We've arrived

We've arrived in Vermont!!!

We left home on Thursday after Dan had worked a half-day and made our way towards Cleveland, OH. We made a brief stop in Chicago at Trader Joe's to pick up a few items including these really delicious treats called Almond in the Coconut. They are like Almond Joy candy bars only the almond is chopped up. I have yet to share them with the kids. :-) And Dan snuck some chocolate-covered cashews into the cart too. After stopping there we drove a few miles to the Lands End Inlet to look for some clothes and a new swimming suit for Ellie. Unfortunately they didn't have the swimming suit we were looking for, but she did get a khaki skirt and a new pair of shoes for really cheap. And Natalie got this adorable sweater that I'm hoping she doesn't grow out of before fall.

After our stop there we continued towards Ohio. I had packed supper to eat in the van so we didn't have to stop to eat. After supper we surprised the kids with some Johnathon Park CDs that we had bought at the homeschool conference in April. We had put them on Dan's iPod and brought the sound dock along so we plugged that in and that kept them entertained for quite awhile. They are loving those CDs and keep asking when they can listen to more.

Due to losing an hour from the time change and stopping in Chicago, we didn't get to the hotel in Cleveland until almost 2am. Thankfully the kids were already sleeping so we just moved them into the beds at the hotel and tucked ourselves into bed. The next morning we quickly packed up our stuff and headed to Vermont.

Before we left home, I found a Panera in Erie, PA so we stopped there for bagels for breakfast. I had packed lunch for the day, but thought that fresh bagels sounded good for breakfast. We continued on our trip and had hoped to arrive at the resort around 6 or 6:30. Unfortunately, we didn't arrive that early. First of all, the road that we were traveling on in upstate New York was closed. However, the roads in upstate New York are few and far between so we had to turn around, get on the interstate and go south (the wrong direction!!). As we were getting off the interstate this cement truck pretty much ran through the intersection and Dan missed the turn onto the road and ended up getting back on the interstate--again going south. Doesn't sound like such a big deal, right? Well, at this particular exit, you could only go straight to get back on the interstate or turn left to turn onto the road we wanted to be on but couldn't due to the cement truck. So we were back on the interstate. However, there aren't very many exits in that section of New York so we had to travel quite aways to get off the interstate.

As a side note, I don't like how New York labels their interstate exits. They don't label them with mile markers. For example, one exit is 41. The next exit is 42 even if it is 20 miles away. So it is difficult to tell how far it is from one exit to another.

Back to our trouble with the roads. Aside from there being very few roads in upstate New York, there are even fewer points where you can cross from New York to Vermont because the border is mostly one long lake. Thankfully we had the GPS along otherwise I'm not sure we would have ever crossed the lake and we'd still be wandering around.

After we finally made it into Vermont, the driving was still slow since the roads are very windy. It was definitely a beautiful drive, just slow. As we got close to the resort, we continued to follow the GPS and drove down this road that I never would have chosen in the first place. It definitely wasn't a major road. More like a dirt road. But it was gorgeous and got us where we needed to be. I'm just not sure that we'll be taking that road again. :-)

When I had planned our menu for vacation, I was thinking that we'd be at the resort in time for supper. However, due to our detours, it was apparent that we wouldn't be arriving in time. Thankfully I had leftovers from supper Thursday and lunch Friday and we ate in the van.

Finally we arrived. We unpacked, tucked the kids in, and went to bed ourselves. Thankfully the beds here are comfortable.

Saturday morning we went out for breakfast at 158 Main in Jeffersonville. It was delicious and Ellie was particularly excited that they used real Vermont maple syrup. If you know her, you know that she despises pancake syrup. The restaurant also states that it is a bakery and I had been hoping that we would be able to pick up some muffins for breakfast for today and a loaf of bread for sandwiches. However, they don't have muffins or any pastries and the bread left a little to be desired. I had the maple wheat bread with my breakfast and wasn't too impressed. It almost tasted like they left the salt out of it. Kara's cinnamon raisin toast, however, was good.

After breakfast we stopped by a maple syrup sugar house and learned a little about making maple syrup. This was a small scale business that we just happened to drive by and stopped. We did not, however, buy anything there although I am considering going back and buying some maple cream.

After our brief stop, we went to a nearby small-scale grocery store to get our supplies for the week. Then we went back to the condo and unloaded. We had planned on just kind of chilling out and recovering from driving, but the weather was absolutely gorgeous so we decided to do a little hiking. Just down the road from where we are staying is some great hiking. We stopped by an information center and got some ideas on where we should hike.

For our first hike we went on a trail that led to Sterling Pond--the highest lake in Vermont. It seemed like a steep and rocky climb even though it only rose 900 feet. The hike took us about an hour and a half and even Natalie walked the whole way--without complaining!!! She kept asking if she was such a big girl and a good hiker. Of course I told her she was.

















After the first hike we had a snack and drove a few miles down the road for a shorter hike to Bingham Falls.

**Insert picture of Bingham Falls here.***

Yep. You'll just have to imagine what the falls look like. When we got to the end of the trail we found three large dogs barking constantly and several young men (probably in their early 20s) jumping into the water in their underwear. So yeah. I didn't take any pictures. And we quickly turned around and hiked back to the van.



We drove back to the condo and I made chicken pot pie for supper. It was a new recipe that I found in a Moosewood Restaurant cookbook that I got from the library on the recommendation from a friend. The recipe was definitely a hit and we are having the leftovers for supper tonight. The recipe says that it feeds 6 people, but as the kids said, it must be 6 people who haven't eaten for days!! I'll have to post the recipe later.

After supper we went down to the Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop that is on the grounds here and got dessert.

This morning for breakfast I made blueberry coffee cake since I hadn't picked up muffins for breakfast. I had planned on this for another day but had already planned on making a double batch so that there would be leftovers so moving it to today's breakfast wouldn't leave us without a plan for breakfast on another day. (Did that sentence totally confuse you?) The original recipe is called Strawberry Cheesecake Muffins but seeing as how I forgot to buy strawberries to mix into the batter (it doesn't call for it but that is what I usually do), I decided to make the recipe into a coffeecake and mix in a bunch of blueberries that I had picked up at Trader Joe's. And I didn't really feel like making muffins so I doubled the recipe, added a bunch of blueberries and put it in a large glass pan (it is a bit bigger than a 9x13). Then I mixed the cream cheese, sugar and some strawberry jam and dropped it by teaspoonfuls over the top. It was delicious, and I think I'll be making it again. And we'll be having the leftovers for breakfast tomorrow morning since we didn't even eat half of it.

After breakfast we had a great time of family worship. Then the kids went exploring outside in the trees right behind our condo. They've been having a great time and wishing we had a small forest behind our house at home.

Well, that's about it for today. Tomorrow we are going on some factory tours--a great day for it since it is supposed to rain all day tomorrow.