This was my first time visiting Vermont. After 32 miles through Eastern New York we crossed the Vermont border. I knew we were on to something when the welcome to Vermont sign had Kerry-Edwards signs stuck to it ... progressive in a retro way?
Vermont felt immediately different than New York. As we road into the first town - Bennington - I saw something I hadn't seen since Seattle: Sustainably grown organic food posted in a restaurant window. Coffee shops with real locally roasted fair trade coffee. This gave me hope so when I saw a sign that said "real fruit smoothie" I thought it might be worth checking out.
See, smoothies are theoretically simple creations. Fruit, milk or juice, Ice or yogurt. But regardless the FRUIT is key. But everywhere else that advertised smoothies across the country there is sort of mix they use that must have "real fruit" on the bottle because I would ask "Is there real fruit in this smoothie?" and they would enthusiastically say Yes. Then I would follow up No - I mean Real Fruit and they'd fess up to the evil, sneaky mix. But in Vermont - she opened the freezer and pulled out actual Fruit. Ahh ... satisfaction at last.
We biked across southern Vermont today. All of it except for less than a mile which we'll cover tomorrow. The route has been called the Molly Stark Byway. Who is Molly Stark? I had to google it when I got back to the hotel to figure it all out. She was the wife of General Stark who led American troops and won a pivotal battle in the Revolutionary War in Bennington. Apparently his version of the Henry the 8th speech was something like, "Boys, if we lose this battle Molly Stark will wake up a widow." This caught on and Molly Stark became a symbol of patriotism in the North East and there are tons of things named after her - a forest, bridges, byway, schools ...
These things struck me about Vermont. It's lightly populated, but the towns feel dense. This may be because they are tucked into valleys and by rivers in the mountains. Or it may be because it was a summer Sunday afternoon and the tourists were out. Regardless the entire area felt very empty in the green rural areas and uncomfortably full and congested in the towns.
The mountains are pretty, tree covered, various shades of green from hardwoods. You can see why it's famous for its beautiful fall color. the terrain reminded a bit of the foothills on the west side of the Cascades ... substitute evergreen trees and add big mountains in the background. But they don't really strike me as mountains. The roads are steeper, and the the mountains feel closer together and more densely placed than the West Coast mountains.
We rode east through National forest up an 8 mile climb. It was fun to climb again and did not feel very difficult. A beautiful stream parallelled much of the climb. We dropped a bit and then climbed to the summit of Hogsback Mountain. The claim to fame there is you can see 3 states from the top - Mass, NH and VT. It was raining again when I was at the top so I didn't stay long and headed down. A great descent - really fast. Flew into Brattleboro on the descent and then some rollers that felt easy and fast.
Tomorrow is our last long day - 85 miles into Manchester with lots of climbing including some 13% grades. Can't believe it's almost over.
Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016!!
10 years ago
