Stowe, Vermont

We went up to Stowe, Vermont for the weekend of Oct 7-9 to see the peak Leaf-turning season. Of course, it was raining all weekend. Hey, I finally got to use the timberland boots I got like 5 years ago. Too bad they're a bit dirty now. Anyway, we left at 9pm from Boston and arrived at the "stowehof inn" around 1am. I don't recommend it. The room was so small, it makes rooms in New York or Tokyo look enormous. Literally, it was the size of my den in LA. And there were no towels. On the other hand, the lounge was quite nice.


Day 1
We got up the next morning and went to the annual "Stowe Leaf Autumn Arts and Crafts Faire" or something like that. Not usually my cup of tea, but they had some interesting stuff. There were these jugglers for the kids. And there was a tent of ...condiments. I guess it qualifies as Crafts. Condiments. Dressings, Hot Sauce, Syrups, Chocolates, Fudges. Killed my diet. Luckily it was my free day. The GC bought some Mayple syrup and dressings, I got some Hot Suace from Vermont Pepper Works. We put that stuff on everything now (try it!) Need to get some more. I also got a 15 minute massage for my strained neck. The other areas were more of what you'd call crafts, although there were a lot of photographers. There was one guy who took photographs of scenery and would edit them in Photoshop and make them look like Picasso paintings. Pretty cool. I couldn't tell at first. Another guy did panormaics by stitching photos together. You could see some of the seams, but it was still cool, and it reminded me how much I like Panoramas. In fact, I've decided to pick up Photography as my next hobby just because we get to travel to much and we should learn to photography well so we can get good shots of the kids. You'll see in the photos that we ended up taking more pictures of scenery then the kids, cause we were developing our skills and testing out a new camera I got at a Garage sale. I got it cheap, and share it with Lilo, who is becoming quite the photographer. In fact, check out some of her photos from the trip. (Yes, we have conceded that she has an obsession with Birthdays)

After swimming back in the mud to the car (got to off road the MDX! Kinda), we went to the Ben and Jerry Factory. Yum!
Before dinner, we me a family in the lounge from Western, MA. Had a great time chatting with the couple. They were complaining about their room too, and in fact left early the next morning because they were so fed up.
We had dinner that night in the Stowehof inn. I have to say it was actually really, really good. Try it. Then we squeezed back into our shoebox. At least there were towels now.
Day 2
The next day, we arose and went to the Trapp family Lodge. We were told that it had the best view. We arrived, only to discover that the Trapp actually was Von Trapp. This was a lodge opened by the Von Trapp family (of Sound of Music Fame) after they fled Austria. Yep, they traded Austria for Vermont. The family still runs the place. The GC got so excited about it, she went to the library when we got back checked out Maria Von Trapp's autobiography.








Afterwards, we went to a cider mill where we watched them making apple cider. There was this little girl next to us who said, "Mommy, when I grow up I want to make apple cider"
The last stop before we headed home was the Cabot Cheese Factory. We got to sample of ton of different cheeses. This was really a killer on my diet. But hey, how many times do I get to go to Stowe?




We took the scenic drive home, and on the way passed a Ski shop having a major sale before the season started. We got some good deals to keep us warm. By the time we got home, the kids were KONKED out.
Check out more pics.