Written by Dave

Day 76 – August 12– 65 Miles, 4,080 feet climbing (Whitehall, NY to Royalton, VT)

First a report on dinner last night… For a small, extremely well hidden restaurant, they had pretty good crowd at 6:30 for dinner. We snagged one of the last spots and had pretty good food, not the best or worst of the trip, but enough to refuel us. We entered the restaurant to nearly cloudless blue skies and exited to gloom and rain. It rained on an off until 10PM – we had to sneak out of the tent between showers brush our teeth and go the bathroom. We were at the far end of camp where there was a port-a-potty but everyone used it quite happily rather than trudge to the bathrooms at the other end of the park.

It was supposed to rain on and off all night and into the morning, but it stopped and we had clear skies when we got up.  Between the dew and the evening rains, our tents we soaked this morning and they went in the bags wet. Last night we agreed to skip brekkie at camp as we knew it would be wet. We got up, had some snacks (no coffee!) and rode 9 miles to Fair Haven to another Dunkin Donuts brekkie – oh the shame.

Somewhere on the way to Fair Haven, we made it to Vermont, state number 9. Or if you want to count the Canadian province of Ontario as a state, make that state number 10. We are only in Vermont for two days and one night. We took back roads from Whitehall this morning and as such we didn’t even know that we had crossed the state line. Today was a big climbing day and the back roads had some super steep bits. In fact, we did nearly a quarter of the day’s total climbing in the first 9 miles to Fair Haven.

Thankfully the roads levelled a bit between Fair Haven and Rutland. Even though there was a big hill between Rutland and our final destination, we stopped in Rutland for groceries for dinner. We are staying in an AirBnB far from any food and needed to be stocked, so we added weight to our bags to slog up and over the Green Mountains.

Today’s evaluation profile showed one big climb and a few little bumps. The one big climb was up to the crest of the Green Mountains at Sherburne Summit, where Killington Ski hill is located. The climb started a little after Rutland and was steep at the beginning before we joined Highway 4 for the push to the summit. On Highway 4, there was a nice big shoulder and some more gentle grades. We crossed the Appalachian Trail near the summit. Chris is more than holding his own at this point in the trip and was not far from Nancy reaching the top. I was last reaching the top with my photo and bio stops.

The downhill in Highway 4 was fast and smooth. Unfortunately after only about a mile, we turned off 4 onto state route 100. It was fast downhill but had very rough pavement and no shoulder. It seemed kind of unfair to make us brake after all the hard work we put into the climb but better safe than sorry, especially with only 3 days left to ride. There was a fair amount of traffic but mostly one car was nice, slowed down a bunch of cars, all of which passed quickly when the first car thought it safe – perfect really.

We followed 100 and 107 down the White River to the town of Bethel, VT. Bethel is near the home of Vermont Castings (the wood stove company) but we did not stop in at their foundry. Adding dinner supplies to my panniers was more than enough added weight, didn’t need any cast iron parts adding to the load. We were too early to check into our AirBnB so we did make one stop in Bethel – at the Bethel Sandwich shop where we had a nice feed.

It was only 5 miles from lunch to the finish but it was anything but straightforward. There was one really steep hill just before the AirBnB but the real struggle was a closed bridge that we somehow got in our route. It was clear from looking at the bridge that bikes crossing would not be an issue but we still had to lift the bikes over the barricades at both ends of the bridge. Re-routing would have added at least 10 miles to the day so no one complained about lifting the bikes, even mine, the one that weighs the most (no, Chris’s does not weigh the most even though it should because he’s the biggest!).

Our AirBnB is nice, a two room suite with a shared bath. The owners don’t live here any longer, but their parents have moved in. We need to use their kitchen to make dinner and we will the first guests to use the kitchen since Covid. I guess that most guests have cars and can drive to place to eat out. We are not keen on that idea because, of course we have the bikes, but also because the shortest way to town means climbing over the barriers at the closed bridge again. We didn’t get busted the first time, no sense tempting fate.

About half our ride tomorrow is in Vermont, and then we enter New Hampshire. Same deal in New Hampshire, we’ll be there for 2 days and one night. We’ll try getting an early start as tomorrow we may have over 5,000 feet of climbing. Nancy’s already found and removed one closed bridge from tomorrow’s route so at least the adventure part of the ride can come down a notch or two.