It's a Trapp!

In a rut.

Stowe, VT – A few intrepid birds dot the grey sky as we wake to aromas of wood smoke and mountain air. There’s a chill in the crispness as we pour ourselves coffee and stare out the large picture window overlooking the mountains.

After feasting on Dutch pancakes filled with roast chicken, apple and cheddar at the Grey Fox Inn, we bank through the mountains, fog falling in sheets thick enough to obscure the rain. Patches of sunshine are like mirages, vanishing over each rise.

By this time of year, the highways have been jackhammered by the frost, and they threaten to chew the tires off the car.

We have decided to pay a visit to Hillsboro, home to Hill Farmstead Brewery, which has been named the world’s best four of the past five years.

It’s also located in the middle of nowhere.

Pulling off the pitted and cracked main highways, we skid on the hills’ silty, rutted roads. It is, once again, a reminder it’s muddy season in Vermont. 

Even behind spattered windscreens, we can see 4x4 drivers laughing at the MINI grinding past holes large enough to engulf it. Each tentative step forward is like driving on bloated worms following a rainstorm.

The trenches threaten to swallow us; in turn, we spit mud for miles.

But, as we arrive, a creamy, salted chocolate stout – on nitro – awaits. And we’re left to admire the beauty painting itself over the hills before we head to the Trapp Family Lodge for the night.

The beer is certainly better than the journey has been.

Even if it is nearly the same colour.