I love Vermont. I first went there one weekend when we were up in New Hampshire for a long weekend. Sarah and I decided we would take a day and head over to Vermont to check out the breweries. It couldn’t be that far and there were so many good ones. Turns out it was kind of far. It would seem everyone in New Hampshire lives in the southern portion of the state while everyone in Vermont lives in the northern portion. So 3 hours later we made it from Peterborough to Burlington and boy was it fun.
Burlington is a great little city. We went for Magic Hat (they have much more than #9 to offer and it’s mostly really good) and I recommend you do too. The brewery reminds me of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for adults. Everything is a bit weird, but definitely fun and the people are eager to serve you delicious things, in fact you get to taste everything on tap for free.
There’re plenty of other great breweries up there too. Switchback, Otter Creek, Long Trail, and the Alchemist are great places (not all in Burlington, but all in Vermont) and if you get to the Alchemist early enough you might even get to drink their Heady Topper. We found it once just by a Google maps search of local breweries on the way to Ben & Jerry’s and got to taste it before they discontinued their tasting room. I think they brought it back now, but the beer is still notoriously hard to find and mostly lives up to the hype. Beer and Vermont just goes together. If there’s something better than drinking beer with your feet in a creek, while you throw rocks for your dog who will dunk her head to try to find them, I’m not sure what it is.
Speaking of Ben & Jerry’s the factory is halfway from Burlington to Montpelier and chalk full of goodness for ice cream lovers. They have several flavors that you can’t find other places, the factory tour (which you’ll have to ask Sarah about since I was sitting outside with Ella who wasn’t allowed in), and the flavor graveyard, an actual fenced off area with tombstones for all the flavors they have discontinued. There’s even two very happy looking cows out front that look just like the ones on the pints.
Lake Champlain is simply gorgeous and provides a distant view of the hills leading to the Adirondacks on the New York side, which will be our next stop. This is the first time we brought Ella over there and she had a blast swimming in the lake, I wouldn’t recommend that as much for people, stick to the shore or rent a boat/kayak/whatever. This time down on the shore I also stumbled across a place called Foam Brewers, a tiny little brewery that I found out opened only two months ago. They brew extremely small batches, I want to say like 20 barrels at a time maybe, so there’s a constant rotation of new and experimental styles. Sarah had a surprisingly good hibiscus saison while I had an IPA.
We camped out in Green Mountain National Forest. A gorgeous place that lives up to the name, those mountains were ridiculously green. They were also far from everything. The nearest town of any size was Middlebury which was 45 minutes up the road. So it was quiet, calm and completely without cell service, so if you’re every looking to get away and have an incontestable excuse for not answering emails, it might be worth considering. There are some good hikes in the area too, we did one called Texas Falls, which is a super easy hike with a great view of some decent sized waterfalls.
But you really should check out Sarah’s post for specifics if you ever have the desire to revisit any of the places mentioned.
Bicoastal Surf 