We Heart Vermont

Last weekend, Chuck's mom, Pat, came up to visit us in Boston. Like my parents, she had come to see us in Seattle but hadn't spent much time with us exploring Boston/the Northeast. She arrived on Friday and we did the typical North End dinner and pastries that we always do with our visitors.

Saturday morning we started a weekend road trip- beginning with Salem, MA and ending up in Burlington, VT.

In Salem, we explored the town, took a history tour (which became a private tour when we were the only people signed up for it), and ate lunch on the water. It was cool to hear the history of Salem and learn new things about the town, but he didn't really talk about witches enough for our taste. We wanted to hear the juicy stories! Oh well. We saw a lot of cool landmarks, including the hall where they filmed a major scene from everyone's favorite Halloween movie, Hocus Pocus. We saw real historical landmarks too of course, like one of the oldest remaining houses in the U.S. and the second oldest cemetery.

Hocus Pocus shooting location- where Bette Midler sings "I Put a Spell On You"

I want this house.

View from lunch

After Salem, we drove to Vermont towards Burlington and took a little scenic detour along the way. Vermont is famous for it's old covered bridges, so we looked on a map and tried to find some that weren't too far off the beaten path. While searching, we also found there was a place called Quechee Gorge, aka Vermont's Little Grand Canyon. So obviously we decided we had to see it.

The best way to see it is from a bridge, and we found it was pretty freezing when we stood out on the bridge. So we snapped a couple pictures and ran back to the car. Picture Clark Griswold at the Grand Canyon. That was us.

Then we found some of the covered bridges. This red one was my favorite.

Finally we made it to our hotel outside Burlington, and after checking in we decided to drive into town to find Church Street. First we stopped at Lake Champlain to snap some pictures because the sun was setting and it looked really pretty.

It reminded me a lot of Puget Sound in Seattle and for a second I missed living in Seattle and also thought about moving to Vermont.

After the lake, we walked around Church Street for a little while but most places were closing and it was kind of chilly, so after about an hour we left. We found a Texas Roadhouse right by our hotel, so of course we had to eat there. :) It was great, as always.

Sunday was Easter, so we headed into Burlington again for an Easter Brunch at a place called the Bluebird Tavern. It was delicious.

After brunch we walked Church Street again and got some truffles from the famous Lake Champlain Chocolates.

We then decided to go on another scenic drive, this time to a little island in the middle of Lake Champlain. We found a state park and got some pictures of the lake from a campsite within the park.

Before heading back to Boston, we made one last stop- at the Magic Hat Brewery just south of Burlington. Our tour guide asked why the 7-8 of us on the tour were touring a brewery and drinking beer on Easter, to which we responded "why not?" The tour was short and sweet and at the end we got to do a free tasting. Magic Hat isn't my favorite beer but we all found one or two that we liked.

And with that we ended our trip and headed south to Boston! We love Vermont a lot and I wish we had explored more of the state in our time here. I guess we will just have to come back someday for a vacation!