Just an update on the car situation. So after our hike to Sterling Pond, we visited Stowe Dogs (1669 Mountain Road) for some lunch. Just a quick shout out to them because if you’re looking for a good hot dog, with a myriad of toppings look no further. We each had a Stowe Dog (the local treat – hot dog smothered in meat and cheese) and shared some Stowe Fries (fries smothered in meat and cheese). Along with some diet Pepsi (I finally get the concept of a fattening meal but diet soda).
After lunch, we headed to Morrisville and our appointment with Palmer Automotive on Brooklyn Street. Another shout out to them – they put four new tires on my car in an hour – damage, $475 – considering when we bought the car the Volvo guy said it could be about $1000 to replace my tires, I think we did pretty good.
While they worked on the car, we walked over to Rock Art Brewery for our tour with Zeb. Zeb’s a nice guy – not very vivacious though but he knows his stuff. It’s a tiny operation, maybe one or two steps up from someone brewing beer in their garage but pretty darn cool. I’ve decided that brewing beer is the answer to making wine for those with ADD since it’s less than 2.5 weeks from start to finished product. They have multiple varieties of beer (unfortunately no test tasting) and we found out they do sell in Jersey (time to call Glendale to see if they can get it for us). We bought a case of the Ridge Runner, and a 12-pack sampler for our friends, who are taking in our mail (to go along with the Vermont Maple Syrup we bought them). Now I’m sorry I didn’t get the Rock Art t-shirt – oh well.
We also learned there’s a Brewery Tour thing in Vermont called the Vermont Brewery Challenge. You get this little passport card, and at each Vermont Brewery you visit, you get it stamped. There are 18 breweries on the card. When you get 4 breweries, you get a bottle opener magnet that says, “Drink Vermont Beer.” When you get 10 breweries, you get a “Drink Vermont Beer” t-shirt. When you get all the breweries, you get a Collector’s Set of Vermont Beer Gear. We’ve got two stamps so far (visited another pub/brewery for dinner last night), but next summer, we’re going to do a tour (we can get 3 in Burlington alone). If only we’d known about this earlier, it could have changed the entire tenor of the vacation.
After our tour, we headed over to Munchies for some ice cream – i got a creamee, what they call soft ice cream. Asked for a small, and got what I would consider to be an x-large (ended up throwing most of it out). I’d hate to see what a large is.
Then it was back home to rest before dinner. So the car thing worked out well in the end.
