Who Makes the Best Maple Creemee?

That is indeed an essential question: who makes the best maple creemee in Vermont?
Essential because you cannot come and visit Vermont without trying a maple creemee. It has to be part of the experience!
The creemee is a soft serve ice cream (also seen spelt creamee or creamie) and people agree that a great maple creemee uses real maple syrup rather than flavoring. Many people say “Morse Farm” on County Road, just outside Montpelier has the best maple creemee, and indeed it’s good… It is one of these little pleasures of life, right after supper to go there for a creemee, sit down in one of their Adirondack chairs, watch the valley and the mountains far into the distance… and if you’re interested, visit their shop and their sugarhouse…
I don’t think that all sugarhouses necessary have great maple creemees though. I have had some with little taste (cheap on the syrup I guess) and on the other hand, I have seen little ordinary soft serve ice cream stands have top-class maple creemees (like Simply Subs on Main Street in Barre… I am hoping they continue to use as much maple syrup as they now do… their creemee is really good…).
One thing for sure is that it seems impossible to declare a winner… you’d need to try them all at the same time and I have not heard yet of such a competition… may be I should make the suggestion to the Harpoon Brewery group… to add a maple creemee competition to their BBQ competition next year
In the meantime, here are some tips from maple creemee lovers on the best place to get one!

• Maynard’s on rte 100 between Waitsfield and Moretown
• Bragg Farm, Route 14 North, East Montpelier
• Strafford Organic Dairy farm
• Dakin Farm in Ferrisburgh on Route 7

Where is YOUR best place?

9 Back Road Bike Tours

We’ve just come across this section of the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce website which has some suggestions for bike tours, and we thought we’ll share it with you, because we believe they did a very nice job with it.
It presents 9 back road bike tours with very detailed descriptions of the routes and their level of difficulty; every type of cyclers is going to find one for him/her abilities. The presentation is very inviting and they made it very practical as well: each route has its own PDF for you to print and take on the road with you. We also liked the fact that they included some historic facts about the buildings and villages you see along the way… why not learn a little more about the places you are biking through as you are enjoying the landscape… and pedaling hard!
Here are the routes:
- Berlin Pond Loop - 5 Miles -for casual cyclists - dirt road
- Calais Historic Hamlets - about 20 Miles - reasonable degree of fitness - unpaved
- Mad River Valley Recreation Path - 4.5 Miles - flat to gently rolling - mostly unpaved
- Mad River Valley Tour - 16.3 Miles (5.7 Mile Optional Extension) - degree of fitness required - option more difficult
- Montpelier - East Montpelier - 16.5 Miles (9.2 Mile Option) - quite hilly but can avoid the climb out of Montpelier
- Northfield Tour - 12.3 Miles - 2 very steep hills - mostly unpaved
- Lake Tour - 7 Miles - hilly terrain and dirt roads - Calais and Woodbury areas
- Waterbury - Stowe - 22.2 Miles - few fairly rugged climbs mixed with easy terrain and exhalarating descents - half paved and half dirt road
- Websterville Loop - 13.7 Miles - few good climbs - unpaved, gravel roads
In addition to the bike tours, the site has some other interesting information such as bicycle organizations, bike tours companies and even bike races.
So check it out, enjoy the tours and tell us what you thought! And check back with us soon… we have articles on the Champlain Bikeway and the famous Route 100 bike road in the works!
Link to Central Vermont Back Road Bike Tours.

Fun Things to Do in Vermont

There are lots of fun things to do in Vermont in the summer. Here is for starters:
- Go to one of the 89 swimming holes - ponds and rivers - listed on this website. Make sure to watch their slideshow, it gives you a great idea of the look of the different places (names are on the photos). Great for a hot day!
- Go to one of many outdoor concerts of the Vermont Mozart Festival or the Lake Champlain Bluegrass Festival;
- Watch antique cars at the 51st Annual Antique & Classic Car Meet, in Stowe on August 8-10;
- Eat a maple cremee: you got to have one if you are in Vermont in the summer… Make sure you get the ones made with real maple syrup and not just the flavor! We’ll give you some addresses soon, but for now, let’s mention Morse Farm, up County Road, near Montpelier, that’s the place everyone knows;
- Go to the Harpoon Brewery BBQ competition in Windsor on July 26-27; 40 teams from all the country will compete!
- Get a Vermont Brewery Challenge - Official Passport and visit all 18 great micro-breweries in the state of Vermont; Get a stamp at each and you can win prizes!
- Go and watch the Challenge Race at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, near Vergennes on July 20; it’s a 3-mile race of around 50 small boats. Should be fun. Around 200 spectators usually attend. And may be even more fun, on Saturday 19 (today!) there is a duct tape boat construction and race there!
- Attend your first Thunder Road night in Barre (not NASCAR racing but close!) - every Thursday and occasionally on week-ends;
- And if you are into American Revolution history, go to one of the reenactments/encampments which take place at different historic sites along the summer: the Battle of Hubbardton early July, Mount Independence encampment this week-end, Bennington in August…
What do you think? Fun enough?… Anything fun we should add to this list, leave us a comment and tell us about it!!

Restaurants: in the NY Times

The Hen of the Wood was again noticed last week, and by noone else than the Mark Bittman, who writes for NY Times’ dining section. Nice!
The title of his article definitely caught my attention: “Revitalized Eating in Vermont”. Seems like some other gourmets agree with our team (see our posting on “Waterbury award-winning restaurants“), and believe that there is now some nice gastronomy in Vermont!
I will let you read the article but in summary, he mentions “3 wonderful eating experiences” he had in Vermont last week-end:
- the Hen of the Wood,
- Clotilde, a 70-family community supported agriculture operation,
- Ariel’s in Brookfield.
Ariel’s? Interesting… The owners have another restaurant in Montpelier called Ariel’s Riverside… We were there the other day, and were actually disappointed that the owners had decided to change the menu from the BBQ place we loved (Finkerman’s Riverside) to this fancy, somewhat expensive, undifferentiating menu… oh well…

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