Yurts Yearning for new Homes - Props to MTN Ops!

I showed up for work today to see the parking lot coned off. I thought to myself, oh, they must be repaving the lot at the administration building. I couldn't have been more wrong. At about 9:30am a low-boy trailer showed up carrying a yurt. Our mountain operations staff had managed to move this huge structure early in the morning, put it on a trailer at the Solitude Lodge, and drive it down the hill to the Clocktower base area! With about 15 guys on hand, and one very skilled driver, the Yurt was quickly delivered to its new home, right next to the rental shop. This year the yurt will house the Salomon and Atomic Demo Center, a great place to go demo the latest equipment and have a tune done on your current skis.

Props to the Mountain Ops team for carefully moving the building into place. It amazes me what the staff here can do.

One thing to note though - while watching them I could only laugh and think about "that guy with his hand on the mattress on top of his car"! Apparently we hired all our ops guys straight out of ESPN's World's Strongest Man competitions.

Box o' Bees

Literally. Take a look at where these little creatures set up shop for the summer! Sorry guys, the fun is officially over!!!

School is back in session

Wow, sometimes I just don't know where the time goes. Summer is over. The kids are back in school. The nights even seem cooler. Can you believe it? Next we'll be talking about the brilliant colors of Fall.

The VT Dept of Forests, Parks and Rec says, “We’ve experienced many bright sunny days and received plenty of moisture this summer, which has created ideal growing conditions for all vegetation ... We can look forward to another brilliant fall foliage season.”

I hope they're right. Fall certainly can be beautiful in the mountains. If you're planning a trip, be sure to get it in before the first week or so of October. That's when they predict the colors will be in peak for the majority of the state.

Sleeping Under the Stars

It's been a long time since I spent a night sleeping under the stars. I was a camp counselor and back then the greatest challenge was keeping the girls in their sleeping bags and staving off the pranksters carrying pans of warm water.

It wasn't with the intention of dozing in starlit darkness that I ventured out the other night with a quilt and pillow. A cold front brought crystal clear skies that coincided with the Perceid meteor showers. Vermont Public Radio held a star gazing party up at Burke Mountain and conducted a live broadcast with call-in questions and commentary by my favorite Eye On The Sky meteorologist Mark Breen. I cranked up the volume on the radio and headed out to the front lawn. It was pretty chilly for a midsummer night, so it felt good to have Nelson, my dog, curl up under the covers with me.

The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift Tuttle. I learned that the streaks of light darting about in the night sky at this time of year are actually pebble-sized fragments hitting the earth's atmosphere 100 miles above us. The light show is supposed to improve as the night wears on and I tried my best to keep up with the proliferation of shooting stars, but the radio talk of constellations and galaxies yielded to classical strains that lulled me to sleep and the next thing I knew, I was waking to the low growl of Nelson warning off imaginary night specters. I dragged my dew-covered quilt into the house, thankful that no warm-water-wielding marauders had happened upon me.

When was the last time you settled back to take in the night sky? Cheers!

Happy National S'mores Day!

It's true - August 10 is National S'mores Day. It's one of the best things about a summer camping trip or a winter visit to Okemo Mountain Resort's Coleman Brook Tavern. It's so much fun to see families taking a break from skiing and gathered around a table-top "campfire" on a winter day. Of course it's even more fun to be the one toasting a marshmallow to golden-brown perfection and smashing the gooey gob of stickiness between two graham crackers ... and don't forget the slab of milk chocolate! Mmmmmmm ... can't you just taste it? We have the Girl Scouts to thank for the first recorded version of the s'mores recipe, found in the Girl Scout handbook of 1927.

So build yourself a campfire or just make a marshmallow mess of yourself at Okemo.

The Jackson Gore Outdoor Music Series continues tonight with a free concert by The Brightwings. The Brightwings, a Boston-based band, consists of three singer/songwriters: Matt Rafal, Dave Dombroski and Dan Holden. Jayme Tardiff rounds out the line-up on drums. Their name is taken from an episode of the television show "The Wonder Years," which was set in the late '60s and early '70s. The Brightwings are influenced by that same era, hinting at the honest and simple sounds of The Eagles, CSNY, Tom Petty and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band incorporates this nostalgic vibe into their songwriting, creating modern songs with a classic rock feel. Three part vocal harmonies, acoustic guitars and heartfelt lyrics are all key elements of the Brightwings sound. On Friday nights throughout the summer season, the lawn in the courtyard at Okemo’s Jackson Gore Inn is transformed into an outdoor concert venue featuring renowned local and regional entertainers. Admission to the Jackson Gore Outdoor Music Series is free and the grounds open at 5 p.m. Concerts are slated to begin at 6 p.m. and end at 9 p.m. Families are welcome and all attendees are encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs or blankets. In case of rain, the concerts will move undercover. An outdoor barbecue is available, as well as dining in Jackson Gore’s Coleman Brook Tavern. Cheers!

Only 4 weeks left until school starts......

Hard to believe that summer has gone by so fast. If you didn't get outside this weekend, you missed a fantastic 3-days. Oh, did I say 3-days! Yup. I played hooky on Friday and went over to Lake George, NY. Met up with longtime friends and spent the weekend in the water.

Now, keep in mind, winter is less than 90 days away(assuming the season starts at the beginning of November), so the weekend was not all lounging and drinking. I went running on Sat and Sun morning...after the humidity broke. Saturday afternoon I hopped on my Laser and sailed all afternoon....the wind was fantastic..... and the water was warm, warm, warm. What a perfect afternoon.

Which brings up the topic of sunscreen. No matter how diligent you might be when applying sunscreen.....Mother Nature and the sun god always find the one spot that you missed. The back of my right arm....needless to say....it was crispy on Saturday night. I thought I'd slathered every piece of exposed skin.....even my feet were covered. I'm blaming the burn in "life vest rub". It simply wore off the sunscreen.

And lastly.....I can't believe there's only 4 weeks until the kids go back to school.....and for some towns it's even earlier. Oh well, all good things must come to an end. I hope they enjoyed summer camp, soccer camp, sailing camp, lacrosse camp, hockey camp, horseback riding camp, etc. Whatever happened to the daily rec department program and swimming at the local lake......everyone is so programmed these days.

So remember, get out there and exercise. Winter is coming fast and you want to be in good shape for your first turns of the winter.

-Dex

I'm Digging It!

Okay ... I am not personally digging it, but 11 archaeologists from the University of Vermont Consulting Archaeology Program have spent the last two weeks excavating an area at the entrance to Okemo's Jackson Gore and they have come to a conclusion that Paleoindian nomads who roamed the area 11,000 years ago, returned to this spot repeatedly over the course of a decade or more. In addition to thousands of pieces of spear tip fragments, the group found two in-tact spear points!

In the course of planning a new nine-hole golf course at Jackson Gore, Okemo Mountain Resort has underwritten excavation of an area, first identified as a Paleoindian artifact site in 1999.

Paleoindians were the first Native Americans to appear in North America about 500 years after the glaciers receded. They are thought to have been a nomadic people who traveled in small extended family groups. Evidence shows they were superb at stone tool manufacturing, but preferred to make their spear heads (this was prior to the invention of bows and arrows) of stone indigenous to areas now known as northern Maine and Pennsylvania.

The big mystery is - how did the stone from so far away end up at Jackson Gore - through trade or did the natives travel that extensively in their nomadic lifestyles?

Okemo’s Jackson Gore seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of a people who appear to have preferred high, sandy terraces and large river valleys, according to Project Supervisor Jess Robinson. “This must have been an exceptional place,” he said, “one of fine east/west access or perhaps an established travel corridor for game and hence, natives."

It was pretty cool to touch, and hold in my hands, stone tools crafted 11,000 years ago by people visiting this area. Cheers!