The Hills are (Almost) Alive

I seem to be so lucky as to be regularly getting up to the Green Mountain State. Mr. Right and I decided we had had enough of trying to live in our house while also trying to sell it, so we went away for the weekend so the real estate folks could have it to themselves. It was a good trip -- saw some beautiful spots. We picked a funny time, in Vermont it's the "shoulder season," or to put it less euphemistically, "mud season." While things were turning pretty green in Boston in late April, Vermont wasn't quite their yet. Hence, the hills were almost alive ...

Let's go to photos, which I think is the point of this post, no?

First up, we met up with some of Mr. Right's old pals from college and their cutie pie daughter and explored an outdoor art museum called The Path of Life Garden. I'll just include one cool pic that is not of the garden as they asked not to share photos of the spot (which you can see on their website anyhow). It's a very restful and spiritually renewing place to visit.

On our way back to the highway, we passed a delapidated old dairy barn. Anyone who knows me well knows I can't resist such a photograph, so I took a couple dozen. Here are two of my favorites.

And here is a quintessential dillard57 blog photo. While technically, I was not on a food quest to find blueberry buckle in Vermont, I do always feel like I'm on the hunt for interesting regional foods, and this one passed the test with flying colors. My wonderful father-in-law and I enjoy naming all the fruit and cake combinations that exist in American cooking: crisps, cobblers, buckles, slumps, grunts, brown-betty, and pan-dowdy. So here's a buckle, which is a kind of crumb topped cake with fruit:

This trip was during that crazy 90 degree April heatwave, so a stop at the Ben and Jerry's factory seemed like a pretty smart idea.

Finally we arrived in Stowe and did a little exploring. There is a great 5 mile path that takes you through the whole town plus the surrounding woods (of which we maybe walked a mile). Then we drove up to the Trapp Family Lodge for dinner. I definitely come from a Sound of Music Family. I still know most of the words to the songs on the sountrack. When I was a girl, I thought Maria was incredibly glamorous (even whilst a nun). I still am a sucker for the movie, so I thought it would be very cool to see the lodge where they settled in the US. We had a surprisingly good dinner there considering it's level of uber-tourist attraction, and the views were sufficiently stunning to reassure us that the VonTrapp family had indeed picked a good spot for their new home. We finished the trip with a piece of Linzer Torte (above), which I have never loved for its dry texture, but this one was advertised as the best Linzer Torte in the country, so I figured I would give it a chance. And you know what, I would give it that vote. It was delicious, really nutty and fruity. Those Austrians know what they are doing. Now I just have to get myself to Vienna to compare it to the stuff in the old country.

And with that (and one small car breakdown and long tow later, but we'll save that for the new car buying post), we returned home to our cat and regular lives, looking forward to our next adventure.