Right in Our Backyard

I realized last month that we have less than 5 months left here in Massachusetts, but a loooong list of things we want to see and do.  I sat down with our great tour book, Hidden New England, and made a bucket list of places to visit, activities to do and sights to see.  I'm hoping we'll get to all of them, but we crossed another item off the list yesterday.

Last fall when we successfully made it out of a corn maze, despite Chloe's distinct lack of a bloodhound nose leading us around, we passed a winery right down the road and made a mental note to come back and check it out.  Yesterday we were wanting to get out of the house, but realized that, even though it was a beautiful day, it was still only in the mid 30's temp-wise (and we also realized that we made have gotten somewhat acclimated to the climate up here since that felt distinctly warmer to us).  An indoor tour and wine tasting seemed a perfect fit.

We took back roads through beautiful countryside littered with farmhouses built in the 1700's, endless stone walls edging properties, crumbling graveyards, and horses loitering around the pastures.  About a half-hour later, we arrived at Nashoba Winery in Bolton and had enough time to tour the winery, try multiple wines and beers and get asked by the locals why people with southern accents were up in the middle of northern Massachusetts.  It was lovely and delicious and just the thing for a mid-winter's day.

Hunt had found an out-of-the-way restaurant twenty miles north of the vineyard that was a converted 1800's lumber mill.  We arrived just in time to see the last rays of sunshine lighting up the mill pond and series of waterfalls.  Old stone floors, blazing fires in the multiple fireplaces and some of the world's BEST corn fritters made us give the restaurant two thumbs up.

Checking off our bucket list one fantastic Sunday afternoon at a time...