Skiing in Stowe

Happy New Year everyone!! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season with family and friends.

We spent our Christmas in Stowe, Vermont. We have been skiing for several years now and are slowly driving further and further to get good snow. So we drove up on Friday. We had some stops planned along the way to break up the 6.5 hour trip.. but the weather had other plans. Emergency alerts were issued and everything started to shut down early. But thankfully it did not impact our drive and we were easily able to check into our VRBO. 

I really don't like staying at a VRBO/AirBnB. They require too much work.. I had to pack so many things but I suppose the plus is the extra space. But I would still go with a hotel when possible. But by the time (6 months in advance) we got around to booking this trip many things were already booked or crazy pricey. Our place was absolutely beautiful and clean.. so that was a plus. 

Once we got settled in we headed out for dinner at The Backyard. The conditions had gotten worse, a lot of Stowe had lost power. The house was a bit remote and we prayed the whole way there. Let the adventure begin I guess.

The next day it was too cold to ski and the mountain was still working on opening and cleaning up trails so we took it as a break day. I had planned for a break day but it was supposed to be in the middle of the trip not at the beginning.. oh well.

We went out for a lovely breakfast in the neighboring town of Waterbury. 

Then we headed off to our first ever winter hike to a semi frozen waterfall at Moss Glen Falls. 

We spent some time in Stowe's Historic District.. everything was pretty and decorated. We even spotted a Santa driving a pickup truck.  

Enjoyed some cider at the Cold Hollow Cider Mill.. they have a live apple pressing area but was not open during the holidays.

and then we had the most massive tray of nachos at the Lower Bar. So good. 

afterwards we headed back to the house to play board games and watch movies.

Now here's where we hit a bit of a bump in the road. Considering we were coming to a resort town we assumed that restaurants would be open. But except for Chinese take out (which was going to be our Christmas dinner) everything was closed. I understand giving your employees Christmas Eve off.. I really do but as a tourist it really sucked. And we travel often over Christmas and it was the first time where some restaurants were just closed for the whole week. So we ate snacks and made hot cocoa and popcorn and made peace with it. 

On Christmas day the boys were finally able to hit the slopes. I stayed home. From those of you who have been following the blog for some time you may remember I am a nervous skier. I wrote about my panic and anxiety here. So I ski less days. I filled my time with three movies and chocolate chip cookies. And then we ordered Chinese food for dinner. 

The next day I joined in on the skiing. It was a beautiful day. The crowds were low so we hardly had to wait for a chair lift. It snowed pretty much all the time which made everything look so much more pretty and the Stowe resort had the best even if over priced cafe I have ever been to. Rice bowls, ramen, vegetarian options, Indian food, tacos.. pretty impressive. 

In the afternoon we had booked a snowmobile tour. We were supposed to do this on the day we arrived but it was cancelled due to bad weather so we had to squeeze it in with skiing. 

It was a two hour trip winding through a mountain.. there was a guide with us the whole way and it was an incredible experience. The boys loved it a little less. The sunset in the middle of our ride so the darkness was a little unnerving for D. He was afraid I was going to drive us off one of the cliffs. No confidence in mama's skills. 

Afterwards we called a bunch of places until we found a pizza place open. They had a 45 min wait we got our table in 30 mins.. okay.. not too bad. Then the waiter tells us there is a minimum hour wait to get a pizza. But we had already invested too much time in the waiting. So we bribed the kids with unlimited screen time and ordered a salad and drinks to hold us over. H fell asleep. We ordered dessert to kill more time.. and hour came and went and the waiter apologized profusely. It wasn't really his fault. Now D was starting to fall asleep. A little over an hour had passed and the waiter brought us someone else's pizza.. he said the people left without the pizza and it was our if interested. Yes! We ate someone else's pizza and then ate our own pizza. H woke up at some point in the middle and thankfully got some pizza in him. The manager comped our pizzas. 

Now I understand the tough position the restaurants were in.. with half the town closed there were very few places to go hence the excessive crowds and wait times. I felt bad for the staff.. those guys making the pizza were working tirelessly. 

We were there for another two days.. I skied one more.. the boys two. The restaurant situation didn't improve much but we did come better prepared.. many restaurants started turning people away due to too long wait times.

On our last day, before heading back home we stopped at the Ben and Jerry's factory. Ate some free samples and took zero pictures.. ski vacations are not really vacations, we were all exhausted. 

We stayed home for NYE and caught up on our much needed rest. 

       

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