Meg Ryan's Epic NEK Adventures

And then life goes on...

Vermont really is a beautiful state. This past year at school has really shown me just what an amazing location I live in. The Northeast Kingdom of Vermont is a gorgeous place with amazing natural beauty, wonderful (though there are some sketchies out there) people, an astounding sense of community, and a rural majesty that is a breeding ground for pure art. Jeez, I feel like I'm writing a tourist brochure...but it's all true!

Anyway, the reason why I've been thinking about all of this is because recently Megan and I have been taking quite a few summer adventures through our beloved NEK. I thought I would share them, and the pictures that go along with them, with you. Last week, our adventures began with a beach trip to Willoughby Lake on Tuesday, both of us still somewhat reeling from the Lost finale on Sunday. After packing a quick picnic lunch at my grandparent's house, we set off. The water, however, turned our toes to popsicles so we decided to just lie on the beach instead. This resulted in a nasty sunburn on my back which is now in the itchy stage. Imagine that while slaving over a hot grill at McDonald's...

Anywho, we decided to extend the trip into a beach-hopping, lake-skipping journey. We took a side road that brought us to Long Pond. Little did we know that this side road would turn into an extremely narrow dirt path. This trail eventually did lead us to Newark Pond Road, a location we've been meaning to explore for quite some time now. Leave to Vermont to have all of its back roads connect in the most unlikely places.

After driving past gorgeous Newark Pond, we found our way to Job's Pond. We've been to Job's Pond before, and have dubbed it our NEK "spot", but never with our cameras. As you can see, this time we were prepared.

Well, Megan was prepared. I just used my phone.

A further trip down this road brought us to East Haven, VT, a town that can only be reached by Route 5 or back dirt roads as we had found it. Leaving East Haven we eventually made our way to Island Pond, VT, a town and a body of water. Obviously this pond is named accordingly.

While attempting to avoid Canada (because neither of us had our passports, we would have liked to go to Canada), we continued our excursion northward towards Morgan, VT and Seymour Lake. Here we finally found a suitable beach. The water was actually manageable to swim in and we found some nice minnows to hang out with. They ate us. It was fun. I also found a bright white rock and a dark rock in the sand next to each other. It reminded me of Jacob and MIB, so I took them.


The road before us was amazing as we made our way towards Derby Line, VT where we hoped to catch the interstate back down to Lyndonville. Derby Line, however, is a tricky town. It is right on the border of Canada so while traveling here you have to be extremely careful not to accidentally cross over into the land of bacon and hockey. It's not easy. This is the town where I am working on a play this summer, though, so it was good to get the lay of the land (not like I haven't been here before, but it was nice to explore). Although, we did miss the turn to the interstate because we were scared it went to Canada. We got caught on another back road but fortunately we found (okay, Megan found...) another road that brought us back so we could eventually pick the interstate up in Derby (not Derby Line, there's a difference there...). It was beautiful country, though.




Peace out!