Happy Monday!!! I just spent a lovely weekend up in Burlington VT with a great group of friends. This past weekend was the annual Vermont Brewers Festival at Waterfront Park right on Lake Champlain. We dropped the pup off Friday morning and headed up with a couple stops along the way. We stopped at Cabot Creamery in Cabot, VT for a tour and some free cheese. The tour was great, just $3. I love how the Cabot Creamery works- its a coop, owned by the dairy farmers that supply the milk. Over 1 million pounds of milk arrive at the creamery from farms across New England and New York. Favorite cheese? Definitely the alpine cheddar- it was so good, had to get a block to take with us.

From there we stopped at the Ben and Jerry’s in Waterbury. Oh man, it was so packed. There were so many people, we walked around but didn’t stay…..I did get some Ben and Jerry’s at the scoop shop in Burlington though 🙂 Last stop before the campground was Prohibition Pig, also in Waterbury. They had some great beers of their own on tap, and then an awesome selection of local beers- some from Lawson’s Finest Liquids, Hill Farmstead, and Alchemist that are tough to find!

We stayed at North Beach Campground for the weekend, 4 couples, 4 tents, 2 sites. We put all the tents on one site and used the other site for the fire pit, picnic tables, and set up the screened in EZ-up. We were close to the bathrooms, and they had battery operated hot showers, which are great amenities at a campground. It’s not my favorite campground that I have stayed at, but the location was perfect. It was just a short walk to the lake, and just a little longer walk to the park where the beer fest location. The beer fest on Saturday was great. It was hot, but they had plenty of free water thankfully. We pooled our tickets to try as many beers as possible, attacking each brewery with a divide and conquer strategy. Thankfully we are all close friends, because there were a lot of passed beers! In all, I think we tried around 75 different beers!!! Not bad! We made really great food for the weekend- marinated steak tips, turkey burgers, rotisserie chicken salad with dried cherries and walnuts, and of course, s’mores. We had a camp fire and played cards for hours…it just seems like time doesn’t exist when you are camping.

Sunday we got up, packed up the sites, and explored Burlington a bit. I loved Outdoor Gear Exchange, had to hold myself back from LLBean, and grabbed a couple chocolates at Lake Champlain Chocolates. We did lunch at Farmhouse Tap and Grill and I got the best BLT I have had ever. Everyone loved their meals and beers, definitely recommend it!

Very last stop for the weekend was the Magic Hat‘s brewery which is called the artifactory. It’s a very cool brewery….the building itself looks like a plain, industrial warehouse, but they have really done a lot inside to make it feel like a different planet. It’s dark, neon, and kinda psychedelic- lots to look at. You can try beers there and get growlers. I really liked the Single Chair Golden Ale, dedicated to the single chair lift at Mad River Glen, and Stealin Time which is a wheat ale with ginger.

We had such a fun weekend. I loved Burlington and Lake Champlain and think we will be returning next year. It was definitely tough getting up this morning to row at 5:30. Oh yes, I am in a learn to scull program this month, what a throwback. I have loved every second of it, but man is it early. I will write a post about it soon! Anyone else been to Burlington? Where did you go? What were your favorite spots?