Taking the Kids: to Vermont this summer
-- Discover how flavors are chosen and ice cream made at the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Factory Tour (www.benjerry.com/scoop-shops/factory-tours). It's the number one Vermont tourist attraction.
There's plenty of summer action at Vermont ski resorts too (www.skivermont.com) whether you want to play golf, tennis or disc golf, mountain bike or hike. (Take the easy way up Mount Mansfield -- Vermont's tallest peak -- in the famous Stowe gondola and then access hiking trails www.gostowe.com.) There's even hot-air ballooning. More than 25 hot-air balloons will soar during the 26th Anniversary Stoweflake Hot Air Balloon Festival, July 6 to 8, 2012 at Stoweflake Mountain Resort and Spa (www.stoweflake.com). For the first-time ever, Stoweflake Mountain Resort and Spa is offering a special package for its annual hot-air balloon festival with up to 40 percent savings.
Okemo Mountain Resort (www.okemo.com) is offering a new zip line canopy tour, part of the resort's Adventure Zone that also includes a mountain coaster, trampoline bungee jump, disc golf and more.
Smugglers' Notch Resort (www.smuggs.com) has its own zip line canopy, as well as a llama trek, high ropes and a new specialty Survival Camp for kids 9 to 17 that teaches wilderness survival.
Bromley (www.bromley.com), which already has an alpine slide, water slide, bumper boats and bounce house, among other attractions, is set to open a new Aerial Adventure Park in early July that will combine elements of a zip line, canopy tour and challenge course. Kids as young as seven can work their way from platform to platform and tree to tree, over bridges of rope, wood and wire.
I love that Vermont offers so much 21st-century summer fun, as well as the chance at a place like Billings Farm to time travel back to a simpler time. Kids can even have a scavenger hunt in the museum that explains what life was like for 19th-century farm families. (Who can find the doll in the cradle? The buckets used to collect maple sap for Vermont's famous maple syrup?)
After a morning hike, I think about those buckets when we sit down to a sumptuous breakfast at the Woodstock Inn where pancakes and stuffed French toast rule.
Pass the Vermont maple syrup, please.
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For more summer vacation ideas, check out the "Taking the Kids 51 Great Ideas for your Family's Summer Vacation" at www.takingthekids.com and also follow "taking the kids" on www.twitter.com, where Eileen Ogintz welcomes your questions and comments.
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