I'm So Excited & I Just Can't Hide It

I normally don't wish time away, (life passes so quickly why would you want your days to go by faster?) but I have to admit, part of me is wishing it was August because I am absolutely ecstatic about my vacation with Brad to Stowe, Vt. Growing up, my parents rented a house on Long Beach Island, the nicer area of the Jersey Shore, for our family vacation. Every year, for probably almost 10 years, we would spend a week in August building sandcastles and collecting shells for our driveway-side business, Shell World. When we got a little older, my parents decided it was time to take more adventurous vacations and we spent two summers in Cape Cod, Mass. and two summers in Stowe, Vt. Aside the from the Jersey Shore, the vacations that have stuck with me were those to Vermont. Not only is the scenery breathtakingly beautiful, the weather is absolutely perfect - mid to upper 70s during the day, upper 50s to low 60s at night.

Back in April, I told Brad I wanted us to go on a vacation. Although we've been dating almost 7 years, this will be our first official vacation together. We've done long weekends together and vacations with friends, but this will be the first time we vacation alone for an entire week. Naturally, I said I wanted to go to the beach - I could work on my tan, take naps in the sun and work on my summer reading list (which by the way is quite short this year). Brad had other thoughts. He's not much of a beach bum and doesn't really enjoying laying out in the sun. If he does go to the beach he wants to play frisbee or do something more active. Naturally, the compromise hats had to come out.

After deciding on Vermont, I did some research and found a couple of great places for Brad and I to stay. We decided on the Green Mountain Inn which is on Main Street in the center of town. It has the charm and romanticism I was looking for and it's close to nearly everything we would want to explore. While we haven't put together any sort of formal itinerary (do you really need one on a vacation?), we have some activities in mind - biking the 5 mile trail through Stowe, visiting the Magic Hat brewery, taking a tour of Ben and Jerry's, taking a gondola ride up Mount Mansfield and hiking down, and exploring Toronto because Brad's never been to Canada. This morning when I had a few minutes at work, I decided to glance over the Inn's website. They had a whole page of activities, which of course got me super excited. I found some highly recommended hiking trails and learned there will be a fall festival the week we're in town sponsored by a local chocolate shop. There are wineries nearby, canoeing, dog sled rides (yes, even in the summer - they use carts!), etc. Gosh, I'm getting excited just typing all the great things we'll be able to do.

So now the countdown is on. Five weeks from Saturday we will have made the 12 hour (yes, 12 hour) drive from Richmond to Stowe (with a stop in Northern Virginia to drop off Delilah and a stop in Brooklyn, NY to break up the drive) and will be relaxing, maybe in the white wooden rockers on the porch or perhaps poolside with a drink in hand. More than likely though, you'll find us exploring every little bit of Stowe and enjoying every minute of it.