Happy Memorial Day weekend, happy beginning of the summer, happy day with no rain….though it’s much too early in the day for me to be saying something like that! My wish for you is just the right amount of moisture in your life. I know there are places that are in drought, which is very hard to imagine here in the water-soaked Northeast, and other places having a lot more devastation from rain than we are here. Balance. Balance would be nice. It would also be nice to have the Fort Ticonderoga Ferry open – it really is the missing element in my salutation to summer – but, minor in comparison to other’s lives. Still, fingers crossed for a drop in the water level of Lake Champlain someday soon.

Now, back to my topic. Vermont’s Best Foodie Tour! There is a group of 12 inns here in the Champlain Valley working hard to put together a kind of food tour of the fertile outpourings of this little corner of Vermont. The details are still being finalized, but the idea is that you can book a room at any of the participating inns and for a small additional fee you will get a gorgeous goodie basket of local products, a map with directions to all sorts of food and drink related sites throughout the region and a coupon book for discounts and freebies from restaurants, markets, wineries and more. Pretty cool, huh? There’s even a logo and everything. The Shoreham Inn is a participating inn (though I really have to give all of the organizational credit to the other inns involved. I’m more of a cheerleader on this one. Someone’s broken ankle and the ensuing chaos made my spring a little more hectic than usual…..)

Perhaps the most exciting thing about this offer? I will FINALLY have a special to place on my specials page on this here website. Oh, I don’t know, TWO YEARS after I had my web designer put the page there so I could put all kinds of specials and discounts on it. Shocking. Really, I’m completely embarrassed. But, small victory for me and my website coming soon. As for you, I hope you are more excited about the potential deals and way to experience the Champlain Valley. We all feel there is such a wonderful abundance of produce, cheese, wine and more being produced here in the Heart of Vermont. Come visit soon.

Up here in Vermont, we’re finding it hard to believe spring will actually arrive, and stick, this year. We’ve had some gorgeous little teasers, and even a couple of days that felt more like summer than spring. But we’ve also had an awful lot of spring showers – we would just call them April showers, but they continued right into May without a pause. Today, though…..a little chilly this morning, but stunning. And, even though we love to complain about spring not arriving, it obviously has. Grass is green, trees are showing their tiny bright green leaves and our neighbor has taken down his light up Santa.

Our first cycling guests show up in a week or two and then summer will be upon us! In these last few weeks of what will hopefully be spring, while Vermont is waking up and stretching toward summer, there are some great activities and things to do. Not least of which is to just get outside. Whether you are a runner, a walker, a hiker, a biker or  a sit-in-an-adirondack-chair-with-a-glass-of-wine-and-a-booker, these first few days of really good weather always feel so good. Almost like every year we can hardly believe it will happen. And every year we forget that always will.

Unfortunately for me, this is the time of year that I can start to list all kinds of great events and activities happening locally that we just can’t find the time for. The most recent one that has caught my eye is the Vermont Open Studio Weekend. It’s May 28 & 29 and artists studios around the state are open to the public. I just think that sounds like  great way to spend a day or two – peeking into an artist’s workspace, seeing their creations and touring as far and wide around Vermont as you’d like. So, if a few of you would go do that for me, I’d greatly appreciate it. Stop by for dinner if you’d like, heck, come spend the night, we’ll be here.