Friday-rest/travel day – Saturday-kayaking (8/30-8/31)
This Labor Day weekend, Tara and I went up to Burlington, VT to visit her cousin and her husband. We left after work on Friday night so we could get up there and just start fresh with activities on Saturday morning. I expected a lot more traffic, but was pleasantly surprised with how little there actually was. We left around 6:45 I think and arrived around 11:15pm including 1 stop halfway for gas and dinner.
Once we arrived, we lugged all our bags in and spent some time chatting with our wonderful hosts. We didn’t stay up too much longer though, because we had a lot of fun planned for the weekend.
Saturday morning we all got up, got ready and got our gear together for a day on the water! We headed up to Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge and stopped to pick up the canoe they rented for themselves along the way. We put in at Louie’s Landing to start our day.
Overall, we think we went about 4.5 miles total. We paddled upriver to Lake Champlain and let me tell you, that was some of the toughest paddling I’ve ever done! Much different from the nice calm, flat river paddling. There was a tough wind that we were going against on the way to the take out which made it pretty difficult. We stopped about halfway across though so we could have some lunch. We couldn’t find anywhere to land, so we lodged ourselves together in the thick marsh grass. That worked pretty well to keep us still for a bit.
Once we got across to the take out, we packed the kayaks and canoe up and headed back to return the canoe rental. We headed home from there to all get showered and head out for a drive to Smuggler’s Notch. We had visited a couple of years ago and were supposed to go there, but it was October and it was already closed due to snow. This year, obviously, we were there in much warmer weather so snow wasn’t an issue.
This rock was so heavy, I needed Zach’s help to hold it up
Exploring the cave
About 2 seconds before Zach scared the hell out of me!
After our driving tour through the Notch, we headed over to Zach and Melissa’s favorite grocery store, Healthy Living to grab some stuff for supper. Picture Whole Foods on a smaller scale and sourced locally. We had a fabulous late dinner and watched Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, which was quite fantastic. After a very busy day, we all crashed so we could be well rested for our plans for Sunday!
And the most interesting, but amazing find from the day:
And it was delicious!
Don't blink. Just run. 
Smuggler’s Notch is awesome! Looks like a great weekend.
I loved it! It was a little frightening driving through certain portions but definitely breathtaking views!