Mar 29, 2013

Spring Break in the Upper Valley

By Marcy H. TP'14

While many of our fellow Tuckies and TPs spent their spring break on ski trips or traveling to far-flung countries like Japan, Israel, and many other amazing locations around the globe, we instead chose to stick around Hanover. It was so nice to have Zach home and able to relax after the intensity of school and recruiting the past many months. We enjoyed lots of downtime together as a family, but we also took advantage of the break to explore the Upper Valley a bit and made a few local excursions of our own.

During the first week of spring break a friend and I drove to Middlebury, VT for an event put together by Oxfam and Dining for Women, on success stories of foreign aid helping women in developing countries. Zach and I fit in a date or two, finally visiting the King Arthur Flour bakery (I can't believe it took me this long to make a visit), and that weekend we drove with our boys to Manchester, NH to see the dinosaurs exhibit at the SEE Science Center.
 

 
The second week Zach took advantage of some fresh snow to visit Killington a couple times to ski, helped a fellow TP with a project for her school, and we visited a maple syrup and cheese farm in Woodstock, VT for their Open House weekend. At the farm we learned about how to tap maple trees to extract the sap, saw the process of boiling that sap down to syrup (did you know it takes 40 gallons of sap to make a single gallon of maple syrup?), and tasted the different grades of syrup and some of their cheddar cheeses. The farm was adorably picturesque, as you would imagine. On our way back we drove through Quechee's downtown and decided to stop by the Simon Pearce workshop to watch the glassblowers at work.
 
 
 Sugarbush Farm
 


 
At Simon Pearce


 

I am continually amazed at all that the Upper Valley has to offer. It sometimes feels like you're in the middle of nowhere, yet there is so much here (and nearby) and so many interesting things to do.  Our break may not have been as exotic as others', but we greatly enjoyed it nonetheless!