Saturday, August 21, 2010

An End Of Summer Road Trip

Having worked all summer long, I wanted to take a family road trip before going back to school. I didn't know where I wanted to go, or what I wanted to do, but it had to be something we'd never done, and not too far away. One of my friends had mentioned Quechee Gorge in Vermont, and I remembered that as I was Googling local attractions and looked it up. I read about a Gorge, a Village and a Brewery not that far away, and I was sold.

It was only about an hour and 45 minutes away, and I can't believe it took us this long to go visit and explore.  We went to the Harpoon Brewery for lunch, then decided to hit the Village before the Gorge. We visited an antique mall that boasted a Toy Museum that had toys from every age on display (and was soooooooo very cool), several very cool stores, including one by the Cabot Farms dairy people, and had home made ice cream. After that, we continued on the Gorge. This picture was looking down one way from the bridge.


This is another view, looking the other way from the bridge. To stand there, on the bride, and look down at this amazing bit of nature was overwhelming.  I didn't feel like the pictures I took did much justice to the amazing presence of the Gorge, but I really think you need to see it in order to appreciate it. We stood there, on both sides of the bridge for a while, just amazed at what we were seeing. Then we decided that we would take the trail down to the bottom, and experience it first hand for ourselves. You can see from the pictures that a lot of rocks are exposed in the water. Due to a summer of hardly any rain, we were told that most of what we were seeing was normally under water and it was a great summer to go down and really explore.

The trip down was easy, and the bottom was just amazing. The kids played on the rocks, and Mr. Man went in and got wet, although, I should note that he was smart and only got the bottom edges of his shorts wet. This says a lot about him, because a few years ago he would've just gone right in and spend a miserable ride home.  There were small fish in parts where the water ran through over to the ponded area at the far side, and they had a bit of a contest to see if they could catch one.

We spent a while there, just enjoying nature and taking in where we were, then hiked back up and headed home. It was a wonderful way to spend the day, and I was glad we got to have an adventure after a summer of me having to work.

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