A Day in My Life - Day 26 @RRBC_Org 2023 #RRBC 30-Day #Blogging Challenge @YvetteMCalleiro #ADayInMyLife #RWISA @RRBC_RWISA @Tweets4RWISA #travel #RoadTrip #Vermont #hiking #waterfalls #Fallseason #mindfulness #poetry

Hello, beautiful readers! Today is Day 26 of the #RRBC 30-Day Blogging Challenge. Yesterday, in addition to writing my blog, I also wrote a poem for the #TankaTuesday Weekly Poetry Challenge. Colleen Chesebro gave us a painting and asked us to write a poem inspired by it. My mind hooked onto one part of that painting, so I focused only on that. If you'd like to read my poem, you can find it here.

My morning routine was the same until I got to work. Today, I had a Zoom workshop on mindfulness to assist me in my role as the Mindfulness Champion for my school. We completed a body scan which was so relaxing and then discussed ways to bring mindfulness into our classrooms to help our students become more aware of their present moments and how to pay attention to their lives with kindness and curiosity. My school is starting a mental health club, and we are hoping to incorporate mindfulness to encourage students to become more mindful and to learn ways to manage their stress.

After lunch, it was back to teaching as usual. I came home and worked out. Then, I used my sauna, took a shower, had dinner, and caught up on commenting and reading other authors' blogs.

I have one more road trip to share with you. That's correct! By this point, we had gone through 48 of the 50 states. This next trip focused on Vermont. On our road trip to Maine, we had somehow missed driving through Vermont. It turned out to be a blessing because we had to plan a trip to go see it, and what better time to visit Vermont than in the Fall! Living in Florida and always traveling in the summer, my son never had the opportunity to see the changing of leaves in the Fall season, so we planned a weekend trip for him to experience that.

My son has had perfect attendance since pre-K. So, I wasn't about to let him miss a day for a trip. Luckily, students are given full attendance if they are in school for at least two hours. Originally, I had our flight departure planned for 11 am.  Unfortunately, it was the same weekend where a hurricane was going through the state of our connecting flight, so I had to rearrange our flights to get a connecting flight in a different state. 

Because of this change, my son got in a bit over three hours into the school day before I picked him up to get ready for our trip. Because of the new connections, we didn't arrive in Vermont until after 11 pm and then had to drive to our destination about 45 minutes away (In pitch darkness. They don't have street lights on the highway. What!). Had the hurricane not disrupted our plans, we would have arrived around 6 p.m. and would have been able to explore a bit. Instead, we got to our hotel around midnight, but we were there and had every intention of making the best of it.

It's hard to plan a trip to see the changing of the leaves. One week, it can be all green and some yellow, and a week later, it can be all reds and browns. We used the Fall Foilage Map & Nationwide Peak Leaf Forecast site to pick our weekend. We were between two weekends, but one of those Fridays had a football game that my son did not want to miss, so we picked the first weekend. The leaves were still more on the green and yellow side, but there were pops of color everywhere. My son loved it!

Since we arrived very late on Friday, we took full advantage of Saturday. After breakfast, we drove to Underhill State Park in Mt. Mansfield State Forest to do some hiking. We completed the Sunset Ridge as well as a bit more. It was quite chilly for us, so we had jackets with us, but the skies were amazing! We hiked past streams and climbed rocks. We were in our element! The hike was so worth it because at the top, we saw miles and miles of beautiful foliage.

We drove a bit of State Road 100 and Route 108 and took in the scenery. 

We stopped at Bingham Falls at Smugglers Notch State Park and hiked to see that waterfall. 

 

Then, we went to Moss Glen Falls to see another waterfall. We climbed a hill and saw it from a distance. My son saw some people below so we backtracked until we saw a trail which led to a stream with boulders running through it. Yep, you guessed it! The only way to the waterfall was across those boulders. 

My son said, "Come on, mom! You've got this!" So I pulled up my big girl panties and followed his every step across that stream. I almost fell in once, but I caught myself just in time. I am so glad I did because the place was breathtakingly beautiful and the energy was incredible! In total, we hiked almost 8 miles on Saturday. We made the most of every minute.

 

On Sunday, we had a little bit of time to spare before our flight home. We went to the original Ben & Jerry's factory. They were closed, but we still took some fun pictures there.

Then, we went to ECHO, the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain. We walked along the lake and enjoyed the beautiful day. Then, we went inside ECHO and enjoyed science for a bit. Soon enough, it was time to come home.

 

It was the shortest "road trip" we have ever taken, but we enjoyed it to the fullest! Now, my son has only one state left, and that will happen this summer! (Vermont was actually my 50th state, so I have seen every state now.) I'll share more on next trip later. ;-)

Have you ever been to Vermont? Do you enjoy the Fall season? I'd love to hear about it.