We spent the week of September 15th in Cambridge, Vermont. We had been looking forward to Vermont the entire trip, and it didn’t disappoint.

For starters, our Airbnb was incredible. The unit itself was beautiful and spacious, but it was also located on a maple sugar farm, so on our first full day there we walked 100 feet from our front door to do a maple syrup tasting.

The syrups themselves were great. There were around 10 flavors to choose from - our favorite was bourbon, and our least favorite was chocolate. We ended up buying a couple bottles as gifts, and there was a big bottle waiting for us in our Airbnb when we arrived so we got to take one home for ourselves too. It’s really raised the bar on maple syrup for us - the names Butterworth and Jemima will no longer be welcome in our home.

One of the disappointing things about our location was that we were right on the side of a highway, so there was no nearby place to walk Winnie. This meant we had to drive a few minutes to some hiking trails each day, but in the end this worked out because it led Daniel to discover the “best run [he’s] ever done in [his] life”. One of the trails was a meandering rock and root pocked dirt trail that was not just physically intense, but also mentally engaging. Ellie didn’t like it as much, but Daniel took advantage every day he could.

The closest reasonably sized town was Stowe, Vermont, which we visited often. But to get there we had to pass through “Smuggler’s Notch” - a several-mile-long stretch of highway completely enveloped in color changing trees and bordered on either side by large rock formations. Some parts of the Notch were wide enough only for a single car, and it wasn’t uncommon to see folks pulled over on the side of the road climbing on the rocks. The notch was beautiful, but we did grow tired of having this bottleneck in between us and civilization. Like many places on this trip, it elicited the phrase “I can’t believe people live here” from us quite a number of times.

On our last day we dropped Winnie off at a daycare so we could more thoroughly explore Stowe and some other nearby points of interest. We loved Stowe - a picturesque New England town. We also went to a cider mill and had fresh apple cider and apple cider donuts. We both enjoyed the cider, and Ellie liked the donuts too, but Daniel is going to stick with Krispy Kreme.

Just south of Stowe was a Ben & Jerry’s factory that included a little visitor’s center. One of the attractions there was the “flavor graveyard” - a little patch of land filled with actual gravestones commemorating the flavors Ben & Jerry’s had discontinued. Understandably but hilariously, people were very quiet in this graveyard. Out of, ya know, respect.

The factory offered tours but we didn’t think to sign up for one in advance and so we missed out on it. But we bought an ornament for our Christmas tree there so it ended up fine.

Our final stop that afternoon was a Cabot cheese shop - their only retail location in the country, in fact. There we bought a litttle charcuterie box and enjoyed it outside the shop. This ended up being one of our favorite 30 minute segments of the trip. You can’t beat cheese, crackers, and a beautiful view.

• How much we’d like to visit again: 7/10. We wouldn’t go super far out of our way to get out this way again, but if we were in the area we’d absolutely visit.
• How much we’d like to live here: 4/10. Unfortunately this area is a bit too far from civilization for us to be really happy. Even the larger nearby town Stowe was a bit too small for us.