Vermont B&Bs, mud, geochaching, and flea markets
So Jeff and I had a totally great weekend in Vermont. On Friday he had to drop his car off for some repairs so I met him in Walpole where he was leaving his car for the weekend. I decided to tell him at this point where we were going and we were on our way. About halfway there we decided that we would bypass stopping for dinner and instead take my sister out for dinner for her birthday when we got up there. The trip was decently long and uneventful. A little over 4 hours of good conversation, a fun new CD that Jeff had made for me and faily light traffic having decided to go out through western MA.
When we got there the direction said "If there is snow on the hill, do not come up slowly, and be sure to keep your momentum coming up." No problem we figured....no snow in sight. But there was mud....and lots of it. With a little bit of a struggle I got my nice clean before now dirty car up the hill and we were there. (Needless to say this was far from the last of the mud we would see). We checked in to a cozy little B&B and were shown to our room by our hostess Linda who laughed as I informed her that Jeff had no idea what was going on as she described the details of our weekend "package".
After some directions from my sister's boyfriend Wes we were off to find her house which amazingly was only 8 miles away totally by accident. Her driveway was another muddy hill. We picked them up and headed to a local pub for what turned out to be a pretty good dinner. My sister was mildly scary but Jeff survived (plus it turned out she put in a good word about him to my mom and dad which was pretty nice I guess).
The next morning, after a breakfast of fruit, fresh baked pumpkin cranberry bread and ricotta stuffed french toast and with some directions from Linda we set off on what would be Jeff's first geocache. Linda had warned us that the road would be muddy....I don't think we were quite prepared. Basically this was a 5 mile road of mud that drove the car without much help from me. Thankfully it was flat and wide open though so I didn't really have too much fear of falling off or getting stuck. When the GPS signaled we parked on the side of the mud and headed into the woods for a little over a quarter mile trek to the top of a cliff near the Winooski (means onion I guess?) River where we sucessfully found "Poultry in Motion" and logged Jeff's first cache! Yay! I think I've finally found someone to cache with on a regular basis. Of course at this point Jeff wanted his chance to "off road" in my nice new Honda Accord :P so he drove us back out into Waterbury where we randomly decided just to head down Rt. 2 for no apparent reason.
As we were driving along we came to what appeared to be a pretty large indoor flea market and thus it was time to stop. Soooooooo many treasures to look through!! When all was said and done and the two floors had been scoured I bought an automatic pet dish I'd been wanting for Nora and Wilbur and Jeff bought a crossbow. We also decided along with more geocaching more flea markets were in our future.
Since we had free tour passes we were now off to Ben and Jerry's for our free tour and ice cream. While waiting for the next tour I enjoyed some Dublin Mudslide and Jeff enjoyed something with carmel and cashews and such that I can't remember the name of. After the tour the samples were bananas on the rum which was pretty good too. All tired out from our mornings adventures we headed back to kind of lay around and nap until our dinner reservations at 6pm....
....where we learned we aren't really cut out for fine dining. We did fine and all and Michael's on the Hill in Waterbury VT was beautiful but we both feel much more comfortable with much less of a fine dining experience and we definitely didn't fit in with all the wine critics sitting around us enjoying their meals which we couldn't even pronounce! A quick stop at shaws to grab some dessert and back to the B&B where we had a nice bottle of champagne and cheesecake while playing checkers and scrabble....both of which I lost at. Oh well.
The next morning brought more fresh fruit, lemon bread, and lemon ricotta pancakes. After checking out of our room we decided to do a little more geocaching before heading back to MA. As we got further along the road to Little River State Park the mud got deeper and deeper to the point where we started to get afraid we would get my car stuck. We finally got to a part of the road that we really shouldn't risk and the cache was still 3.5 miles away. We had planned on just about a 3 mile hike round trip not a 7 mile hike round trip (atleast) so we decided a change of plans would be best. The final decision: driving back to MA all the way on Rt. 100, a rural rd that runs basically parallel to 89/91 in serch of flea markets and other fun.
Turns out we had no such luck with the flea markets but we saw some cool things along the way and we decided that every major VT ski area is located along Rt. 100. After stopping at taco bell (which ended up making Jeff sick later that night...thankfully I ate pizza hut) we ended up getting back to Walpole and Jeff's beautifully fixed car in the early evening.
All in all a nice, relaxing, and fun weekend I think was had by all :)
When we got there the direction said "If there is snow on the hill, do not come up slowly, and be sure to keep your momentum coming up." No problem we figured....no snow in sight. But there was mud....and lots of it. With a little bit of a struggle I got my nice clean before now dirty car up the hill and we were there. (Needless to say this was far from the last of the mud we would see). We checked in to a cozy little B&B and were shown to our room by our hostess Linda who laughed as I informed her that Jeff had no idea what was going on as she described the details of our weekend "package".
After some directions from my sister's boyfriend Wes we were off to find her house which amazingly was only 8 miles away totally by accident. Her driveway was another muddy hill. We picked them up and headed to a local pub for what turned out to be a pretty good dinner. My sister was mildly scary but Jeff survived (plus it turned out she put in a good word about him to my mom and dad which was pretty nice I guess).
The next morning, after a breakfast of fruit, fresh baked pumpkin cranberry bread and ricotta stuffed french toast and with some directions from Linda we set off on what would be Jeff's first geocache. Linda had warned us that the road would be muddy....I don't think we were quite prepared. Basically this was a 5 mile road of mud that drove the car without much help from me. Thankfully it was flat and wide open though so I didn't really have too much fear of falling off or getting stuck. When the GPS signaled we parked on the side of the mud and headed into the woods for a little over a quarter mile trek to the top of a cliff near the Winooski (means onion I guess?) River where we sucessfully found "Poultry in Motion" and logged Jeff's first cache! Yay! I think I've finally found someone to cache with on a regular basis. Of course at this point Jeff wanted his chance to "off road" in my nice new Honda Accord :P so he drove us back out into Waterbury where we randomly decided just to head down Rt. 2 for no apparent reason.
As we were driving along we came to what appeared to be a pretty large indoor flea market and thus it was time to stop. Soooooooo many treasures to look through!! When all was said and done and the two floors had been scoured I bought an automatic pet dish I'd been wanting for Nora and Wilbur and Jeff bought a crossbow. We also decided along with more geocaching more flea markets were in our future.
Since we had free tour passes we were now off to Ben and Jerry's for our free tour and ice cream. While waiting for the next tour I enjoyed some Dublin Mudslide and Jeff enjoyed something with carmel and cashews and such that I can't remember the name of. After the tour the samples were bananas on the rum which was pretty good too. All tired out from our mornings adventures we headed back to kind of lay around and nap until our dinner reservations at 6pm....
....where we learned we aren't really cut out for fine dining. We did fine and all and Michael's on the Hill in Waterbury VT was beautiful but we both feel much more comfortable with much less of a fine dining experience and we definitely didn't fit in with all the wine critics sitting around us enjoying their meals which we couldn't even pronounce! A quick stop at shaws to grab some dessert and back to the B&B where we had a nice bottle of champagne and cheesecake while playing checkers and scrabble....both of which I lost at. Oh well.
The next morning brought more fresh fruit, lemon bread, and lemon ricotta pancakes. After checking out of our room we decided to do a little more geocaching before heading back to MA. As we got further along the road to Little River State Park the mud got deeper and deeper to the point where we started to get afraid we would get my car stuck. We finally got to a part of the road that we really shouldn't risk and the cache was still 3.5 miles away. We had planned on just about a 3 mile hike round trip not a 7 mile hike round trip (atleast) so we decided a change of plans would be best. The final decision: driving back to MA all the way on Rt. 100, a rural rd that runs basically parallel to 89/91 in serch of flea markets and other fun.
Turns out we had no such luck with the flea markets but we saw some cool things along the way and we decided that every major VT ski area is located along Rt. 100. After stopping at taco bell (which ended up making Jeff sick later that night...thankfully I ate pizza hut) we ended up getting back to Walpole and Jeff's beautifully fixed car in the early evening.
All in all a nice, relaxing, and fun weekend I think was had by all :)