For as long as I can remember I have been coming up to Quechee, Vermont. It is a small skiing village in Vermont, because calling it a town would be giving it too much credit. The main attraction of Quechee is a gorge, a huge pit that falls around a hundred feet into the ground with a stream lazily flowing at its base. This what people come here to see. So fortunately we don't get that many tourists. Summers spent in Quechee consisted of going to the only diner in town for breakfast, swimming in creeks in the forest or pools at the Quechee Club, or making your way over to the Simon Pierce store where you get to see glass blown and all their products being made. You could sift through sand and find all sorts of treasures at the store right by the gorge, go for a hike in one of their many trails or spend an eternity looking at all the interesting trinkets and collectibles at the antiques store (funnily enough, everything has stayed in the same place for about 15 years, so I don't know if it is an 'antique store' so much as a place to store old things people no longer want).
If we were feeling adventurous, we would go into one of the neighboring towns/ villages that are nearby. We always made the obligatory trip to Hanover to see all fourteen stores they have in town, go to the Dirty Cowboy Cafe, maybe see a movie, definitely have a meal at Molly's and walk all around the Dartmouth campus. We usually also made our way over to Woodstock, White River Junction and Lebanon. Then if were all particularly energetic we would making the hour long pilgrimage north to the Ben & Jerry's Factory in Waterbury, VT where we would get free samples and see how ice cream is made again, just in case we forgot about it from all the previous years.
These memories are some of the fondest that I have. I have poked a little fun at Vermont and Quechee, but it is an amazing place that I honestly wouldn't change a thing about. It is a quiet, slower, and more simpler way of life- not backwoods, illiterate, not splitting the family tree simpler, simpler as in removing all the unnecessary burdens and trappings of our ever-evolving cluttered and fast paced lives. No one speeds in town because there is really nowhere anyone needs to be to in a hurry. There is a significant lack of tourists which makes it feel like a true vacation, where everyone there is already relaxed and unwound. These are institutions that have been there for not only the entirety of my lifetime, but for most of my fathers lifetime as well. It is a time capsule that has been preserved for decades, unencumbered, unburdened and unchanged which is exactly the way it should stay. Going to Quechee is like Christmas morning. It is something sacred you have been part of your entire life, it has tons of trees and sweets, and even as you always build it up and get excited for it it always lives up to the hype.
Below are photos from our time in Quechee, Stony Creek, Woodbridge, Hanover, Newport, and Waterbury.
