Vermont Things To Do, Things To Drink

Driving from Montréal to Stowe, Vermont, we took a scenic route down a chain of islands in Lake Champlain.


Aya had never seen ice fishers before, and had certainly never seen cars and trucks parked out on a frozen lake.

View Larger Map

We stopped here for a couple of photos. And then, to our surprise, we did this:

The Vermont woods still had very nice snow, especially in the first few days. This is from when it was wetter, but still wonderful.

This calf seemed warm with its long hair.

Its mother hovered close by with her long horns.

The hot tub was a real treat. When we got too hot we rolled in the snow to cool down, then jumped back in.

Aya and Dad teamed up in the kitchen and produced a rich, dark beef stew and some amazing cheese soufflés to replenish our strength.


Thirsts were met by Vermont's excellent selection of local beers. Here, in no particular order, are some that we remembered to take photos of.

Howl black lager by Magic Hat

Circus Boy wheat beer by Magic Hat

Raison d'Être Belgian brown ale by Dogfish Head was particularly good

Demo dark IPA from Magic Hat

Otter Creek's black IPA was a real hit

A straightforward, flavourful ale by Long Trail

As tasty as their beers were, you may notice that we did not provide links to Magic Hat's website. Designed by and for people who attend way too many outdoor concerts, we wouldn't feed its navigation system to our worst dog.

Suffice to say that the menu is a doodle-pad of incomprehensibility that refers to their beers as "Elixirs".

Never mind. The beer is really quite delicious.

Did we miss any Vermont brewing gems? What should we look for next time?

Montreal Beer

Beside Montreal's wonderful Marché Jean-Talon is Le Marché Des Saveurs which does a very good job of promoting Quebec-made goods.

This cooler, for instance, contains only beers that were brewed in Quebec.

Most of them are not available in other provinces, but a happy exception is the line-up of beers from Unibroue.

With labels looking like 70s rock posters or fantasy novel cover art, what is on the outside is as distinct as what is on the inside. Unfiltered and with lots of lees exposure, the flavours are full, rich and rewarding.

Their Éphémère apple is a white ale brewed with apple must. It is fully dry and crisp, packed with tart green apple flavour and a long, satisfying yeasty finish. A real treat on a hot summer afternoon, but also great with a spicy dinner.

Their Ephémère black currant is made the same way and is similarly amazing. Fruity, spicy aromas and delicious black currant flavour. Like Ribena-and-soda without the sugar and all grown up.

The Blonde de Chambly is a Belgian-style beer with lemongrass and floral aromas leading to a palate full of crisp citrus and bitter hops. Just wonderful.

We're lucky to have some of these available at BC Liquor Stores and Legacy Liquor Store. Highly recommended.

Unibroue was bought by Ontario's Sleeman Breweries who was in turn bought by Sapporo Beer Company (サッポロビール株式会社). It would be great to someday drink an Ephémère apple after a long soak in the o-furo.

*Edit:
One note about the larger bottles of Unibroue is their unique cork-and-cage closures:

Quite fun, but they can be a little tricky to open sometimes. The cage is easy enough, and then they only need a twist to get the cork started. However, the head of the cork is smaller than that of a Champagne cork and on some bottles it can be difficult to get a grip on it.

We found that a rubber dish-washing glove is the simple answer. Drape it over the cork and it increases your gripping power enormously due, of course, to Schallamach waves.

How To Delete A Folder Of Photos

We spent the last few days of a lovely winter vacation in beautiful Montreal,
where there happened to be a student demonstration right around the corner from our hotel.

While taking a couple of photos, we were reminded that my father had recently been in the same situation and had been ordered by a police officer to delete the photos he had taken. It struck us that not only was this a gross violation of his rights, but it would also be a real shame to have to delete a memory card full of vacation photos just because of one or two snaps on the last day.


We decided that we should be prepared in case it ever happened to us.


Here is how you do it (advanced users are advised to keep reading):

Find the menu item for deleting a single image.

Select the option to delete the entire folder.

The system will ask for confirmation.

Select OK and press the button to confirm.

The folder is now deleted...


...unless, of course, you simply made up five images of a fake operating system, loaded them into your camera and showed them one at a time to whichever official thinks they can trample on your rights.


Here they are, in sequence:

And here are the zipped files for you to download for your own camera. The files are 2024 x 1518 px (typical dimensions for a 3Mb image).

*edit March 27, 2012:

We realize now that the images don't have to be so large, of course. We made a new set at 640x480 (should match the VGA setting on your camera) and zipped them here.

They are named

• DSC09995.JPG
• DSC09996.JPG
• DSC09997.JPG
• DSC09998.JPG
• DSC09999.JPG

so that they will be the last files in your folder and therefore easy to find.


"DSC" is the file naming convention for Sony and Nikon cameras. You may have to change the file names to IMG to suit your camera system.


Drag them into the on-board camera memory or onto each memory card you own, then navigate to their folder and go through them one at a time. You may need to turn off the display features (image number, EXIF data and so on) so it doesn't give the game away. We suggest practicing this a few times before attempting it in a high-pressure situation.


When you switch your camera to show the photos, you should be able to go from the last photo you took straight to the first one in the sequence (DSC09995).


If you prefer, you can change the file names to start with DSC00001.


For more information on photographers' rights:
in Canada
in the UK
in the US (PDF link)


*Edit: March 27, 2012:
An interesting issue popped up when we re-sized the images to 640x480. Photoshop added its own EXIF data to each image and this prevented the camera from reading the images.


We created the original images in Flash and output as a JPG sequence. This method gave us images with absolutely no EXIF data at all and the camera could read them right away.


If you load JPGs onto your memory stick and the camera can't read them, try opening and saving the images through a simpler editor (MS Paint, for example).


Alternatively, our research turns up these two tools specifically designed to remove EXIF data (we have not tested them):
Exif Tool
ExifCleaner