happy ski & st.patrick's day!

Yesterday, in addition to being St.Patrick’s Day, was also ski day at work! We basically get to play hookey and go skiing or snowshoeing! I've never gone, in the past I’ve held down the fort and let those that really love to ski, ski! This year, when ski day rolled around, my boss encouraged us ALL to go, and said we could cover work from someone’s iphone. Haha!

I met up with some coworkers at a park & ride, and we headed down to Warren, VT our destination was Ole’s. The downhill skiers were headed to Sugarbush. We definitely passed my coworkers Yak farm in Waitsfield, identified by his large green John Deere pickup (it’s a beauty). We went on this crazy dirt road, with ruts that were like a foot deep! So thankful we were in a car that could handle this! We ended up at a farm, and there were a bunch of men doing farm things with farm vehicles, we asked where the Ole’s Snowshoe and X-Ski is, apparently we were on the right track, just needed to keep going. You never would have known, unless you knew.

Now, when Ole’s isn’t Ole’s Snowshoe & X-Ski it serves as the Warren Sugarbush Airport, a regional and seasonal airport. Visitors are greeted with a really muddy parking lot and the glorious Norwegian flag. If you were me, you’d wonder: “do my grandparents secretly own this place?” Papa Jack is a pilot and Momom is Norwegian. Anyway they’ve got a good thing going on. We checked in, and then headed on our way. We snowshoed around under a perfectly blue sky, 62 degrees of sun, and bunches of snow!

We hiked up, down, all around, down to a river, under fallen trees, over fallen trees. Our guess is that we went about 7 miles. It was amazing to just enjoy creation & be in it! Love it! When we were done, we headed to the Warren Store for lunch. It’s a great little general store with a bakery & deli, and all kinds of other fun things. Totally charming! There are two check out lines one has a sign that reads “express lane: 10 words or less” the other had a sign that reads “long-winded conversation line, blah-blah-blah”. Another fun thing they had was a shadowbox with a marshmallow roasting fork and marshmallows, and a sign that said, “in case of fire break glass”. So great! After a delicious sandwich and hot cider, we decided that we deserved a look and selection from the bakery! We ironically all picked the same thing, an “almond coconut chocolate galette”. With every bite I wanted the recipe, and was also quite thankful I didn’t give up sweets for Lent! We headed over to the Mountain and met up with the skiers for a bit, then back to town. Lovely lovely day!