ExTHURsions

This Thursday, Scott and I just felt like something was missing. We couldn’t figure out what it was exactly, perhaps because we were too preoccupied with the mountains of homework we had due the next morning, but we just knew that something wasn’t right. So we decided to wait until Friday to have our Exthursion. We met for a late Proc dinner on Thursday night to plan our next adventure, and were leaving the dining hall when all of a sudden we realized….It was snowing. And I’m not talking flurries of tiny flakes that melt as soon as they touch the ground…I’m talking SNOW.

           Scott and I looked at each other, and knew, our ExFrision would be a SNOW HIKE. We decided to check out Buck Mountain, the lesser-known little brother of Snake Mountain. Buck Mountain has a certain mystique, which became obvious to us upon finding directions to its roadside entrance, which was apparently on Route 66. Confused about whether we would be hiking in Vermont or hitchhiking down to the west coast on the Motherroad of the United States, we hopped in Emily’s silver civic and drove up route 7 on our hunt for the illusive Buck.

          We arrived at Route 66, a dirt road a few miles off of 17 West, and were relieved to find that it actually existed.

We were so elated we literally ran down the trailhead, Emily and I protesting Scott’s decision until he slowed to a walk. We began the hike, marveling at how easy it was to find the trail from our questionable directions. However, the Buck Mountain gods or ghosts or whatever you want to call them (we decided ghosts because they were invisible in the white snow cover) decided that we were having too easy of a time conquering the mysterious Buck Mountain…. so they led us on an hour long detour, in which we chose to follow the road less travelled by (thanks Robert Frost), and ended up following an ATV trail in a giant circle that led us almost back to Route 66. Thankfully, when we realized our mistake, the fresh snow allowed us to retrace our steps and wind up back on the real trail.

          We finally reached the summit about half an hour later, and found it to be absolutely breath taking.  The forest thinned away to an opening of cliffs, which provided a gorgeous 180-degree view, all the way from Middlebury’s town center, across to the Adirondacks, and up to Lake Champlain. We remarked, as we looked over to our left at Snake Mountain, that Buck Mountain was certainly superior. After our original survey of the cliffs, we took some obligatory pictures (Emily tried out the panorama setting on her iPhone and failed miserably), and once again failed to capture a decent picture of everyone jumping. We did get a few gems though…

After a snack of trail mix, we chose to head back down the mountain before the Buck Mountain ghosts could decide to screw with us again. We made it back to the car before dark, and after some quick but slightly malicious snowball fighting we drove off into the sunset, down Route 66…..

Then Route 66 ended, and we made it back to the civilized world, where we immediately stopped for hot chocolate. 

Exthursions is back! We realize we have been not so good at keeping up with our blog, but studying (among other things) is really time consuming!  We did go on two exthursions (technically exFrisions) before Thanksgiving: first challah making with Juliet, and then Snake Mountain climbing with Emily, our trusty exthursions chaffeur. In typical exthursions fashion, baking our challah was quite the struggle.  First, realizing at the last minute that we didn’t have any dishes or utensils (oops), we had to prepare our dough in the B1N kitchen, making this quite the throwback exthursion.  Despite the help of veteran baker Linda Schiffer, we managed to ruin the dough by killing our yeast.  We then moved the whole operation to Forest, involving an interesting and attention-attracting walk across Battell Beach to Forest.  Laura then had to leave for her rugby game, but Juliet and I made a trip to Shaw’s courtesy of Emily’s car (holla atcha girl) to buy an entire jar of yeast which would not be depleted in the event of several more yeast slaughters.  Luckily we succeeded this time and, feeling a little risqué, added some chocolate chips to part of the dough and even attempted a (semi-successful) four-braid.   The whole process took about 8 hours, but it was very much worth it in the end.  The next week we took an evening hike on nearby Snake Mountain.  We had a lovely photo shoot on the summit involving several pictures of us jumping (and even more attempts at these pictures).  We also fuddled around with the self-timer function on Laura’s camera to moderate success…  Afterward, we rounded out our trip with a visit to an exthursion favorite, the swanky Middlebury McDonald’s franchise.  Today we are hiking Snake Mountain’s younger brother Buck Mountain.  It should be especially fun considering there is now snow on the ground!  Peace and love y’all. 

Laura: I don’t know if I can do it, Scott.

Scott: But Laura, you have to.  It’s almost my birthday after all…

Laura: But… do you think it’ll be deep enough?

Scott: It will be if we aim right. Don’t worry. 

[they grasp  hands]

Laura: I’m still scared.

Scott: Don’t be.  We’ll get in, thrash around for a little bit, and be out after five seconds.  And then we’ll feel great. Should we….say a prayer?

[they bow heads]

Laura: Hail Mary…

Scott: Full of grace…

Laura: …The Lord is with…

Both: THEE.

[the prayer continues]

Both: ….now, and at the hour of our death.

Laura: Which is not now.

Scott: Ok, I guess we’re ready to go now, right?

Laura: Will you count us off?

Scott: One for the money, two for the show, three for exthursions, HERE WE GO!!!

[nothing happens]

Laura: Why didn’t you go???

Scott: I was waiting for you!

Laura: I was waiting for YOU!!

Scott: Alright. OK. That’s fine.  We’re actually going to do it now…  Ready?

Laura: Let’s do it.

Scott: One…. two…. three………….

[they gracefully leap from the 20 – nay, 30 foot ledge into the frigid water, surface, and scramble to shore]

So we kind of copped out last week – we called the Moth our exthursion and never even wrote about it.  But as you can see, we made up for it with a trip to Bristol Falls worthy of a soap opera. We were trying to decide what to do late Wednesday night.  I jokingly texted Laura saying “What if we went to Bristol Falls for a polar bear plunge sort of deal?” and to my great surprise, instead of “hahahaha” or “shut up scott” she replied “let’s freaking do it.”

After our plunge, we motored to downtown Bristol, where we found Legos and Magic Tree House books that got us feeling a little nostalgic.  After that we wandered around the town square, learning about local history, swinging on some swings, and mounting some cannons all the way.  We then headed to the local pizzeria for some lunch.  At this point, it was nearly 12:30 – and I had to be back in Middlebury by 1 to head to Monkton Central School with the other volunteers who teach French there on Thursday afternoons. We ordered anyway, got our pizza and started shoveling it down our mouths.  It was really good, but also very hot, which is a dangerous combo when you are in a rush.  My mouth still tastes a little like blood from the burns which I inflicted upon myself that day.  Anyway, Laura eventually had the sense to ask for a box.  We had a very stressful drive back to Midd which tested the limits of our Honda Insight ZipCar, and since we left at 12:47 we had no chance of making it back in time.  We got back at about 1:10, right as the other Monkton people were pulling out and ZipCar was calling to see where we were.  We tried to make a swift exit from the ZipCar upon our return, but our attempts were foiled by the wet clothes and pizza slices strewn all over the car.  We were riding the strugglebus in a big way at this point.   

When we found out Scott’s organ lesson had been cancelled, we decided to start the morning earlier than planned with a 9 a.m. breakfast at Proctor. Then we picked up the wonderful Ford Focus ZipCar behind Proc that Scott had reserved for the morning. With our windows down and Beyoncé (End of Time – it’s Scott’s newest obsession) blaring, we set out on VT Route 7, headed north through fields of corn and solar panels. Our first destination was the Vermont Flannel Factory, a store full of wonderful Vermont goods in a plethora of flannel patterns. Scott particularly enjoyed the bright orange , lime green, and purple plaid pattern.  I considered buying a flannel baseball hat, while Scott was tempted by a flannel ‘Vong’ (Vermont thong) but we ended up leaving empty-handed.

            Next we visited Dakin Farms.  Thanks to the presence of a giant maple syrup jug in the parking lot, I correctly predicted it would be my favorite stop of the day. We entered the gift shop portion of Dakin Farms and were immediately overwhelmed by the smell of maple syrup and cured meat. Now, full disclosure— there’s something you should know about me before I continue. I am absolutely 100% obsessed with free samples. I think it comes from my childhood tendency of biking/skiing to the Grafton Cheese Company and wolfing down free cheddar cheese and crackers samples to my heart’s content. Anyway, because of this, Dakin Farms became my new favorite place in the world. Not only did they have a number of cheeses and crackers to sample, but they also had THREE KINDS of salami and pepperoni.  I made sure to take advantage of this.  Several times.  Although Scott, being the vegetarian animal-lover he is, refrained from the meat samples, he thoroughly enjoyed the spreads (especially jalapeno pepper jelly!), and we both bonded over our shared love of maple syrup, knocking back free samples of Grade A Medium Amber.  To compensate Dakin Farms for taking their entire daily profit in free samples, we bought at $2.25 maple sugar candy that we intend to consume at the top of Mt. Abe this weekend.

            After Scott dragged me away from Dakin Farms, we continued up Route 7 to Cookie Love, where we were distraught to see that they had stopped serving creemees for the season. We picked up some cookie dough to make ourselves feel better. Then, our exthursion turned into a safari.  Heading back toward Vergennes, we decided to pay a visit to the mysterious creature known as the Route 7 Camel (the cousin of the famous Camel’s Hump camel).  Since this was sort of an impulsive decision, we missed the farm’s driveway, so Scott pulled over on the road and put the flashers on.  I decided that it would be less conspicuous to park on a side-street half a mile away, so, drawing on my inner stubborn toddler, I refused to get out of the car.  Scott pulled away and parked us on the side street (which might have actually been a private driveway…) and walked down the side of the highway, which made me feel like a real leaf-peepin’ flatlander (totally the less conspicuous parking option..). It was totally worth it though, because we had a successful camel sighting. 

            We walked back down the side of Route 7, hopped in the zipcar, put on some Alvin and the Chipmunks, and motored on to downtown Vergennes (the smallest city in the US!). First we hit up a thrift store, where I scored a sweet vest, and then we walked down to Vergennes Laundry, which is the not-so-apt name of a café and bakery on Main Street. True to its name, however, the “Laundry” was absurdly hot and humid, to the point where there was too much condensation on the windows to see outside.  While Scott and I were originally hoping to stock up on detergent and dryer sheets, we settled for a croissant and cinnamon bun instead. We wrapped up our exthursion with a cruise back to Midd on Route 7, jamming to some Gnarls Barkley, Baha Men, and Mariah Carey on the way.

            This weekend is fall break, and we are so pumped to have a four-day weekend!  We discussed hiking Mt. Abe, taking a tour at the Ben & Jerry’s factory, and visiting Burlington among other things, so look out for a special edition ExThursions post soon…

As it turns out, Thursdays can still get pretty freaking busy even when you don’t have class! I started teaching French to fifth and sixth graders in Monkton this Thursday, and Laura had rugby practice and a film screening.  So for this week, we decided to go on a night exthursion.  While this precluded the Route 7 adventure we had been planning, we ended up on a different, spontaneous Route 7 adventure anyway.

Our exthursion began in the heavy fog outside of Warner Hall. We tried our best to take advantage of the atmosphere by taking creepy Halloweeny photos; however, the only thing creepy about them is that I looked like I was publicly urinating. While the pictures were questionable, our company was not, and we were very pleased to have two fabulous gueTHts with us, New Yorkers Emily Caffry and Juliet Schwarz. We headed down, guests in tow, to emerge from the fog at 51 Main in order to catch our Exthursion adviser, Gregg Humphrey, in action with his band Snake Mountain Bluegrass.  The atmosphere at 51 Main was boisterous, at some points even downright rowdy.  Laura, Juliet, Emily and I had trouble finding seating, so we awkwardly stood in front of the food counter for about ten minutes.  Then an opening cleared on one of the strange, out-of-place cloth benches in the back.  Laura, Emily and I squeezed on the bench and made Juliet sit on the floor.  We listened to the toasted Kentucky groove and Gregg’s soulful voice for about an hour, and were even visited by the man himself during intermission. It turned out that Laura and Gregg had coordinated with their Snake Mountain Bluegrass t-shirts, so we took a great Exthursions picture in which I looked extraordinarily lonely and left out (don’t worry, I’m getting my shirt soon). After the set, we decided to leave, and found ourselves hungering for unhealthy food. As usual, the womenfolk were unwilling to put in the effort to find out how to summon the food at this establishment (it was the chocolate chip pancake debacle all over again) and, well, I wanted McDonald’s.  So we called Midd Rides and headed back to campus.

While in Hepburn getting the keys to Emily’s car, we convinced Maggie to come on our spontaneous pilgrimage to the golden arches, expanding our convoy to 5.  Emily drove us to McDonald’s on Route 7 in Middlebury, and we decided to eat inside since Emily has had trouble in the past understanding exactly how the drive through works (the two windows really throw her off… who can blame her?). Laura had also previously experienced some traumatic failing cone-ing attempts at said window, so the decision to eat in was unanimous. The interior of this particular McDonald’s is about as classy as a chain restaurant selling Filet-O-Fishes and Spicy Chicken McBites can get.  The dark maroon upholstery combines with a central circular booth (where we sat), a bar with stools, and faux-chandelier lighting to give the impression of a fine Parisian eatery, and might even tempt the customer to order a McDom Perignon with his Southern Style Crispy Chicken Sandwich.  We all ordered our favorite dairy-flavored dessert, the Oreo McFlurry, and remarked (quite seriously) that McDonald’s would be a fantastic spot for studying late into the night. With guts full of sugar and fat, we returned to campus to feed our hungry minds with biology and education studies and other items on the menu of the fine institution McMiddlebury. 

Next week happens to be fall break, and we have tentative plans for what could be the greatest exthursion ever starting on next Saturday. Stay tuned for more details later this week!

Scott and Laura will be seeing the sights of the legendary Route 7, from Middlebury to Shelburne! Watch out for photos and maybe some recommendations for parents’ weekend activities tomorrow evening.