The weather was gorgeous for a Sunday drive from Connecticut to Vermont. Travel was easy, everyone was excited, but the best part was the motorcycles. It was the last day of Laconia (NH) Motorcycle Week, and people were starting to head home. The southbound lanes of I-91 had a lot of extra motorcycle traffic, and I was filled with a mix of joy (at seeing the different bikes) and jealousy (at not being out there).
We got to Stowe in pretty good time and got settled in to "Stowe Haus". Ellen's brother-in-law John's brother is a retired colonel from the army, but he's been hired as a consultant to do whatever it was he was doing when he was active duty. This means that he is still "stationed" in Germany. He has a house in Stowe so that he and his family will have a place to go when they come back to the states, and I think it will be a place to live upon permanent return. In the meantime, the house gets rented out, and we are beneficiaries of that largesse.
Laura and Liam and Maggie were there to greet us upon our arrival, and Liam and I ended up sitting around watching the USA-Portugal World Cup match. It was a thrilling game, that ended in a tie as Portugal scored just before the end of extra time in the second half. Now the US has to beat or tie Germany on Thursday to move on to the elimination round.
Monday saw us head in to Laura's house in Colchester. We had decided to go to Burlington and to the Church Street Marketplace to do some shopping and visit our niece Libby, who works at Ben & Jerry's (score!!). We wandered around, visiting shops we usually frequent, like Earthbound (clothes, but also incense, cool Buddhist/Hindu statuary, and other eclectic stuff), Frog Hollow (locally made art pieces) and stores we've recently discovered, like Saratoga Olive Oil Company (this year we bought two vinegars - fig and coconut - and some spice rubs - Adobo and Kentucky something.
One really cool store that wasn't there last year is Blu-Bin. They do 3-D printing on site. You can purchase items that have been printed, or you can bring them your own files and they will print them. They also will scan something you bring in, and create the file for printing. I thought Iain's head was going to pop off when he discovered this store. When we got back to Stowe Haus, we had to scour the internet for 3-D printing plans that he could take in. We found a spaceship from one of the video games he plays, and a Ganesha. Blu-bin's website is "under construction", but here's an article from Burlington's Seven Days newspaper about the store.
As we were wandering around, we got a text from Libby that Ben & Jerry's was pretty slow and that would be a good time to come in. I had a cone of Coconut Seven Layer Bar. It was yummy. Here's all of us enjoying our tasty treats:
Tuesday turned out to be a low-key kind of day. We stayed on the Stowe side of the mountains that separate Stowe from Burlington, and we visited the Danforth Pewter Store, the Lake Champlain Chocolates Store, and the Cabot Cheese outlet. (They are all in the same complex, so easy to do all at once.)
The chocolate store has some interesting things, including a chocolate filled with cider from Citizen Cider. Laura got some for us to try and it was very tasty. They also have a wall of "seconds", so I got a Sea Salt and Caramel chocolate bar off of that wall that was a-mah-zing!! (Love the crunchy bits of salt!)
The Cabot store is a hard one to get out of without lightening your wallet. They have samples of what seems to be all their cheeses, so you can just continue to walk around the table filling up. All those cheeses are then available for sale in the cooler. Along with butter and yogurt, and local beer, and syrups. The syrups also have a tasting station. I especially loved the "hot" infused syrups - Sweet Heat, Sweet Chai, and Sweet Ginger especially.
We got to Stowe in pretty good time and got settled in to "Stowe Haus". Ellen's brother-in-law John's brother is a retired colonel from the army, but he's been hired as a consultant to do whatever it was he was doing when he was active duty. This means that he is still "stationed" in Germany. He has a house in Stowe so that he and his family will have a place to go when they come back to the states, and I think it will be a place to live upon permanent return. In the meantime, the house gets rented out, and we are beneficiaries of that largesse.
Laura and Liam and Maggie were there to greet us upon our arrival, and Liam and I ended up sitting around watching the USA-Portugal World Cup match. It was a thrilling game, that ended in a tie as Portugal scored just before the end of extra time in the second half. Now the US has to beat or tie Germany on Thursday to move on to the elimination round.
Monday saw us head in to Laura's house in Colchester. We had decided to go to Burlington and to the Church Street Marketplace to do some shopping and visit our niece Libby, who works at Ben & Jerry's (score!!). We wandered around, visiting shops we usually frequent, like Earthbound (clothes, but also incense, cool Buddhist/Hindu statuary, and other eclectic stuff), Frog Hollow (locally made art pieces) and stores we've recently discovered, like Saratoga Olive Oil Company (this year we bought two vinegars - fig and coconut - and some spice rubs - Adobo and Kentucky something.
One really cool store that wasn't there last year is Blu-Bin. They do 3-D printing on site. You can purchase items that have been printed, or you can bring them your own files and they will print them. They also will scan something you bring in, and create the file for printing. I thought Iain's head was going to pop off when he discovered this store. When we got back to Stowe Haus, we had to scour the internet for 3-D printing plans that he could take in. We found a spaceship from one of the video games he plays, and a Ganesha. Blu-bin's website is "under construction", but here's an article from Burlington's Seven Days newspaper about the store.
As we were wandering around, we got a text from Libby that Ben & Jerry's was pretty slow and that would be a good time to come in. I had a cone of Coconut Seven Layer Bar. It was yummy. Here's all of us enjoying our tasty treats:
Tuesday turned out to be a low-key kind of day. We stayed on the Stowe side of the mountains that separate Stowe from Burlington, and we visited the Danforth Pewter Store, the Lake Champlain Chocolates Store, and the Cabot Cheese outlet. (They are all in the same complex, so easy to do all at once.)
The chocolate store has some interesting things, including a chocolate filled with cider from Citizen Cider. Laura got some for us to try and it was very tasty. They also have a wall of "seconds", so I got a Sea Salt and Caramel chocolate bar off of that wall that was a-mah-zing!! (Love the crunchy bits of salt!)
The Cabot store is a hard one to get out of without lightening your wallet. They have samples of what seems to be all their cheeses, so you can just continue to walk around the table filling up. All those cheeses are then available for sale in the cooler. Along with butter and yogurt, and local beer, and syrups. The syrups also have a tasting station. I especially loved the "hot" infused syrups - Sweet Heat, Sweet Chai, and Sweet Ginger especially.
