Winter has come

---

---

Typically when I woke up in the morning the rain had finally stopped which was very irritating especially as when leaving Montreal I saw the theme park! It was my turn to drive the car again and I had a very easy drive to the American border after taking one wrong turn along the way. Sadly I chose the wrong lane of traffic when queuing to get through border control and it took a very long time before we made it to the front. We were entering the USA at the Vermont border and the further we travelled through Vermont the more beautiful it became; this was somewhere that I could very easily live in. To get to Stowe we needed to cross through a mountain but the closer we go to this road we could see signs of there being snow in the area. It was crazy as we had literally had every type of weather on this trip so far. When we got to the mountain pass that would take us to Stowe we discovered that it was blocked due to heavy snowfall the night before. This was a big problem as we had absolutely no idea of another route around. Thankfully there was a hotel at the foot of the mountain and they were able to give us directions of an alternative route that would take us into Stowe. They advised that was something that would happen regularly at this time of the year. After a quick snowball fight we headed back to the car and took the 45 minute detour into Stowe.



Driving through Stowe was great, the village was very picturesque and there looked like there were loads of good restaurants that we could try when driving up to our hotel. The hotel itself was a couple of miles outside of the centre of Stowe but this was nothing compared to the amount of miles that we had walked on this trip so far. It had started to snow when we arrived at the hotel and it was clear that I had not packed clothing that would be suitable for this weather as I had not been expecting it to be this cold! The hotel was really nice and we decided to stay an extra night here mainly at my insistence to be fair! The hotel had its own putting green and bowling alley and we decided to start the night off with a game of bowling. Today was Alex's birthday as well so we all bought him a drink. It was quite a good bowling lane considering it was a hotel and you were able to customise an avatar on the screen as well. I won the first game and got condemned by everyone on the second game as it was supposed to be a game of speed bowling and apparently I was not going fast enough!



After bowling we went down the road to a restaurant called the bench which was somewhere that I had looked up online. All of its food was finished off in a wood burner. The food was absolutely amazing and is somewhere that anyone should go to if planning a trip to Stowe. Me and Alex shared some mussels for a starter and they were delicious and I then had a hanger steak for the main which was cooked absolutely perfectly. To top this off the beer was excellent as well with Jake and Grant particularly enjoying the Zero Gravity beer they had in there. After the meal we went down to a pub a little further along the road and played some pool in there. It was very quiet in the pub and I think that was because we had gone to Stowe in the quiet period between 2 seasons. I paired up with Harv for the pool and we won overall although very little of that was down to me!



Alex and Jake really wanted to head to a club called the rusty nail which was back near our hotel to carry on the night but unfortunately when we got there it was closed. There was a hill near this pub that I decided to run down but as I got to the bottom I quickly realised that I was not going to stay on my feet so I had to do a combat roll so I could get back to my feet as the top of the hill the other side! Back at the hotel nobody wanted to go back to the room as it was still quite early so we went back to the bar where the bowling alley was. While having a drink in there this really annoying guy kept coming up to us trying to get someone to arm wrestle him which no-one wanted to do and then started to go on about politics. Thankfully his wife pulled him away in the end which was something we were really grateful for. Unfortunately the bar was closing so we had no choice but to then go back to the hotel room.

---