last day

Today is my last day in Vermont, but yesterday was my last "vacation" day--today I mostly cleaned house and packed and did some last-minute shopping.

So, my last exploration yesterday was along the Long Trail and Highway 100--two of Vermont's most scenic north-south routes, as evidenced by these photos.

Here's the view from Mount Abraham, Vermont's fifth-highest point (at a not-quite-nose-bleed-inducing 4006 feet above sea level).  Below is a pastoral scene along Route 100.

I have to finish packing before I head out in the morning, but there is still a bit more to say.  All in all, a pretty rewarding experience.

25.97

25.97 is pretty close to 26.  So I'm gonna trust gmaps pedometer and say that my ride today was 26 miles, from Oakledge Park to the end of the causeway, up to Intervale, then to Church St., back up to UVM, and back to the car.  All in all: one of the best days of the summer.  Perfect weather, nice breeze off Lake Champlain, and really great scenery. Including a stop at Shelburne Farms before the ride, where I got a view like this one:

Here's a photo from the railtrail, out on the causeway.  Part of it was closed since high water earlier this year created some pretty big washouts.

And here's one from the ride back through the UVM campus.

Yeah, tough place to spend a summer, I know.

photos

Here are some pics from the Cape Cod/Boston/Cambridge trip from last weekend.  I may have a few more pics to post soon, from yesterday's jaunt to Hanover/Dartmouth College/Appalachian Trail.

Bostonia!

Over the weekend, I headed to Cape Cod and Boston to explore.  A brief list of highlights, in roughly chronological order:

• Getting to see Elsa and Jim, and meet baby Kate.  I stayed with them on Friday night.
• Poking around Woods Hole, where Jim works, in the afternoon fog.  I had fish and chips at Captain Kidd and got to see some of the ocean research vessels that are based out of Woods Hole.
• The beach! On Saturday we drove/walked to Black Beach, including wading through some pools in the street left over after the previous night's rain.  Beach!  Dead fish! Shells! Rocks! Starfish!
• Successfully finding Lyn and the Riverside T station.  Lyn is my friend David's girlfriend's mom, and she was a great companion for exploring Boston.  And we got to ride the public transportation!
• Freedom Trail.  I gotta say, I think that the Freedom Trail is a great concept, and that other cities should create their own "preferred pathway" through their city's high points.  I mean, the thing about Boston is, it's a big city with loads of cool shit.  And that's great, but for someone like me--someone who's underprepared and easily overwhelmed--it's easy to feel adrift.  So the Freedom Trail creates a cool way for a visitor to see the major points, not get lost, and get oriented for further exploration.
• After walking the Freedom Trail, Lyn and I went back to the Bell in Hand Tavern for dinner.  I had the hot lobster roll, so now I feel that I've completed the Northeastern seafood tour as well (lobster, crab, clam chowder, haddock, mussels.  Is there something I should add to the list?)
• Beacon Hill.  After staying with Lyn and her husband Dean near Wuster (spelled Worcestershire), I headed back into Boston on Sunday to look around a bit more.  While I think the Freedom Trail's a great idea, it was also nice to discover that getting two blocks off the trail was a chance to see a resident's view of the city.
• Chinatown.  Pho for lunch.  Yes please.
• Cambridge.  At Elsa's suggestion, I hunted down Burdick Chocolate after a quick look around Harvard.  Cool town, good chocolate.

Pictures coming soon!

Canadia!

Today I headed to the Northeast Kingdom, to ride a rail-trail along Lake Memphramagog.  The guide book said the trail ended at the border, but I took along my passport in case there was more trail on the other side.  Turns out, there was!  So, I rode about five miles, crossed the border, then rode another the miles on the other side.  The border patrol on both sides were friendly, and the ride was beautiful (even in spite of the rain--which started to fall just as I was getting ready to turn around and continued long enough to get me really soaked.  I rode down to a lake access point when I got back, though, to rinse out my socks, shoes, gloves, and shirt.)

Here's my turn-around spot, near Tomifobia, Quebec.

And here's a view of the lake on my way back--between storms.

On the drive home, I stopped off at a roadside syrup store, operated by the parents of one of my sister's colleagues, and learned a bit about syrup making.  Fascinating!  Now I just wish the maple tree I planted two years ago was a little bit bigger....

sunset's long shadow

Here are some pics from my short ride yesterday (~5 miles), around the neighborhood.  The first is Cox Brooks, just west of town.  The second is at West Berlin Cemetery is along the route I drive every time I head into Montpelier--one of bunches of cemeteries out here.  There's one across the street from me, too.  Most are relatively small, but well-tended and peaceful.  I guess that could feel creepy, but it doesn't--it fits in, feels natural.

freedom

To me, apparently, freedom means a bike ride.  Today I rode an out-and-back at Groton State Park.  The guide book was reliable for the first half of the trail, less helpful on the second half.  I ended up walking part of the route, because of washouts and sandy spots; all in all, about five hours to do 30 miles.  And on the way back I stopped to dip my toes in Ricker Pond, just a few yards from the parking area.

There weren't any fancy markers, like on last year's Independence Day ride, but there was this cool slab:

Here's one of the spots where I couldn't quite ride my bike down the railway.

And here's the celebratory shandy I drank at the end of the ride:

food

a short list:

• organic greens with celery, apple, chicken, and green goddess dressing
• oatmeal with maple syrup, currants, walnuts, and almond milk
• brie wrapped in pastry dough, with a layer of rhubarb-currant compote melted inside
• scrambled eggs with kale and hard salami
• grilled pork chop with roasted brussel sprouts
• and tonight's meal: chicken with sweet potatoes, celery, snap peas, red onion, and garlic (with chinese five-spice, mustard, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and beer)

i suppose i could be more adventurous in my cooking.  but i don't do so bad for myself.  i admit, i'm pretty excited about the frozen pizza i bought at the store the other night.

an idea rolling around

As I've been exploring lately, I've been trying to figure out what feels different to me about Vermont.  It's not just that the landscape is greener or that the business is less commercialized.  There's something else, something that has to do with the establishment of community.

Things here seem really pretty distributed.  Evidence: Vermont has 630,000 people, roughly.  Yet Burlington is the biggest city, at just 42,000.  If you add in the nearby communities, the Burlington area is closer to 85,000.  But after that, the biggest cities are only about 15,000.  But, more importantly, the "city limits" here butt up against one another: in other words, all of the rural space between communities counts towards the population numbers (I think, anyway).  This means that the actual population of more built-up areas is much lower than the census numbers suggest.  Instead of large built-up areas, there are "strings" of development, along highways and other routes, with occasional "clots" that count as towns.

I'm going to call this "anthroganic" development: humans developing in relatively organic ways, without much  help from large-scale technologies.  This form of development probably mirrors population patterns of other animals: congregating near water and in sheltered valleys, traveling along paths of least resistance, and eventually building in areas that didn't require a great deal of land-clearing.  Overall, the system is consists of many arteries and even more, smaller capillaries, carrying traffic out in what seems to be a pretty even distribution--some more congested areas, but overall a relatively slow, steady flow of life.

In contrast, I'm going to suggest that lots of the West was settled in a more "technoganic" way: though major pathways might be based on long-past animals trails and paths of least of resistance, large-scale technologies may have played a larger role in the establishment of communities and major arteries.  While much of Vermont was settled at a time when D-9 Caterpillers weren't around to help build roads, I think that, in the West, the re-routing of major roads (as emerging technologies allowed) has caused communities in the West to be established in places that aren't necessarily the most "natural" fit.  Thus, communities clustered more, and required more large-scale technologies to enable further development.  The relationship between major arteries is much different: flow is relatively unimpeded between major communities, but then slows markedly within those communities.  And, there the "length" seems the capillaries is much shorter, overall.

I could be wrong about all this.  In fact, I probably am.  It's just a rough idea, and definitely the overall scale plays a role.  I've already wondered what Wyoming's population distribution would look like if you compressed it to Vermont's size.  And I suppose that Wyoming communities can be bigger just because the landscape--with vaster plains--does allow it, even without massive restructuring of the natural environment.  All of this makes me wish I knew more about land/city planning.  It's interesting to be somewhere that feels rural in a much different way than Wyoming does.  It's odd for a space to feel rural without necessarily feeling isolating.

Another interesting feature of Vermont's development is the way that the interstate feels very much "overlaid" onto the landscape as a "late-comer" to the landscape.  In my limited exploration, the interstate is truly the high road--built higher up on the landscape, above the communities, and I've often had to drive a good few miles to get from the interstate to the communities.  The interstate seems to be NOT part of the local traffic system, overall, which means most communities along I-89 have only one access line to the interstate.

goodbye, earl

Tonight I visited Hope Cemetery, in Barre.  Since Barre quarries so much granite, there are lots of impressive memorials there.  It's a beautiful cemetery.  One thing that struck me is how many Italians are buried there--old stonecutters who came over from Europe to make a go of it in the wilds of Vermont.  And another that always strikes me about old cemeteries is how many kids are buried there--lots who didn't make it a full year, and others like Earl, who was just 14.  Hard life.

on the road

Here's a brief review of my trip over the past week:

• I'm lucky to know great people

Part I of the trip: Roads lead further east.

• Dinner at Peter Christian's Tavern in New London, NH, with Courtney and her mom Lynn and sister Stephanie.  New London (home of Colby-Sawyer College) is beautiful.  They convince me I need to add Boston to my list of places to see while I'm in the neighborhood.
• Camping at Thousand Acres Family Campground near Franklin, NH.  At $29 bucks to pitch a tent in the warm glow of the Pepsi machine light, I can't recommend them.  They had amazingly clean bathrooms, but it woulda cost me some extra quarters to take a shower.  WTF.
• Breakfast at the Downtown Deli in Laconia, NH.  This is a cute town.  As I was telling my sister earlier today, NH and ME definitely feel more commercialized than VT has so far.  Laconia still feels smallish, it definitely has more of a "parking lot sprawl" feel to it.
• A slow drive up the coast, with a fun stop in Old Orchard Beach to dip my toes in the ocean.  The nice counter staff at Perfectos recommended stopping there to look around on my way to Portland.  They also recommended the pumpkin raisin muffin, which was tasty.

Part II of the trip.  An amazing stop in Portland, staying at my friend Megan's place.  Highlights include

• Megan and Pat's little boy Felix.  He's adorable.  And, also, it's fun to watch really great parents interact with their kids.
• Dinner at Gritty's in downtown Portland, and a nice walk around their business district.  They've got it going on, like Donkey Kong.
• A return trip to Old Orchard Beach, since this is Megan's old haunt; turns out, the day before, I'd parked across the street from her dad's bar, The Whaler.  We ate pier fries, hung out on the beach, and had a crab roll at Huot's.
• A hike along Portland's Forest City Trail, and some looking around at Bug Light Park in South Portland.  Boats! Light house! Canals!  Man, I'm not used to being around water.
• Pizza from Otto Pizza.  Muthafuckin' mashed potatoes on a pizza! With bacon! And scallions!

Part III of the trip: the road home

• At Megan's suggestion, I hiked Pleasant Mountain rather than searching out a trail in my rail-trails book.  This was a beautiful hike, with few people on the trail.  I hate ticks; luckily, neither latched on.  At 2006 feet, it's one of the highest peaks in southern Maine.
• Another of Megan's suggestions was a trip across the White Mountains on the Kancamagus Highway.  This stretch of road makes me want to sign up for a return trip next summer, just to explore this area.  Lots of trails, incredible views, a rocky river.  Not too many people; most trailheads had only one or two parked cars.  Here's where I want to stay next time I'm there: Redeke Cabin.
• Dinner at Brown's Market Bistro in Groton, VT.   As the only cafe-ish place on the main road through town, I didn't expect fancy dining--just a place to get a panini or some such.  But there were tablecloths and candles on the tables; I skipped the $28 lobster and went for grilled veggies on polenta.  A few minutes after ordering, the chef brought out a small appetizer plate of bruschetta with grape tomatoes, mozzarella, balsamic, and basil, and apologized that the order would take a few minutes.  It was worth the wait.  I'm hoping to ride a rail-trail in the state park near Groton, so maybe I"ll have a chance to try the cheesecake that was on the menu.

I don't know what more to say.  The trip was spectacular.  Great scenery, really great people, and a new sense for what New England is about.

The Maine Event

more details about the trip to Maine will be added tomorrow, but for now, I'll share the first decent set of pics I've taken so far this summer:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/singledropofrain/sets/72157627088775670/show/

resident snake

must be snake season.  

i guess i'd rather have him on the top of the compost pile than underneath the lawn mower.

still, it gives me the eebyjeebies.

burly

So, yeah.  Yesterday was a trip to Burlington, to look around vermont's big city.  It definitely felt more developed than lots of other places I've been--in both good and bad ways.  The Church Street area was beautiful, but also annoyingly full of the types of stores that can be found in any other shopping area: macy's, eddie bauer, patagonia, banana republic, borders, etc.. The place feels less unique, more commercialized, for sure.

To be fair, the Church Street market also had a good share of cool local businesses, too: I wrote postcards I'd picked up at Apple Mountain gifts while sitting in Uncommon Grounds. I met up with my UW colleague Courtney at Sweetwaters, where I had a pretty fine eggplant sandwich.  Crow Books appeared to be a nice, mostly-used bookstore, and there were various boutiques and jewelry stores too, if you're into that kind of thing.

But the real fun, for me, was off the strip.  I stopped into the marriot to ask for directions to the Switchback Brewery, then enjoyed a nice (rainy) walk down Pine Street to find it.  Turns out, the brewery tours are only on Saturday, but I was able to pick up a couple pint glasses and some free stickers.  The brewery is relatively small, mainly because there is no bottling operation: it only comes in kegs, so ends up mostly on tap in the bars.  Their main beer is a tasty, smooth ale.

The brewery people gave me a great recommendation for lunch: Four Corners of the Earth.  Though I'd walked by the deli on the way to the brewery, I woulda totally missed it with out the recommendation--it's tucked away towards the back of a big building, and it sorta feels like you're wandering around a USPS warehouse parking lot to find it.  In any case, the owner there suggested the special, a pork-loin sammie with fresh coleslaw toasted with some really fine bread.  It was the simplest kind of delicious: good ingredients, well balanced.  I may stop back in next time I head to Burlington.

Which I'll do soon, since I stopped in at the local non-profit bike store, Local Motion, and they hooked me up with some really great trail info.  I'm excited about the Island Line trail, and look forward to getting back in July on a sunny day.  Here's a view of Lake Champlain from the waterfront:

And here's a view down Church Street, from the foot of the Unitarian Church at the north end of the street: 

self portrait

here's a picture from my day in burlington.  more about the trip tomorrow, but wanted to get at least this pic up.  i like it a lot.

heroism / words to chew on

"The source of all existence ... yields the world's plenitude of both good and evil.  Ugliness and beauty, sin and virtue, please and pain, are equally its production. ... Hence the figures worshiped in the temples of the world always beautiful, always benign, or even necessarily virtuous. ... Likewise, mythology does not hold as its greatest here the merely virtuous man.  Virtue is but the pedagogical prelude to the culminating insight, which goes beyond all pairs of opposites."  -- Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces

breaking news

here's what the montpelier/barre paper has to report today.  results make me feel like i'm not so far from home.

stowe/waterbury

Yesterday I hiked the Stowe Pinnacle/Hogback Mtn trail.  Somehow I messed up my foot somewhere in the past few days, but the hike was spectacular.  It was also kinda brutal; I feel ridiculously out of shape.  I feel like the humidity takes it outta me.  Anyway, here's a pic of the trail, before it gets steep and rocky:

After the hike, I stopped in Waterbury to look around a bit.  A thunderstorm warning came over the radio on my way into town, and they weren't kidding.  I bounced the car off the curb trying to leave town, since it was raining so hard I couldn't see out the window.  Somehow the picture I took of town had a sorta "1983" look to it, which I tried to enhance with editing software.  Suhweet.

60 up, 30 down

Gmaps says my ride this afternoon was about 12 miles (if I calculated my turnaround point, anyway), up Cox Brook Road.  The road is mostly straight, but still really pretty, and the closest non-highway ride.  The first two miles or so were paved, then good unpaved roads beyond that, along the brook.  Initially it looked like I might get rained on pretty good, but then the sun came out and I had really great temperatures.

I didn't have my camera with me, but here's a picture I could find of the lower bridge:

another good day

the line-up for today:

• tour of north america's largest granite quarry
• hike to paine mtn.
• dinner with will and tawnya in randolph

the tour at the Rock of Ages quarry was pretty awesome.  the scale is impressive; they're the quarry who created a 12-foot tall statue of Pope JPII.  They slab it off in 200-ton blocks.  80% of their granite is for gravesite memorials/masoleums, but they also make surface plates for industry.  we got to hear (but not see because it was too far below us) a blast during the tour.

after eating lunch at a diner/movie-rental store (vermont cheddar burger with handcut fries), i decided out check out a nearby hike in the hiking guidebook i picked up in montpelier earlier this week.  i got lost.  or, more accurately, i lost the trail, and i'm still not sure exactly where.  but i think there is another road i'd like to explore there, so i might take the bike back with me another day.  i'll just have to be careful not to run over any frogs:

while i was out wandering, i heard back from tawnya, who is out in vermont for will's dad's wedding.  twenty miles from northfield.  so, they invited me for dinner and strawberry-rhubarb crisp and really, how could i say no?

the view from here

today i stomped around the ski hill east of northfield.  vermont has some steep country, but i found my way to the top (ish) of the hill and also wandered around the old slate quarry.  (tomorrow i'm thinking i'll head to world's largest granite quarry, just over the hill from here.)  anyway, here are some pics of my hike; the wild turkey i scared up flew away too fast for me to get a good picture.

here's a flower shaped moth hanging out on some dead leaves.

here's a picture of the old highway.  (actually, i don't know what it is, but it's a neat old cut through the rock near the slate quarry.)

somehow my camera ate several pictures i took of a fallen tree with little communities of fungii growing on it.  maybe i'll be back before too long and can try again.

mont - peel - yer

Today I spent some more time wandering around the capital.  The search for cheesecake was unsuccessful, but I'll continue the valiant effort.  I predict success, eventually.  In the meantime I found a bar of ginger chocolate to keep my taste buds entertained.  (And brussel sprouts, too!)

Anyway, here is a photo of the Hubbard Park observation tower, on the hill behind the capital, a view from the trail, and a photo of town.  I can think of worse ways to spend a day, and worse places to spend it in, too.

rainy days

If I was disappointed that summer was slow in coming to Laramie, relocating 2000 miles away hasn't really solved the problem: Vermont has been mostly rainy for the last three days, and coldish too (high in the low 60s today).  On the bright side, I really, really needed to get my online course put together before class starts tomorrow, so the weather has been a good thing.  Happily, the course is now about 95% ready for lift-off.  Sunny, near-eighty-degree weather isn't forecasted until Wednesday, but I'm planning to get out tomorrow to do some more exploring.

Also, I want some cheesecake.  Perhaps that will be the guiding force for tomorrow's exploration....

trip east

Here's a slideshow I made of my trip.  I may play with it some more, so that it plays in order, which I can't figure out.  Essentially, it shows a driver view of the trip at every 100 miles (very roughly--sometimes I looked down at the Trip A odometer and realized I'd driven 12 miles past the hundred mark, so I'd take a shot then instead of turning around and driving back...).  So, essentially, the 23 pictures are Mile 0 to Mile 20 plus the bridges into and out of Canada (at Detroit and Cornwall).

What's interesting about the slideshow is not the variety but the relative conformity of the images.  More than 85% of the trip was completed on interstate roads, and the impact of that mode of travel is obvious: the whole continent looks pretty much the same, zinging by at 75 mph on controlled-access roads.  Or, at least, the windshield view is pretty much the same.  It's a bad way to get any sense for the uniqueness of geography, I think.

a brief list of highlights

I'd hoped to get a slideshow of my trip assembled by today, but it's not quite there yet.  But, in the meantime, some brief notes to get this blog started; I'll fill in backstory in the next few days, too.

So:

• A taxi halfway between Rapid City and Wall, SD.  I'm going to imagine that this was a "bucket list" trip, someone who had a random free day, decided they'd fly into Rapid, take a cab to Wall Drug, eat a 25-cent cone, and cross that one off the list.
• An elephant in Sherburn, MN.  Actually, a slide, at the park where I stopped to eat lunch on Day 1, part 2:

• Sushi in Cedar Rapids.  Really, a great visit all-around to my friend Ross and his wife Jessica.
• Highway 30 around the south end of Chicago.  Not a "highlight," really, except that the traffic was moving.  Unlike I-80, where things were a standstill for 40 minutes before I decided to dodge off.
• Zingermann's and Angelo's in Ann Arbor.  Mmmm, food.

That'll have to be enough for now; it's bedtime.