It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been to Smuggler’s Notch, Vermont. 6 years in fact! I forget the last time I was here. It’s always been tough to come lately because of Philmont. It’s difficult to take work off a week and travel 4,000 miles to Vermont/back haha so I’ve been skipping it. This year I had to stay home because of Coronavirus. Probably for the best, but still very upsetting. I can go into what I’ve been doing and my lack of blog posting later. I probably never will though.
My family has been coming to Smuggs for about 22 years. I’ve gone canoeing, hiking, skiing, climbing, swimming, mini golfing, and lots of day camps.
Our family usually stays in the Sycamore condominiums. Every condo building is named after something. Usually trees like birch, oak, sycamore, and owl (ok not a tree), I think you get the point. As I recall, my parents always did cool things like hiking, classes, golf cart driving, cool arts and crafts, or making essential oils (jab at mom haha). Meanwhile us kids went to day camp filled with boring arts and crafts, wiking (mix of a walk and a hike) around the mountains, pool time, or rock climbing. I mean there’s a lot more stuff than this, but this is what my fragile memory can remember. Ok so this is good enough as an introduction, I’ll get back into memories later this week if I’m bored again.
We started this current adventure on Sunday, August 2nd, 2020. (Writing the date so future me will remember stuff.) Typically on my trips we are looking at 12 hours of driving, then a few sightseeing stops, a hotel, and the 12 hour drive back. Not this time! The drive up was only about 3.5 hours and mom did the whole thing. That gave me time to set high scores in my game Phoenix HD (mobile game).
Aside from the gaming we also listened to a lot of Above and Beyond (music). ~In fact that’s what I’m listening to now~ We are in the Jeep for this trip. Philip was driving up in the red car and not even 15 min after we started the trip he got his first speeding ticket. Hahaha not as exciting as my first ticket though. Around an hour before we got to Stowe, VT we tried to sign up for mountain biking. With mom diving I had the laptop out and it was connected to my hotspot, however I couldn’t crack mom’s impregnable login setup. We tried literally 10 different passwords. It was super frustrating so we ended up pulling off the highway so she could do it. Anyways, we were headed to Glen Moss falls near Stowe. Philip managed to get there 10 min before us because we had to stop out in the Vermont wilderness to register for Mountain Biking.
The waterfall trailhead wasn’t that far off the road and we quickly made it there. Ok so it was 70F and humid. Humidity + Coronavirus mask + glasses = blindness. That’s exactly what happened. (My glasses fogged up.) The trail was pretty overgrown. I’m 6’2 and the weeds were taller than me in places.
The waterfall was about .5 miles away and wew were the falls big. A misstep from the top of the hill overlooking it would mean instant death or a gnarly picture. Of course just like the Grand Canyon I inched as far forwards as I dared and peered over the edge to see the bottom of the falls.
The trail kept going so I decided to see if it went to the top of the falls. It turns out it does and there’s also another pretty high cliff up that way too, but we were running out of time so I went back to the first overlook where we then made a careful descent down. The next fun destination was the supermarket to get some basics like milk, beer, and laundry detergent. Traditionally we go to a local grocery store every year to stock up on essential foods, but this year we chose Shaw’s because it’s quicker. Big mistake. The employees looked like they had just worked a 30 hour shift and the experience just wasn’t as great. Part of me was crying inside because I chose ultra processed food over nice locally sourced food. Ah I’ll never do that again!
After grocery shopping we went to go play mini golf. It’s right before the Notch and we have been going there for years. Now see my brother and I are pretty competitive so this match was going to be no friendly game. About halfway through (hole 12ish) my brother said “look a bear” and I was like “shut up whatever”, but sure enough a black bear had walked right onto the minigolf course. Wow! I was sort of conflicted because it was a great picture opportunity, but we should also be scaring it away because the whole point is to make it believe it’s not welcome and to never come back. It sauntered over towards the little shed thing where the people in charge of the course and I tried to warn them about the bear. They didn’t hear me, which ended up being ok because the bear went past them into the parking lot and back into the woods. Well, I ended up losing like usual because I was too overconfident and I didn’t really put a ton of effort in. Better luck next time!
Next we headed to the Smuggler’s Notch parking lot to check in. This year a person came out with our room keys instead of us going in to get them. We stayed in our car throughout the whole process. That about wraps up Sunday.
On Monday we woke up bright and early to try our hand at disc golf. See on the drive up in the Jeep we secured a lesson of disc golf on Wednesday with the pro Nick. Yesterday we went to the pro shop so Philip could pick up a midrange and I could buy a new driver. Quick lesson time! In regular golf, a driver is what you use to put the most distance on the ball. In this case we had a frisbee disc. A midrange is basically a weak driver. A putter is what you use when you’re around 20 ft from the basket. Ok lesson is over. After getting some tips from Nick on the best disc’s for us we headed outside to the course.
It’s a world renowned 18 hole course. Meaning they play tournaments and such here. I’ll save the specifics of the adventure for tomorrow for when we go out on the lesson. It looked like a wet day at the start and around hole 9 it started to rain. It would drizzle hard for a few minutes then stop. Did that off and on for awhile. We had to hurry because the next stop was mountain biking. I ended up barely losing to Philip. He has been playing more with his friends lately and honing his skills.
Mountain biking was next on the list of things to do. I’ve done a lot of activities here, but I’ve never done mountain biking at Smugg’s. The bikes had the huge rubber wheels on them. It was a mix of anxiousness and fantastic adrenaline while I was riding. I’m incredibly out of shape so it was difficult to pedal up the mountain. Going down was awesome. Weaving between trees and the turns was nerve racking. Not long after we started Philip almost died when his front wheel slipped on a rock. I lagged behind the vast majority of the time because it was just so brutal going uphill. It is wise to stand up and not use the seat to avoid a sore rear. The seats aren’t exactly made with comfort in mind. Ok so long story short we finished. The guide talked me into doing the cool downhill practice course thing (even though I was exhausted) and I’m glad I did it. I didn’t bring my phone for the bike ride so no pictures from the trail. I thought it was too risky with potential rain and mud. After mountain biking it hurt to sit down so that marked a period of resting time. My mom invited us to the pool, but we declined because we were too tired.
It’s Tuesday today and I have ended up procrastinating on the blog. I pushed myself to write it tonight. Today was kind of a boring day because I’m lazy and hurricane Isiais passed through. Lots of rain today which canceled all plans. Not any of the super high winds or flooding luckily. On Tuesday night my moms good friend Lynn had driven up to join us for a day. It was great to see her in person again (it’s been awhile).
Ok so on Wednesday I had a chance to show off my disc golf prowess. Philip and I took a disc golf lesson. I typically throw a forehand when I’m playing so the plan was for me to work on that and possibly learn a basic backhand throw.
As you can see my form isn’t great haha. So the plan was to perfect that throw into the ultimate driver throw. Philip was trying to learn his forehand and improve the backhand. Without going into a ton of boring details I’d say we both improved with the help of our awesome instructor Nick. After the lesson Philip and I decided to play a round of disc golf, but first we got a drink. He had a Powerade and I got a white claw. It was on hole 4 that things collapsed for me and I lost my driver disc. I spent at least 15 minutes looking for it, but I finally gave up because it had seemingly disappeared. I ended up going back to the condo and left Philip because he wanted to play more. He actually ended up losing his disc in the chest high tall grass on hole 12. Later that night I went swimming in the Sycamore pool. It was the first time I had the courage to go swimming in 6 years. Unfortunately for us there were a bunch of rowdy teenagers so we left.
That night we had tacos for dinner made by Mom, the legendary cook. Lynn was joining us for dinner that night and the four of us had an epic dinner chat with margaritas (at least I think that’s what they were…I’m not an drink expert.) We ended up talking about a mix of politics, life stories, opinions, and current events. Super fun! I happened to get drunk and if you’ve ever been with me for such a time it’s quite fun. :3
Unfortunately Lynn left us in morning to go on a long drive home and Philip abandoned us to go hang out with friends in New Jersey (while following Covid restrictions no worries). I got up in time to say goodbye to Philip. Then mom and I kindly debated what to do. I convinced her that today (Thursday) would be a great day to visit Burlington, VT to go sightseeing! She wasn’t thrilled, but after some more fierce debate we left.
It took about an hour to reach the first destination: the Whale Tails! Google maps lead us to the Ben & Jerry’s corporate headquarters parking lot, which apparently is where the trail to the statues are. Of course me being the great navigator I am…couldn’t find them. It was super weird to have people watch me fumble with directions so I opted to leave, but mom persisted and after 10 minutes of looking around we headed to the next spot.
Now what you have to realize is that I’ve been talking about this before our Smugglers Notch trip began. “We MUST see this.” “This is the highlight of the adventure.” “Come on it’s only 30 miles away!” So for us to actually go was a treat. Now I’ve been to the worlds largest (WL) Art Easel, WL pistachio, WL ball of twine, WL Czech Egg, and now the worlds tallest FILING CABINET. Woo! Ok sorry, I’m just so hyped. After the brief visit to this super cool spot we parked next to lake Champlain to see more things. The first thing was the Oakledge Treehouse.
We didn’t spend a whole lot of time admiring the view because there was a boy and his girlfriend making out. *Awkward* Moving on…the next weird place on the map was History on the Rocks, which turned out to be a nice beach with some cliffs next to it. People were swimming and socially distancing and if Philip had stayed he might’ve enjoyed the cliff jumping. Not too far away was something called ‘A Manor For All Seasons’. It didn’t have any reviews. Just one of those locations with a boring picture so I felt compelled to check it out and leave a real review. That way people would be warned about what’s actually there haha. Essentially at one point there used to be a bunch of cabins on the river and a world renowned resort. That’s the short version without boring you to sleep. Turns out there was nothing there except a concrete foundation. Nothing to look forward to.
Next we went downtown and made it to the monument to Champ the Lake Monster.
It was an absolutely great day to visit the shore of Champlain. I kept my eyes peeled for Champ. Didn’t see him this time though. Mom noticed some blue/green algae on the side of the dock, which turned out to be a harmful form of Cyanobacteria. It’s not a great thing to hang around. In fact, it’s known to cause cancer and some other diseases. So stay away from it!
After looking for Champ we headed north to the Ethan Allen tower. It was built in 1905 or something. Very cool to catch a glimpse of the lake and surrounding mountains on such a clear day.
The last place on the list was Rock Point. It looked like a bunch of super cool cliffs, but after discovering parking was closed due to Covid-19 and the walk from our car was 1 mile in the hot sun, we opted to just head back to Smuggs. Mom then suggested that we try to get dinner somewhere in the Church Street Market. It’s a street that’s been closed to cars so you can walk around on the street and visit shops and get food. We ended up sitting outside at a pizza place. Pizza was great and it’s what I’m snacking on now. After dinner we headed back to Smuggs and went to bed. Loooong afternoon!
Ok so today is Friday. The week went by fast! Today it was just me and Mom. I got up at 12pm because I was super tired for some reason. The only fun thing happening today was we went swimming at bootleggers basin. We tried out paddle boarding and I got to jump on the water trampoline. I’ve got to say that paddle boarding is easy and it was much more fun than the trampoline. The only problem was I couldn’t risk wearing my glasses on either because I didn’t want to lose them if I happened to fall off a paddle board. I generally don’t like pictures of me swimming so no pictures sorry. After swimming we returned to the condo and for the past few hours I’ve been browsing YouTube, listening to music, and writing more of the blog. Wew! See you tomorrow!
Ok tomorrow is here and it’s Saturday. Today I got up at 8:30am and we left to go electronic biking (e-biking) at 10am. Unfortunately Mom kept forgetting things like her pool card and face mask so we actually left at around 10:15am haha. The e-biking wasn’t that far away though and it only took 20 minutes of driving to get to Johnson, VT. The trailhead was here. Long story short e-biking is much like regular biking. The only real difference is there is a mini battery powered motor that helps you along. It makes the peddling easier. You can chose from the ‘eco’, ‘normal’, or ‘pro’ settings. Aka slow, medium, or fast. We started out by riding through a corn field towards Morristown, VT.
I’ll quickly go over the mask etiquette. So when you are off alone on the trail or super far away from people it’s ok to pull the mask down, but obviously if you are passing someone or going into a store it’s required that you pull up the mask, covering your nose and mouth. Pretty self explanatory, but mostly said for those of you wondering why it isn’t pulled up in this picture. It’s about 7 miles from Johnson to Morristown and we made it in about 30 minutes. The plan was to have lunch at an old barn in Morristown, but we needed to reserve a table 30 minutes in advance and we had gotten there too early so we went past it a few more miles. I’m not going to lie, the first few miles were hard and I had the bike set to normal/gear 5. After around 5 miles of riding I was in the groove and bumped it to high/gear 7 leaving Mom behind. Haha 21.3 mph for a few minutes is pretty fun. It was a struggle to stay together. Eventually we made it back to the barn for lunch and I got a Pilsner and a burger.
Also when you are at a restaurant table you can take off your mask if you want, but definitely put it on whenever you are waiting for a seat or not 100 miles away from everyone on a bike. The cooking options for the burger were ‘bloody or burnt’ and I, being the madlad I am, chose bloody. It turns out that means the burger is super juicy. There wasn’t much blood. After lunch we proceeded back towards Johnson and our car. It took about 40 more minutes because we took our sweet time. We ended up going around 3 miles further before turning around, making it back to the parking lot, and driving back to Smuggs. Around 20 miles biked today I think! The bumps I rode over still sort of hurt from mountain biking though. 🙁
Ok so I had an hour to update this post before we set off to the pool. It has this pretty large tube slide that I got to go down a few times. It’s kind of strange with only like 50 people at the pool instead of 300. When I was 4 I supposedly was too afraid to go down the little ‘turtle slide’. Look at me now! Flying down the highway at triple digits and going skydiving! Me afraid? Bah! Tonight we will have dinner at the nice Candle Hearth Inn and then tomorrow we will start the sort of long drive home.
Alright, sadly the return trip has come. This morning I woke up at 9:30am and quickly mobilized to get all my stuff in the car by 10am. We weren’t exactly sure when checkout was, which was a stressful problem. When we were done I thought to myself ‘all transports are away’ like they did in episode 5 of Star Wars. The only stop on the way home was visiting The Notch. It is where the smugglers supposedly hid items back in the day. It might just be a fable though. I remember one time when I was younger our day camp went out bouldering and I quickly scampered high up the rocks. Now see, there was this neat cliff outcropping I sat on to get an aerial view of The Notch. Well this younger boy tried to follow me, slipped, and broke his arm. Philip remembers the exact details because he supposedly saw it. That younger boy quickly ended the climbing expedition.
Today however it was just me so I had the freedom to climb wherever I wanted. Mom would provide first aid if I fell. I went up quite high on the boulders, which was scary because my shoes have no grip anymore. The bottoms are almost completely flat. Then we started driving home! Writing in the car with spotty internet is tough haha. Oh I almost forgot the picture of bb8! Here you go. See you next time!
Post blog announcement
Initially I was going to do this blog day by day. As you can see I didn’t sit down each night and write about the day so the structure is a bit strange. I threw around past, present, and future tense a lot. I wrote this whole blog on my phone, so I’m sorry if the formatting seems strange. It’s more difficult to imagine what it looks like on a computer vs a phone. Anyways that’s it for now. Hope you have a good day!
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