Kick off summer in Vermont during the Summer Solstice!

Five days in Stowe surrounded by beautiful Vermont Hils
The picture perfect white-steepled, mountain-backed New England town everyone has a picture of in their head.

 Surrounded by the Vermont mountains, you’ll stay at the home of the legendary von Trapp family, whose remarkable journey inspired
The Sound of Music.

Overall Trip Highlights

• Summer Solstice with your BB Sisters: The Longest Day of the Year June 21, 2027 is the summer solstice, and it lands squarely in the middle of our week: fifteen hours and twenty-two minutes of daylight, sunrise at 5:14, sunset at 8:36. 
• The von Trapp Story, Told in the von Trapp House Ninety minutes, private to our group: what is true in The Sound of Music and what was written for the screen, how the family actually escaped Austria, a documentary about Maria’s last trip to Salzburg, and a walk to the family graves.
• Walk up to the chapel
  Werner von Trapp promised God that if he came home from the war, he would build a chapel. He came home, and he built it with his own hands, and it still stands on the hill above the lodge. The climb is short and steep — the one demanding stretch of the week — and there’s a bench at the bottom with the same view for anyone who’d rather take it.
• The Top of Vermont, Sitting Down We ride an enclosed gondola cabin to near the summit of Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in the state, and have lunch at the mountaintop restaurant behind floor-to-ceiling windows. Not one step of climbing.
• Three Herds in Three Days Scottish Highland cattle with the farmers who raise them, the Katahdin sheep who come right to your hand, and the Brown Swiss cows at Shelburne Farms whose morning milk becomes the cheddar you watch being made and then taste.
• The Chapel the Family Built by Hand Werner von Trapp and his family put it up on the hillside they came to as refugees from tyranny and made their home as Americans. Solstice morning begins with a few quiet minutes there, for anyone who wants them.
• Iconic Stowe The white-steepled 1863 meeting house at the center of the village, the most photographed church in Vermont; the 1818 Old Town Hall with its 10th Mountain Division collection; the 1844 covered bridge; and a paved river path that crosses the water eleven times on arched wooden bridges.
• An Evening in the Wine Cellar  Down in the Main Lodge cellar with the resort’s sommelier, who chooses the pours and tells you why, in the hour before our farewell dinner.
• A Taste of Vermont — Three hours with an expert guide through the state’s cheese, chocolate, apple and coffee makers, with something to eat at every stop and the history of how each one is made. Door-to-door, so nobody drives.

The Real Family Behind The Sound of Music

Before Julie Andrews ever sang on a mountainside, there were the von Trapps.

We’re not just visiting Vermont. We’re staying where the von Trapps began their American story and where the hills are still alive.

Day One: Welcome to Vermont

You did it. You booked the thing.

The moment you walk out into the Burlington baggage claim you’ll see a familiar face; your Beatrice Bradley hostess, waiting with a warm smile and ready to take it from here. No figuring out a strange airport, no rental counter, no map. Just a hug, your bags handled, and a comfortable ride up through the Winooski valley.

Then the road turns up the side of a mountain and opens onto meadows in flower, and this is where you’re staying. Not one night on the way somewhere else — four. The Trapp Family Lodge sits high on 2,600 acres above Stowe, and a second hostess is waiting at the lodge to receive you, so whichever end of the day you arrive at, somebody is expecting you.

Late afternoon, we’ll walk the meadow loop together — flat, mown, no hurry, with the Mount Mansfield ridgeline in front of us the whole way and the Kaffeehaus halfway round for anyone who’d rather sit down with a coffee. If you’ve been on airplanes since five in the morning, skip it entirely and rest. You’ll miss nothing.

Tonight we gather for a relaxed welcome dinner in a private room at the lodge the perfect moment to meet the women you’ll be sharing these days with: like-minded company, easy to be around, the kind of women you don’t have to explain yourself to. A glass raised, a few laughs already starting, and the very beginning of friendships that often last long after the trip is over.

Welcome to Vermont. Let’s begin.

Hotel: von Trapp Resort, Vermont

Highlights

• A Warm Welcome at the Airport — A friendly face the moment you step off the plane, with every detail handled from your first step in Vermont.
• Historic Hotels of America — A 96-room Austrian-inspired lodge on 2,600 acres of meadow, forest and farm, inducted into the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
• The Real Sound of Music Family — Not a themed hotel. The actual hillside, still owned and run by the von Trapps today.
• Pools, Hot Tub and Sauna — A heated indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a twenty-person hot tub and a sauna, yours all week.
• A Welcome Dinner — Austrian-Vermont cooking in a private room, and the first toast of the week.
• Four Nights, One Room — You unpack once on Sunday and don’t touch the suitcase again until Thursday.

A Note on Arrival

Standard check-in is 3:00 PM, and while we’ll do our best to have rooms ready earlier, early access cannot be guaranteed. 

Day Two: The Longest Day of the Year

Today is the summer solstice. Sunrise was at fourteen minutes past five, and the sun will not go down until thirty-six minutes past eight — and we’ve built the whole day around having somewhere to be in all that light.

Breakfast together

We start on the meadow. At half past eight, outdoor morning yoga facing the Mansfield ridgeline, with the light already three hours up: stretch, breathe, and let the day open. It’s gentle, mats are provided, and no experience is assumed — if you have never once been to a yoga class, this is precisely the sort you’d want your first to be. There’s an indoor studio if the morning is wet, and skipping it entirely is a perfectly good choice too.

At eleven, we go inside for the story of the house itself. One of the family’s guides takes our group through the lodge — how it came to be here, what the von Trapps built, and the memorabilia the family kept from the Broadway production and the film. It’s an intimate hour and it sets up everything you’ll hear on Wednesday.

Then, in the afternoon we will be tasting our way across Vermont. Cheese, chocolate, apple, coffee: at every stop there’s something to eat, and someone who can tell you how it’s made, who makes it, and where to find it again. This is a state that takes its small producers seriously, and by the end of it you’ll have opinions about cheddar you didn’t have at breakfast. 

Back at the lodge we will have a releaxing stretch of the afternoon that belongs to you. The pools are open, the heated indoor one and the outdoor one and so is the twenty-person hot tub, and the sauna, and the Kaffeehaus if what you want is coffee and a pastry and a chair. A hostess is right in the mix the whole time, and we regroup at a quarter to seven. Some of you will swim. Some of you will sit in the hot tub and talk. Some of you will close a door and lie down, and that is exactly what vacation is for.

And then dinner together, we will celebrate and toast to the light outside and the light within us. The sun will not set until 8:36. You will begin this meal in daylight and you will finish it in daylight, on a hillside the von Trapps chose partly for this light.

Highlights

• Outdoor Morning Yoga on the Meadow — Gentle, facing the ridgeline, no experience assumed, mats provided.
• The Story of the Lodge — An intimate guided hour inside the house the von Trapps built, with the family’s own memorabilia from the stage and the screen.
• A Taste of Vermont — Three hours with an expert guide through the state’s cheese, chocolate, apple and coffee makers, with something to eat at every stop.
• The Pools, the Hot Tub and the Sauna — A real stretch of the afternoon to use them, hostess close by, regroup time named.
• Solstice Supper — We gather at one long table in full daylight on the longest evening of the year, with two hours of sun still to come.

Fun Fact: At this latitude the solstice gives fifteen hours and twenty-two minutes of daylight — nearly six hours more than the shortest day of the year. It’s also why the sun feels like it’s setting for an hour and a half: this far north in late June, the light goes down at a much shallower angle than it does at home.

Note: This itinerary is a general guide to what we’ll be doing, seeing, and eating, with the final version provided approximately three weeks prior to departure

Day Three: The Top of Vermont & the Village Below

After breakfast we drive nineteen minutes up the Mountain Road

We ride the gondola to near the summit of Mount Mansfield, the highest point in the state of Vermont. There’s no climbing involved: the cabin is enclosed and seated, one of them is fully wheelchair accessible, and the ride up takes about fifteen minutes. At the top there are restrooms, a warming hut, and the entire spine of the Green Mountains laid out in front of you, ridge behind ridge. Bring a jacket, and we’ll remind you at breakfast: it runs fifteen to twenty degrees colder up there than down in the valley, and windy, even on the solstice, even on a warm day.

Then we come back down and go home for lunch — the Bierhall or the Kaffeehaus, on our own property, unhurried — and then an hour in your own room before the afternoon.

Later we’re in Stowe village, and the whole rest of the day is on foot within three flat blocks.

We begin at the Stowe Historical Society, where a volunteer has agreed to take our group through it personally. It lives in two restored one-room schoolhouses beside the village library, both of them fully accessible, and it holds the actual texture of this place: nineteenth-century furnishings and clothing, the tools people worked with, photographs, the covered bridges and the mills and the farms, the electric railroad that once carried visitors toward the mountain, and a military collection reaching back to the Civil War. An hour with someone who knows a town’s own history is worth a great deal more than an hour of labels, and this is a society of fourteen volunteers who care enormously.

From there it’s a two-minute walk — under six hundred feet — to the Stowe Community Church, the white-steepled 1863 meeting house at the center of the village, and the most photographed church in Vermont. It’s open to visitors, and it’s worth five quiet minutes inside. The lot behind it has the classic view back over the village.

Then the shops, and the good part of a New England Main Street: the mercantile, the galleries, the bookshop, the Vermont makers. 

Dinner is in town tonight

Overnight: Stowe, Vermont

Highlights

• Mount Mansfield by Gondola — We ride to near the summit of the highest mountain in Vermont in an enclosed, seated cabin, with no climbing at all.
• The Green Mountains From Above — Ridge behind ridge from the top, with a warming hut and restrooms right there.
• Lunch at Home and an Hour to Freshen Up — We come back to the property between the summit and the village, so the afternoon starts properly.
• A Narrated Hour at the Stowe Historical Society — A village volunteer takes us through two restored one-room schoolhouses, both fully accessible, and the real history of this town.
• Stowe Community Church — Six hundred feet on foot to the white-steepled 1863 meeting house, the most photographed church in Vermont, and five quiet minutes inside.
• Main Street on Foot — The mercantile, the galleries, the bookshop and the Vermont makers, all within three flat blocks, hostess walking and hostess seated.
• Dinner in the Village — Enjoy dinner in the village

Note: This itinerary is a general guide to what we’ll be doing, seeing, and eating, with the final version provided approximately three weeks prior to departure

Day Four: The von Trapp Day

Everything below happens within a few minutes’ walk of your own room.

We start at half past nine with the cattle. Sixty-five Scottish Highland cows — shaggy, long-horned, magnificently indifferent to visitors — grazing about a third of a mile from the Outdoor Center. We walk out with the farmers who raise them, and their standing advice is not to be shy with questions, because they have a great deal of history with this herd. Bring a camera. These animals photograph like they’ve been paid to.

At eleven, the heart of the trip.

For ninety minutes, one of the family’s guides tells you what actually happened. Not the film — the truth of it, and where the two part company. How a family of ten walked away from Austria and everything they owned when the alternative was serving a regime they would not serve. How they arrived in America with almost nothing and sang for a living. How they came to be on this particular hill.

We walk to the family cemetery, where Maria and the Captain are buried alongside seven of their children. And we sit down together to watch The Real Maria — a documentary about Maria’s last visit to Salzburg, made when she was eighty years old, going back one final time to the city she left.

There is one more thing that sometimes happens on this hour, and we won’t promise it, because it depends on the day. Two of the Captain’s grandchildren live here on the property and help run it. Sometimes one of them comes and answers questions. If it happens on our morning, you will be in a room with a grandchild of Maria von Trapp, in her house, asking her whatever you like. We mention it not as a guarantee but because it’s worth knowing it’s possible.

A quick lunch, and then at half past one we walk up to the chapel — and here is the story we saved.

During the war, Werner von Trapp made God a promise: if he came home from the battle in front of him, he would build a chapel in His honor. He came home. And he built it, on this hillside, with his own hands and his family’s. It’s up a wooded trail, and the trail is short but genuinely steep — the one demanding piece of this whole week. If that’s not your walk, a hostess stays below with you at the meadow benches, which look out on the same view, and there’s a gentle yoga session that afternoon for anyone who’d rather. Nobody is counted and nobody is asked why.

The afternoon after that is yours: the pools, the hot tub, the sauna, the Kaffeehaus, or a closed door and a lie-down. A hostess is easy to find, and we regroup just before four.

At four, we go down into the Main Lodge wine cellar. The resort’s sommelier chooses what’s poured and tells you why each one is what it is — seated, underground, cool, and a genuinely lovely thing to do after a steep climb. Anyone who doesn’t drink gets poured something too; that’s arranged in advance, not improvised at the table.

And then the farewell dinner, which the calendar handed us: our last night at this lodge happens to be the night the Main Dining Room serves prime rib (subject to menu change) Four days ago most of these women were names on a list. Now they’re the ones who walked out to the cattle with you, who saved you a seat at supper on the longest evening of the year, who waited at the bottom of the chapel trail so you wouldn’t be down there alone.

Raise your glass. You’ve earned every bit of this.

Highlights

• Sixty-Five Highland Cattle — A gentle third of a mile out to the herd with the farmers who raise them, questions encouraged.
• The von Trapp Family History Experience — Ninety minutes on how the family actually left Austria and came to this hill, told by the family’s own guides.
• The Family Cemetery — We walk to where Maria, the Captain, and seven of their children are buried.
• The Real Maria — We sit down together for the documentary about Maria’s last visit to Salzburg, filmed when she was eighty.
• Werner’s Chapel — The wooded walk up to the chapel he built with his own hands because he promised God he would, with meadow benches and the same view for anyone who’d rather stay below.
• An Hour That’s Yours — Pools, hot tub, sauna, Kaffeehaus, or a closed door, hostess close by, regroup named.
• A Sommelier in the Wine Cellar — Down in the Main Lodge cellar for a seated tasting chosen and talked through by the resort’s own sommelier.
• Prime Rib Night (subject to menu change) — Our farewell dinner falls on the one night the Main Dining Room serves it.

Fun Fact: Two of the Captain’s grandchildren live and work on this property today, three generations after the family arrived here with almost nothing. The chapel their uncle built still stands on the hill above the lodge, and the family still holds services in it.

Note: This itinerary is a general guide to what we’ll be doing, seeing, and eating, with the final version provided approximately three weeks prior to departure

Day Five: Until Next Time, Vermont

Look at everything you did.

This morning, over one last breakfast together, let it catch up with you for a moment.

• You flew here on your own — maybe for the first time, maybe after years of telling yourself one of these summers.
• You rode to the top of Vermont.
• You walked up a hill behind a goat. Y
• ou stood in a pasture with a lamb eating out of your hand, watched cheddar being made from milk that was in a cow an hour earlier, and ate an entire supper outdoors in daylight on the longest evening of the year.
• You heard how one family walked away from tyranny and built a life on the hillside you’ve been sleeping on. And you did all of it surrounded by women who never once let you do any of it alone.

After breakfast both hostesses take the group to Burlington. They stay with you until the last woman is through security  the same care that met you at the curb on Sunday, carried all the way through to goodbye. There will be promises to write, to call, to plan the next one.

And some of the women standing beside you will turn out to be friends you keep for the rest of your life.

Here’s the thing we already know, because we see it on nearly every trip: this won’t be your last. Right now, with your bag half-zipped and your head full of new friends, a little voice is already asking — where to next?

“These trips can be addictive … I’ve already booked two more for this year.” — Brigitte, Utah

We’ll be ready when you are. Safe travels home, and until next time.

Highlights

• A Last Breakfast Together — One more unhurried morning at the lodge before we scatter.
• Hosted All the Way to Security — Both hostesses take the group to Burlington and stay until the last woman is through.

Note: This itinerary is a general guide to what we’ll be doing, seeing, and eating, with the final version provided approximately three weeks prior to departure