine: 10 pounds 7 shillings
French Brandy: 2 pounds 8 shillings
Wine: l pound l shilling

This bill was submitted after the two gentlemen had "run the partition line" a total of 22 miles. Steve and I traveled a total of 2,384 miles, and we didn't touch a drop. Honest.