Breaking the fast

Hippy Ice Cream Land

This morning we headed out for Burlington, VT – home of Ben and Jerry’s and….MAGIC HAT!

We had a rockin’ breakfast with homemade bread next to the Green Mountain Coffee visitors center which smelled AMAZING.  Then it was off to B and J for a tour and stomach full of ice cream.  The tour guide was a complete nut job, slightly hunched with a solid ice cream belly and some dried drool on his chin (that parts not true).  However, he was hilariously self-deprecating and full of terrible cow jokes.  The tour was OK, nothing super cool to see but the Triple Caramel sample at the end was worth it.  Tyler then had a jumbo sundae of 7 layer bar ice cream.  Because my body is a temple, I politely declined choosing water and cashews instead.  Next stop, Magic Hat…

Magic Hat!!

On the road again!

…which was totally off the wall. Someone described it to Tyler as the Willy Wonka of beer and he could not have been more spot on.  They call it the Artifactory and have all sorts of weird doo dads on the walls and tons of cool gift shop crap.  I normally find this stuff worthless but in this case was rendered totally limp and wanted to buy EVERYTHING.  I settled on some shirts and a bottle opener but considered liquidating my bank account.  We got our 4 free samples which were delicious, especially the Rousing Root, a Vermont only special edition.  The guy said it was limited to VT’ers because each batch used 500 pounds of sweet potatoes that took a long time to cut up.  Apparently these hippies are unfamiliar with the newfangled

Tyler loves Magic Hat skeletons

Lake Champlain Ferry

technology that is the Cuisinart but who cares, it was DELICIOUS.   We did the self-guided tour which was better than the guided B and J tour.  We got to see the whole process and take pictures with screwball props and devices.  Couldn’t have asked for more.

From there we boogied to Rochester to crash with the McCourts for the night.  On the way there we took a detour and rode a small ferry across Lake Champlain which was pretty rad.  Rochester was a great stop mainly because Mike and Jan are awesome but also because they plied us with glorious steak, potatoes, salad and beer – a welcome change from pizza and burgers.  Oh, and they had real beds PLUS we got to do a load of laundry.  We both slept really well that night.

Especially after we visited..