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After our train ride to Mount Washington, we were looking for a bit more exercise and we were still having some nice weather. It has been almost two weeks since we had gotten in a bike ride and from our research, there appear to be several nice rail trails in the area to try out. The Lamoille Valley Rail Trail (LVRT) runs 94 miles from nearby St Johnsbury to the northwest ending in the town of Swanton Vermont near Lake Champlain just south of Canada. Obviously we aren’t planning on seeing the full trail but we would like to see some of it. There are several closures due to the recent flooding. At the end of the trail closest to camp is a five mile stretch that is closed. But if we drive west just a bit to the town of West Danville, we can bike about 11 miles before we would encounter another closure. That would give us about a 22 mile round trip, which would work out as a good distance for a bike ride for us.
There is a decent size parking lot in West Danville right next to the LVRT. There is an unusual covered pedestrian bridge near the start. The first mile or so goes right along the northern side of Joes Pond. Given the size of this body of water, it probably should be called Joes Lake instead.
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| Mini Covered Bridge in West Danville |
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| Joes Pond |
The trail is in excellent shape. While not a paved path, it is a fairly wide and smooth stone dust surface that is a pleasure to bicycle on. The first 2 miles of our ride is relatively flat so it is also an easy ride.
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| Beautiful Trail |
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| More Joes Pond |
As we continue, we found there were not all that many other people out using the trail. The second two mile stretch does have some elevation gain but probably less than 200 feet so it isn’t too much of a workout. It is a rather rural area and we only have a few road crossings so it feels quite secluded.
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| Rolling Hills of Vermont |
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| Mountain View |
The next 6 miles is a pretty consistent downhill, dropping nearly 500 feet. Of course we will pay for that after we turn around but we can enjoy it while we have it. Just before the 10 mile mark, we hit the sign about the trail being closed ahead. They do have a detour route along some lightly traveled roads into the town of East Hardwick where it will pick up the LVRT again in just over a mile. But it looks like this route will be an even more significant downhill and we don’t have a real reason to check out the town.
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| Detour Ahead |
We decide to go past the Trail Closed signs and see how much more of the trail is rideable. The answer turns out to be 1 more mile. When we get to Belfry Road, there are more trail closure signs and we can even make out the top of a very large crane over the tree line in the distance. Since we were near the 11 mile mark, we decided to turn around and head back up the hill. As an aside, I happened to be checking out Google Earth while writing this post and discovered that the most recent satellite imagery from where the trail is closed was from a month after our bike ride. I also pulled up the previous image from 2 years earlier to compare. The upper photo is before the damage and the lower one is from after the damage while the trail is being rebuilt. You can see a culvert and a large area of the woods gone. A measurement of the culvert shows it is 60 feet in diameter and 140 feet long! That would explain the need for the large crane we had seen.
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| Notice Top of Crane Over Tree Line on Right |
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| Upper Image Oct 2022, Lower Image Sept 2024 |
We could definitely tell the return trip was uphill for those first 6 miles or so. We had seen a sign for an ice cream shop on our ride down the trail and by now ice cream was sounding pretty good. We double checked our maps to determine how far off the trail we needed to go and when we saw it was only a tenth of a mile, we went for it. There really isn’t a trail but more of a mowed path in a farmers field down a rather steep hill to Tootsie’s Ice Cream.
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| Don't Veer Off the Trail |
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| Sign For Ice Cream |
We seemed to be to only patrons that had arrived by bicycle, but this place does a pretty good business. We felt obligated to give the “Real Vermont Maple Creamee” a try. It was so good that we would find ourselves looking for other places offering this delicious soft serve ice cream during the rest of our stay in New England.
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| Try a Maple Creamee |
It was a challenge to push the bikes back up the hill to return to the LVRT after we finished up our treat. The good news was we only had a mile or so more of uphill before we reached the top of the trail and had a very nice 4.5 mile gradual downhill back to the car. As we were putting the bikes on the rack, it started to sprinkle so our timing was ideal as well. This was a very nice 22 mile bike ride.
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| All Downhill From Here |
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| Lone Sentry at Joes Pond |
We had some rain and took a couple days off from exploring the area. The good news was the rain wasn’t too significant so there were no additional flooding problems at our campsite. With good weather back in our forecast, we head out for a hike. This time we will head to the southwest of camp to check out Owls Head Mountain Trail. Listed in AllTrails as a moderate hike of 4.7 miles and 675 feet of elevation, it sounded like an interesting place to visit. It wasn’t clear if the trail was within New Discovery State Park, or just adjacent to it. There were no signs regarding a fee at the parking lot we started from. There looked to be several trails from the parking area that would get us to the proper trail to the summit and our path took us on some forest roads before we intersect with our trail.
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| Forest Road to Start Hike |
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| Bright Mushrooms |
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| Owls Head This Way |
The trail was in good shape and not very steep until we got to the last half mile. Large rocks were nicely laid out to provide steps up the very end of the trail.
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| More Mushrooms |
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| Chris Walks the Plank |
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| Climb to Summit |
The views from the summit of Owls Head were pretty nice. There is even a large stone hut built at the top. I suppose if you’re up here when a storm rolls in, it could be a welcome shelter.
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| View from Owls Head Overlook |
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| Stone Hut |
It is likely that most visitors check out the view from this overlook before heading back down, but we knew there was a geocache hidden a few hundred feet from the summit. It turns out there is a rather well used trail heading in that direction that, while not marked, was pretty’s easy to follow. We found the cache and took advantage of the relative seclusion of this spot to have lunch and enjoy the views.
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| Another Owls Head View |
The return trip was pretty easy and there were a fair number of other hikers out on what was a pretty decent Sunday afternoon. On the way back down, we intersected the Telephone Line Trail which our map showed would get us back to another connector trail and to our car. We saw there was another geocache hidden in the woods next to the parking lot. Chris decided to wait in the car while I trudged through the thick brush. This cache was in theory along an old snowshoe trail but I was never convinced that it is used any more. The cache hadn’t been logged in nearly 2 years so I was a little skeptical that I would even find it, but once I got back to ground zero, I spotted it right away.
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| Unusual Mushroom |
On the way back, we stopped at the Groton Nature Center. The building looked to be very new. We headed in to check out some of the displays and found the guy working there to be a wealth of information. We stood around and talked with him for 20 minutes or so getting all sorts of ideas not just of things in this state forest but all over the surrounding area. I’m sure he gave us more ideas than we have time or energy to get to in the next couple of weeks but we will see what we can fit in.
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| New Groton Nature Center |
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| Inside Center |
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| Porcupine |
The next day would bring us back into the White Mountains of New Hampshire and near Franconia Notch State Park. Our goal was to check out the Artist Bluff Trail and Bald Mountain. It’s only a 1.5 mile loop with just over 400 feet of elevation and very easily accessed from I-93. Of course all these facts also means that it is an extremely popular hike. It is mainly a loop trail with just a couple of spurs from the parking lot and up to Bald Mountain. We decided to take the loop in a counterclockwise direction mainly because the elevation profile appeared to have the steepest uphill part of the trail along this section of the loop on the way to Artist Bluff.
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| At Artist Bluff Trailhead |
It turned out that even the “flat” portion of this section, well before we get to the climb, was quite the challenge. It was basically a quarter mile or so with nearly constant rocks to scramble over or around. It wasn’t clear whether the trail was always like this of if there had been some sort of rock slide recently making for the difficult hike.
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| Very Rocky Trail |
The short and steep climb to the large overlook known as Artist Bluff was manageable but it did look like coming down this section would be a problem so I think we were justified in coming the way we did. The view from the overlook is outstanding. Echo Lake is to the south and there are mountains to the east that were surrounded by low clouds. There is a tramway just beyond the lake and it was running steadily up and down. I suspect that its proximity to the interstate leads to a lot of visitors stopping for a ride up. I can only imagine how crowded this place must be during the leaf peeping season.
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| View at Artist Bluff |
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| Clouds Hanging on Mountaintops |
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| Tram Cars at Ski Resort |
We had a geocache to find near the overlook and given how many people were here, I wasn’t to optimistic we could get to it without drawing attention to ourselves. But it turned out to be far enough into the woods that we were fully hidden from view.
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| White Admiral Butterfly |
The trail next heads west and up a couple hundred feet in elevation before coming around to the short spur trail to Bald Mountain. This trail has a lot of rock climbing involved. Nothing too technical, but slow going to get up and over all the obstacles. At least the trail is very well marked.
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| This Way to Bald Mountain |
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| And Up We Go |
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| And Up |
There are some decent views on the way up but the climb continues before reaching the summit. It was a steep ascent but worth it for the views. There were also many fewer people here so it was a more peaceful place to have our lunch.
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| Ski Resort in Summer |
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| And More UP |
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| View from Bald Mountain |
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| Chris Picks Lunch Spot |
Cannon Mountain Ski Resort looks to have quite a few downhill runs. Obviously not much appeared to be going on in the middle of August but it probably is rather busy in the cold winter months.
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| Dark Eyed Junco Stops for a Visit |
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| View Before Heading Back Down |
The hike back down from Bald Mountain was even more challenging but we safely made it without twisting an ankle or worse. We still had the afternoon to spend so we headed over to the town of Franconia to work on some stages of an Adventure Lab. One stop was at an old iron furnace used to smelt iron ore during the early 1800’s.
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| Old Iron Furnace |
While exploring this stop, we discovered there is a trail along the Gale River with art exhibits every few hundred feet. It was a short but pleasant walk and the artwork was a wide mixture from whimsical to beautiful to down right odd. It was a fun way to end our day.
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| View of Mountains from Trail |
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