Rent The Lodge At Blueberry Hill

Remember when we used to do stuff indoors during the winter? My family used to spent an awful lot of time lingering in the Snow Bowl lodge, in Junebug, in the children’s room at Ilsley Library and the college field house.

So far we’ve loved spending more time outdoors this winter. But sometimes I just want a place to dump all our stuff, warm up a bit and eat a snack.

So when I heard that the nonprofit Blueberry Hill Outdoor Center in Goshen is renting out the upstairs of its lodge for private use by single households — and that it’s only $25 for a three-and-a-half-hour slot — I jumped at the chance.

We brought our own cross-country skis, plus sleds, snacks and a few games. You can rent adult- and kid-size snow shoes and adult-size skis there. You’ll also find soup, hot cocoa, cookies and other snacks available for sale downstairs in the lodge.

Upstairs was our own big, rustic space, with couches, tables, a chess set and other games — oh, and wifi. We kept our masks on, since occasionally folks came in and out downstairs to use the bathroom, grab a trail map or get a cup of coffee. But for the most part it was just us.

There’s a whole network of trails at Blueberry Hill, but we’re still extremely novice cross-country skiers, so we stuck to the beginner trails right around the lodge. Then we came back and planted ourselves around an outdoor fire pit, which was tended by a nice guy named Nico.

After a good long break, with many snacks and a partial game of chess, we dragged our sleds right across the road to a pretty sweet sledding hill next to the inn