Vermont Part Three: Friends, Stowe, and the Long Drive Home!

Here is my last installment of our Vermont trip. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed it!

Saturday was my 25k Race at Trapp Family Lodge. You can check out a full recap here. My goal was to take my time, have fun, and take a lot of pictures. All three goals were met and the course wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

One thing I forgot to mention in my race recap was that near the beginning of the race, I kept getting caught near this one woman who was talking SO LOUD. She was basically screaming to her friends. I kicked it into gear to get ahead of her because honestly, her loud talking was ENRAGING me.

After my race, I went back to the hotel to shower. Then I drove to Stowe to meet Paul, Bob, and Rachel. (They had a fun morning grabbing breakfast and checking out Trapp Family Brewery.)

Stowe is a very cute town with lots of interesting shops and galleries.

We went into a public house that sold lots of different beers and wines. Check out the sign on their bathroom door...

I saw this wine. At the bottom it says, "We crush grapes. You crush life." Ha!

Did you know you can walk around Stowe with open containers!? Of course we all bought a beverage to carry around and sip because... why not!?

Here's to a wonderful day with friends!

I had a cranberry cider and loved it!

The staff at the public house directed us to the Stowe Recreation Path. We took a short walk on it. It was beautiful!

There was a spur that was called the Quiet Path. I'd like to make that loud lady at the race come here.

 Check out this sign at a church parking lot. I love Vermont!

After we were done checking out Stowe, we went to Boyden Valley Winery and Spirits to do a cider and wine tasting. Guess what... I like cider now!

We bought a bunch of wine and ciders to take home, but here are just a couple. It's so nice not having to get on a plane, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to buy all that we did!

Right next door to the winery was a shop with lots of different Vermont products. We got some mustard and syrup to take home. I also got a cat cookie cutter, because, why not!?

By now we were pretty hungry, so we went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant Bob and Rachel like. It was delicious!

When dinner was over, it was time to say farewell to our friends.

We miss you already, Bob & Rachel!!!!!!!!!!!

We spent one more night in the murder hotel and then the next morning we headed home. Without stops or traffic, it should take about 7.5 hours. However, we hit a TON of traffic and we stopped to do two hikes. It made for 10 hours of driving time and then of course our hiking time added on top of that.

First we stopped at Molly Stark State Park and hiked up to the fire tower. It was only about 1.7 miles round trip. But it was UP.

I planned to go up but I couldn't even make it to the first platform!

Then we continued south to Brattleboro where we checked out the Harris Ski Jump. They still do ski jumps here. It was so cool to see in real life! If someone said to me, "Megan, do you have any desire to see a ski jump?" I'd say no. But seeing one was cool in the moment. And it was on the way home, so it wasn't like we went out of our way.

If you want to see cool footage from the Harris Ski Jump, check out this video on Youtube.

There were many trails around the ski jump, so Paul and I took the nature trail. It went through a working farm.

It was after this hike where our drive home got DARK. We hit sooooooo much traffic. We basically were at a slow crawl for 55 miles. Not kidding. When we finally got to PA and had about two hours left, there was a huge storm and I was convinced there was going to be a tornado. It was just terrible. I cannot tell you how bad the drive home SUCKED!

But overall, our trip was fun and we want to go back to Vermont and check out some new places! And of course, visit Bob and Rachel again!

Would you go up that fire tire?
Did you ever speed ahead to get away from an annoying person at a race?