Burlington, Vermont

After our trip to Rhode Island, we drove to our AirB&B in Colchester, Vermont, where we enjoyed an evening in Burlington: walking Lake Champlains’s waterfront, checking out the shops like Burlington Flannel Co., and people watching while eating dinner (yummy pizza) outside, on Church Street. If you’ve ever been to Church Street you know why it’s such a great place to take-in all the sites!

Waterbury, Vermont

Waterbury is such a beautiful place, especially in the Fall, and the location of Ben & Jerry’s factory equally picturesque! It’s nestled in the side of a hill with breathtaking views of the landscape from the front patio. The inside of Ben & Jerry’s has cute little seating areas with Ben & Jerry Q&A’s projected on the walls. It also has an ice cream wall of fame, height chart in ice cream pints, and a fun gift shop. The tour was very cool, but unfortunately we were not allowed to take any pictures inside the actual factory. I was surprised at the relatively small size of the factory, especially when considering they make 350,000 pints of ice cream a day! During the tour we got free samples of cookie dough chunks, and at the end of the tour we got free samples of Dirt Cake, the mystery flavor of the day. I would highly recommend going to Ben & Jerry’s if you’re close to Waterbury VT, especially if you have kids! (Fun fact, did you know that Ben & Jerry’s was the number one selling ice cream in the U.S. in 2002?) We also ate real food in Waterbury, at McGillicuddy Irish Pub, located downtown. We ordered sweet potato fries and a Vermont burger. The Vermont burger was a cheese burger topped with bacon and thin slices of apple. Smoked maple barbecue sauce was then poured on top of the apple…yeah, it was as good as it sounds!

Sheron, Vermont

Not far from Waterbury was Sharon, Vermont, the birth place of Joseph Smith, who was born in 1805, and was the fifth of Eleven children. I wasn’t sure what we would find in Sharon since Joseph Smith only lived there a few months before his family moved, however, they stayed in the surrounding counties until their pivotal move in 1816, to Manchester, New York, near Palmyra. Joseph’s parent’s Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack were married in Tunbridge, Vermont. Joseph Senior’s paternal line gos back to his 3rd great-grandfather Robert Smith from Lincolnshire, England who settled in Massachusetts colony during the Puritan migration. It’s interesting to see the Puritan and New England influences on Joseph Smith.

Sharon is quite small, but not in beauty, and the Joseph Smith Memorial was no-less impressive! The tall trees lining the road were covered in lights in preparation for the Christmas Season, and the most colorful mums lined the slate walkways. Even though the Visitor Center was getting a facelift with copper accents, we browsed inside where information of Joseph’s early life was displayed (along with bronze sculptures of Joseph). Across from the visitor center was a mission home that the full-time missionaries used for shelter. The monument was quite impressive at just over 50 feet high…a single polished granite shaft 38 1/2 feet high, one foot for each year of the Prophet’s life, and a base that contained a hidden copper time capsule. The total weight of the monument is almost 100 tons. You can imagine how difficult it would be to build such a massive structure so long ago, it was truly a “remarkable engineering feat”! The Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial was dedicated by Joseph F. Smith on the 100th anniversary of Joseph Smith’s birth, December 23, 1905.

Stowe, Vermont

The remainder of our time in Vermont was spent in Stowe. You know me, if there’s some nature to see, or a mountain to climb, I am there! Stowe was the perfect place to do both, a resort town with much to do and see in both the winter and summer. And I will argue, Fall, which in my opinion is the absolute best time to visit Stowe (as you can plainly see from the pictures!). We loved seeing the vibrant Fall colors on our board-walk trail in Smugglers Notch, climbing through pines and down steep rock to the base of Bingham Falls, driving the steep, winding Auto Toll Road (waiting about two hours at two separate places, for cars to come down so that we could go up), and finally taking-in the 360 degree views atop Mount Mansfield’s, Vermonts highest mountain!