Grand Isle to Crawford Notch (Dry River Campground) July 6, 2016

Grand Isle to Crawford Notch (Dry River Campground) July 6, 2016

We started the morning with plans to go to Burlington VT early in the morning.  Today was a short drive day, and with multiple items on the agenda, it couldn’t have been more welcomed. It didn’t get extremely cool on the shores of Lake Champlain, basically because the trees blocked everything coming in.  Since I was hot, I decided to wake up at 4am, and knew I wasn’t going back to sleep.  I got to the blog relatively quickly and caught up.

Sunrise on Lake Champlain

We were on the road to New Hampshire not long after.  Had a couple of stops to do first though.  The first place I wanted to visit was the Island Line trail.  When I checked the map originally to see where we might want to go on the way to Maine, I noticed this line of land that crossed the Lake nearby.  Upon further research, I realized that this was the old Island train line—a converted rail trail.  I figured it would be an awesome bike ride.  I also saw that there was an actual bike ferry in the middle where the pass was.  About a 200 foot opening, where a ferry takes bikes across the channel for a modest fee for about 7 bucks round trip.  Although I wanted to do this originally, later I just felt that it would be much cooler to head to Burlington the next day and find where the trail picked up and ride out to the ferry and back without actually taking it. 

This was a very busy trail.  Loads of cyclists used it on a daily basis, I figured because it was only Wednesday. We hit the trail and did the ride as planned, an approximate 9 mile ride, round trip.  The lake was a little windy, and the trail left a coating of grey on our legs, but the weather couldn’t have been better and the ride got all our hearts pumping quite well.

After the ride, it was time to head to Burlington to check it out.  A modest city, with very cool brick lined pedestrian only streets near the college.  Jen found the Vermont Brew Pub, so that’s where we decided to eat a quick lunch and have a beer while checking out the fair city.  Our day was moving along quickly, so we ate our chicken bbq and shepherds pie, drank our Habarnero Mango beers and headed out.  The beers were not fantastic, but tasted good after the ride.

After leaving Burlington, we headed out about 30 miles southeast to one of the highlights of the trip, the Ben and Jerry’s Factory.  After traversing the bustling hills of Vermont, we arrived about 2:30 for the 3PM tour.  The place was packed and it was HOT out, even by FL standards, it was about 92 degrees this summer day.

Ice Cream Scoops throughout the times

Udder Fascination with the RV

Graveyard of Flavors

In order to cut 2 hours out of our 7 hour commute to Maine, I booked Crawford Notch Dry River primitive campground in New Hampshire.  Situated in the unbelievably beautiful White Mountains, we found a winner!  This place only had about 25 campsites, but the back drop was the incredible peak of Mt Washington!  Wow.  We noticed a trail that lead to a water .4 miles away and had to hike it. 

We never know where these places lead, but that’s the reason we hike them. There is usually something to behold at the end.  The campground manager was very friendly. He told us of tours on the summit of Mt Washington, how the train wasn’t the best alternative, but a very cool one if you're into trains, and talked about the trees in the area.  As we headed down the trail I took some very cool trail pics of the kids meandering—avery with her stomach hurting from female problems, and GT just being himself.  We arrived about 5pm and the walk was quite a refreshing one.  When we arrived at the stopping point on the trail, I had just realized my photo batteries died! DAMN! The reason was that there were the largest boulders I’d ever seen on this river bed.  Once I saw Avery and GT start climbing them like monkeys, I knew I had to go back and retrieve the spare batteries and an extra camera if that was needed. So yeah, I walked/ran a half mile back to camp to grab the extras, (and get me and Jen a new beer of course—beer/battery run). The following pics will show the reason. 

The Mt Washington background pic just does not do this 6628 ft peak any justice, but at least I have the memories stored! The kiddos frolicked for about an hour and a half longer, then it was off to build a campfire and eat sandwiches in the deep dark woods!  Amazing campground Crawford Notch—it was our favorite place yet (to camp at least!). To top things off, none of us awoke at all that night.  We all slept perfectly, ready to head to Maine in the morning.