East Coast Travel

We just got back from a ski trip to Vermont.  Edward finally has some time off work from his deployment, and the school district here is great in allowing five days of excused absence due to deployments.  Our family had a great time, and we drove over 2,000 miles.  The kids enjoyed the sites along the way and loved learning about several new states.  Madison has now been to 25 states; Luke has been to 23 states, and Alex has been to 22 states.

 

 Here's the newly constructed Freedom Tower in NYC, as we passed it driving up the New Jersey Turnpike.  This was taken just after we had a great lunch at a New Jersey diner where I had a fantastic Philly Cheese Steak sandwich (love them!).

 

 George Washington Bridge in NYC

 Our return trip was a nightmare in NYC.  We got stuck in major traffic and passed 22 different accidents, resulting in it taking over THREE HOURS to get through NYC.  It was terrible.  Overall, it delayed our trip by over four hours, and we arrived at my brother's house finally at midnight on our way home.

 Beautiful Stowe, Vermont, our destination!!  This is the ski resort. We stayed about 10 minutes down the road in town.  We picked such a great week to go, as they were running a lot of very discounted pre-holiday prices, and on top of that, the place was deserted!!

This is just one tiny area of the entire resort.  It was huge, and while we were there, they had 50 trails open.  This week, they are closer to 60 trails, but the 50 we used were awesome. The rotunda looking room is the main lodge. We really enjoyed warming up in there, as it had windows everywhere, and we could watch other members of our family skiing as any of us warmed up. The first day we were there, the Vermont National Guard Army Band was playing Christmas music in the lodge all afternoon, and we enjoyed listening to them very much.