Camping in Vermont

It started out looking like this:

You can clearly see a wacky boy and a little glimpse of the walking carpet we packed in the back. Max is holding a plastic arrow to his head that is part of a cowboy bow and arrow set we got him to take along.

I imagined him spending a lot of time walking around the woods shooting things, but it turns out he only played with it the first day. Still, it was fun. He pretended to be Robin Hood and then, after our Sunday morning lesson, Nephi, before he broke his bow.

The first thing we did was drive 4 hours Northwest into Vermont. I really wanted to see the Green Mountains. Conveniently, we drove right through Waterbury, home of the Ben and Jerry's factory. Sounds great right?

We went there with great anticipation. We dreamed of a great tour with yummy samples. Unfortunately, we had to pay $3 dollars a person; the tour had a crappy 6 minute movie and then a brief walk-0ver of the production line, which was closed.

Finally, the samples: a scoop in a slightly glorified fast food catsup cup.

Ginna was not that pleased to have paid $3 bucks for less than a cone of ice cream.

This bus, however, was very cool.

The biggest let down came just after we took this picture. Max was having so much fun that when nature called, we were just a little too far from the facilities.

So, while this photo gives you a good feel for the scenery and the factory, if you look closely you'll see a dad with a 5yr old on his back running to the bathroom in vain.

In total, the factory tour cost us $6 bucks (Max was free) for tickets, one pair of used underwear estimated at $5, one pair of orange track pants estimated at $20 for a sum of $31. What we got? A humiliated boy, my sunglasses fell in the toilet while I was trying to help Max out, a little ice cream, some pictures and priceless memories.

We got into camp on Friday night and enjoyed a nice campfire complete with songs and little boys playing with burning sticks. It was really cold, however. The overnight low was near 30 degrees. We decided to let Sultan sleep in the tent with us since we didn't want him to freeze in the car and he proved his worth by lying on Max and keeping him warm.

Max spent a lot of time exploring nature and finding stuff. I love the giant mushroom (out of focus, sorry) and leaf he found. He was very proud of himself. He did a ton of exploring during this trip.
I was very manly and chopped wood to keep the fire stoked.

I also made a ton of hot chocolate to keep my peeps warm. Max had a chocolate mustache the whole time. I rocked the Hendricks' unshaved mustache the whole time which is equally ridiculous looking.

On Saturday, we hiked up to Moss Glen Falls. It wasn't a long hike, but it was significant because we've never seen Max more excited to hike. He loved it. In fact he wore himself out so well that he fell asleep while sitting around the campfire later that night. Here are some pictures from the hike. It was a beautiful waterfall in an old birch forest.


We hiked up to the top of the falls and then on the way down we went to the base and walked across the creek a few times. It stressed Ginna out, but Max and I really liked it.

This is Ginna looking for Max after he learned about being camouflaged.

This is me happy to be hiking and camping with Ginna and Max. This is much better than hiking and camping with boy scouts by the way.

We loved Vermont, except Ben and Jerry's, although we still like their ice cream.