Vermont Trip-Part 3

On Tuesday morning, we got up early and headed down for our breakfast. I usually don't eat all that much for breakfast. In fact, I usually have a banana, a yogurt (with no HFCS of course), and a granola bar. However, I was getting used to having a big breakfast already. You can't beat fresh cut fruit, fresh granola mixed in yogurt and blueberry pancakes.

After breakfast we drove about 45 minutes to a place where we rented two kayaks for our float trip on the Clyde river. The float trip was part of our pedal and paddle package and consisted of a lazy kayak trip down a very calm river. In fact, it was really more like a big stream rather than a river. We took our time and slowly kayaked down the river. The water was kind of low and there were some fallen trees that we had to maneuver around carefully. But we managed to stay dry for the whole trip. It was very quiet at times and we felt like we were out in the middle of nowhere. Floating down a river can be very peaceful and a great way to see wildlife. We did not see much on this trip until the very end when we saw some loons on the lake that the river dumped into. It was neat because at first we thought they were strange looking ducks. It was not until later when we past by their nesting areas that we saw the signs and realized what we had seen.

Here are a couple of pictures from the float trip.

After our float trip, we had a light lunch at the restaurant at the Inn and then got cleaned up and ready for our first afternoon at the spa. Melissa had the 90 minute hot stone massage while I had the traditional 60 minute full body massage. My massage was pretty good. I give the masseuse an A. He really opened up my tight areas including my legs which still don't have full range of motion.

After our massages, we had another wonderful dinner at the Inn followed by some leisurely walks around the area. We scoped out some of the trail heads on the other side of the road and watched the sun go down from on top of the hill overlooking the Inn. Below you can see a couple of photos from our walk. In one picture, you can see the Church that we came across the day before on our bikes. We tried to do one of those silly pictures like people do with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It did not quite turn out but it is still a neat view.

On Wednesday morning, Melissa took a break from riding and decided to chill out and also go for a swim while I went on a ride on my own. I started out across the street on "Bob Magill" and did a whole bunch of trails including some good climbs. I was taking the opportunity to really push myself and do as much climbing as possible. In fact, I ended up riding lots of what Melissa and I did the other day except in the reverse direction so that I did lots of climbing, some of it pretty steep.

After my ride, we had lunch and chilled out for a while before heading back out on the bikes for another afternoon ride. The weather was perfect again. We did some nice trails with some technical climbs and tricky descents. We took our time and picked our way over the roots carefully. Again, Melissa did really great. These trails were more challenging than anything else we had ridden in Richmond and Melissa really stepped up to the challenge.

Again, after our ride, we dinned on fresh and yummy food followed by another walk around the area. I was really getting used to leisurely walks through the pastures after dinner rather than watching TV. It got me thinking about getting rid of our FIOS TV and just getting free broadcast television. That is another topic for another day and is a project I am working on.

Thursday morning I went on another solo ride while Melissa took a break from riding. She did some site seeing around the area, visiting a nearby village and then we had lunch followed by our second afternoon of spa treatments. This time, Melissa had foot reflexology which I would later find out was a bust as her therapist really did not know what she was doing in the feet department. My treatment on the other hand was excellent. I had neuromuscular therapy which turned out to be so good that I am going to see if there are any other people in our area trained in that particular discipline. The therapist was able to find all my problem areas and release the tension that I did not even know I was carrying. At one point I had mentioned that my ankles have always been tight from a lifetime of soccer. She had me on my stomach holding my ankle with my knee bent back towards my rear. She pressed with her other hand on a particular place on my hip and I could feel my ankle release all this tension and loosen up. It was amazing. If I could afford it, I would go once a week to someone with this skill. But alas, my money tree that I planted in the back yard has yet to be fruitful.

Can you guess what we did on Friday? More mountain biking of course. Melissa and I did a shorter ride in the morning and then I went on one last epic ride. The lady at the Kingdom Trails association gave me some routes that would prove to be challenging. When I told her what I had ridden thus far and how I had ridden it all up hill, she pointed me in the direction of a trail called Burnham Down. Of course instead of doing what she suggested, I front loaded the ride with a bunch of other trails and climbs just to maximize the workout. When I got to the Burnham Down trail which was a double-black diamond trail, I noticed the trail sign said Burnham Up. So there was a little sense of humor here. The climb was long and challenging but lots of fun too. There were all kinds of neat obstacles, bridge work, holes, roots, and hills. It was long but the payoff in the end was a very long downhill on Moose Alley and then some great riding through some meadows and fields of corn. It was a truly epic ride and a great way to end the week. Below are a few pictures I took along the way.

After all that riding, we went back to the River Garden for dinner and had some more delicious food. We went with the specials again and were not disappointed. It was all so very good.

After dinner we walked around a little again before starting to get packed up and prepared for our early morning departure. On Saturday, we bugged out after breakfast and headed south towards Philly where we would be staying the night again at Melissa's sister's house. We had a pleasant drive through Vermont but when we hit NY, we picked up a fair amount of traffic. Back to reality it seems. But we made good time and got to the Redilla's house in time for dinner and had a nice evening visiting. We even showed them some of our pictures on their Wii. We were pretty tired and still had another 5 hours to drive the next day so after picture and tv we went to bed and slept quite well.

On Sunday, we took off early in the morning and had a relatively uneventful trip back. In fact we were making really excellent time until we rounded the DC beltway to get on I95 south. This is what we faced.

Finally after about an hour in bumper to bumper traffic, it let up and we made it home without any more hiccups.

All in all, the trip was superb and it got us thinking about a summer home in Vermont. We will have to wait for the money tree to sprout but maybe someday.

Finally, I wanted to include a link to this video from the Kingdom Trails website that gives you some idea of where we were and the trails that we got to ride.