I liked Granite Escape in Manchester.

Interesting to learn, I’m a big whiskey fan and I’m always on a lookout for local distilleries, but haven’t seen very many ME based ones in my times there. Is there anything you would particularly recommend? I cover New England for work and spend a lot of time on the 95/93/91 corridors and all in between. 2 of my recent finds were Smugglers Notch and Barr Hill.

What towers are they using? I’m in southern vt and nothing but VZW gets service

Legitimately, regardless of your motives, your best bet is to drive the 3.5 hours to the Portsmouth, NH liquor store at the Portsmouth Circle. Or 3 ish hours to Gorham, NH. Why? Because as you mentioned ME liquor laws suck. NH liquor stores, especially the new ones, have a great selection. If you’re looking for specialty Bourbon or Scotch, they usually have a glass case somewhere in the store for the really top shelf stuff.

Other than that, you’re stuck with whatever your local stores ordered. ME is very controlled and if the distributor didn’t grease the liquor commission well enough you won’t find that “small batch” whatever. You won’t find much local liquor in ME, it’s mostly breweries. VT and NH however have a handful of local distilleries that are available via NH liquor stores.

Good luck.

Need more info before we can really help. If you’re flying into Boston/Manchester/Hartford you have different choices than if you’re going into Albany or Burlington.

Coming from the south, Killington, Okemo, Mt. Snow, Stratton, Bromley. Probably in that order. I don’t know who offers tubing up here though.

If you fly up north, Stowe is the big one, but Smugglers Notch, Jay Peak and Bolton Valley are all good options as well. You can get to those from south, but add 2-3 hours drive time.

My personal recommendations would be Killington, Stowe and Okemo in that order. All 3 are large mountains with a lot of real estate to give everyone something they can ski. All 3 have reputable ski schools and a lot of rental options around. And all 3 have good on mountain or close by lodging options, killington and Stowe being the bigger ones.

Good luck. I ride all 3 all winter, hopefully we’ll have some good snow dumps before you get up here.

This is the right answer. One way doors. They leave and can’t come back. Not cheap though.

So, there are over 155 comments here by the time I am posting this. So forgive me if someone said this already. I will give you the advice that I wish someone gave me at your age. Your job/career doesn’t NEED to be fulfilling. You need to be fulfilled. What I mean by that is that when I got out of college I worked multiple different jobs from teaching, to becoming a police officer to sales, making anywhere from 25k/yr to $150k a year, taking pay cuts for a job that was “helping people.” It wasn’t until I realized that my priority was making the money that allowed me and my family to do what we wanted outside of work and a job that had an appropriate work life balance for me. I realized this in 2019 and made the change 4 months before everything shut down. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. Do I love my job? No. Do I like it? Yes. But I would leave tomorrow for something that offered better terms for me and my family. It’s exceedingly unlikely for that to happen and thus I’m perfectly happy where I am currently. I work remote, live in the sticks on 2.5 acres on a private road.

TLDR: Work to live, don’t live to work. Do something that allows you to live the life you want. Whatever that may mean.