Stowe

We camped at Little River State Park. The road going into the campground was 3.5 miles of washboard dirt road. The campground itself was very nice with really private sites and a beautiful lake.

Our first stop after arriving was Ben & Jerry’s factory. We did the tour, but it was not very good. You watched a six minute film and then looked down into the production floor. It’s surprisingly small and not much going on. The best part besides eating ice cream is the graveyard of retired flavors. Reading the descriptions of the flavors, I can see why they’re in the graveyard.

We started the next day walking some of the Stowe Recreational path.

We saw the Von Trapp Family Lodge.

We drove through the Smuggler’s Notch Scenic Road and stopped to hike to Sterling Pond. The hike is only 2 miles roundtrip, but in that 1 mile in you gain 1,000 feet in elevation. Needless to say the path is costantly up. Not far from the Pond is one of the summits of Smuggler’s Notch Ski Resort.

We took a tour of Rock af Ages. It is a granite quarry with the deepest active quarry in the world.

We went to Morse Maple Sugarworks Farm to see how they make maple syrup. We also had an excellent maple cremee here. A cremee is what we call soft serve ice cream. We had cider donuts at the Cold Hollow Cider Mill. They claim they are legendary, I’ve had better elsewhere. We stopped at Cabot Creamery to sample and pick up cheese. We were able to go to two craft breweries, Idletyme and The Alchemist. Both are definitely worth stopping at. Scott had a Heady Topper at The Alchemist, it’s rated as the 7th best beer in the US by beer advocate. I don’t like IPA’s and it’s a double, but tasting it I can see why people who like that type of beer would love it. It has a very crisp and clean flavor.