Late Fall Musings in VT and ME

Hello Everyone!

If you are in New England, what a fall we had! With these late fall musings in VT and ME this has to be about one of the best falls I can remember in a long time. And…we got to enjoy it! 😊

We finished up one of the busiest park seasons we have had. On paper, we were 14 people shy of 39K visitors. It was a busy park season!

Unicorns became a strong theme and dominated our team spirit. In that regard, we did really have a lot of fun.

Vermont parks just shined with all their beauty.

There was a moment where I was sad to be leaving Vermont’s foliage because we were going to Maine and I was worried we’d miss the fall colors. But all of New England was a glorious blanket of color. We did a 10 day trip to the Maine AMC lodges around Moosehead Lake.

As we have spent the past two winters working with the Maine AMC we had never seen the ground up there. Literally. We have only skied around and snowmobiled in and out of our lodge. So to go in the fall was such a treat!

Even when peak in the canopy passes, then the understory hits peak. It was just incredible.

But this leads into the question lots of people have been asking us:

What are we doing next?

Sadly, we will have to sit out this winter of Maine. Tiff has had leg pain for years. Until this past November, I have been able to ignore it and it never stopped us from doing the things we wanted. Within this last year it has gotten significantly worse and impacts my daily life. I got xrays, saw several providers and turns out I have SEVERE arthritis (they wrote it in all caps, not me) in my R hip. The best course of action for long-term lifestyle is to get a hip replacement.
So very shockingly to me at first, that is what is happening in November and I am counting down the days. There is every belief I will be able to resume normal mobility and get back to living life. I never thought this would be in my cards, certainly not at this stage of life, but even going for a three mile hike has become a daunting thought. So, I am grateful I have a solution with a super high success rate for the issue I have. I will keep you posted.

This winter you will find us cozied up in Vermont with our friends, working on projects and recovering.

What else? So yeah, even tho we won’t be there, our trip to Maine reminded us all the more how much we love it up there and the AMC’s mission. The AMC was just awarded a huge multi-million dollar grant to make another land purchase up there. This is such exciting news. If anyone watched David Attendbouroughs documentary, he talks about rewilding places and how important large tracks of land are. The Maine AMC has tried to be a leader with that. So if you want to support them you can become a, member or make a booking to go and stay at one of the three beautiful lodges (Gorman, Little Lyford or Medawisla.)

Chris says he should start a youtube channel just of watching my highs and lows of scanning receipts. (Side note, our
maned wolf video is now over 5.5 MILLION views! Never would have thought!)
I get so excited when I find random scores. When I was checking out of the grocery store I happened to find this little pile of three discarded receipts. I checked on Ibotta and there happened to be an offer and I got $1.50 back just for picking these receipts up off the ground. So far my lifetime Ibotta earnings since April are $73.65 with $15.58 on deck. It’s like a mystery hunt for deals! Plus I always scan all the receipts in Fetch and so far have collected on $15 for that.

Let’s see. That’s about it for now. What else have you all been up to? Did you get to enjoy any nice fall activities? We also ate apples off the trees in two states and enjoyed fresh pressed cider. Ahh…the simple joys of fall.

Hope you are all doing wonderful out there!
Until next time,
Tiff and Chris