Verdant Vermont

Today we took a trip up the eastern side of Lake Champlain. It was a stinking hot day in the high 90's and not the most pleasant for motorcycling.

We took a ferry from Crown Point in New York to Vermont. Until last year there was a bridge here, but it was demolished, and until it is replaced, a free ferry service is the only way across Lake Champlain for miles.

On the ferry we met Mark who owns a BMW K1200, but was travelling with his wife who doesn't like to ride, so they were in a car.

The first part of the trip was through rolling farmland and small villages. There are many variations of home styles using stone, brick and weatherboard; some grand, some homely. Much of the land in this area has been cleared for housing or small farms.

 We were able to make good time and the temperature was still in the seventies. However, as we approached the city of Burlington we ran into miles of traffic lights - some spaced only a hundred metres or so apart. Our average speed dropped and the heat started to make itself felt.

We hadn;t seen any of the sixties style diners we enjoyed so much.  This state seems to have another culture of eating and we have yet to learn what to look for and what to order. The "coffee shop" served just that, with a few cakes - not what we quite felt like at this hour.

By the time we arrived at South Hero Island, around noon, we were hungry and seriously dehydrated. There we found an almost hidden, tiny, roadside snack bar. It was safest to order burgers with fries and canned soft drink. We'll sort ourselves out eventually with this new style of eating.

As we ate this little boy wanted to know why we looked so hot and would have asked us a lot more if his mother did not drag him off.

 
We continued on, looking for a sign to point us to the site of the oldest log cabin in the US, but we somehow missed it...
 
Fiurther along we diverted to the Ilse La Motte,  and stumbled on the site of the first European settlement in Vermont. We took a lenghty break there and ingested more fluids.

Across the road at St Anne's shrine there was a small outdoor wedding. 

People were picnicing on the edge of the lake. The water was warm enough for a swim.

Bronze stations of the cross are set in a park overlooking the lake. 

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Chris cooling off.

Our run continued north, almost to the Canadian border before turning east then south. We avoided Burlington this time by riding to the east, but there were many small towns along our route and we never really got a decent run. The speed limit was up and down like a yo-yo. We would just get to 50 and almost immediately have to slow to 40, then 35 or 30, and sometimes 25. 

A bicycle rider pufffed up a hill, saw us resting under a tree and said we should be enjoying this weather as "it will be snowing in two weeks". We laughed.

 
As we neared the Crown Point ferry our GPS decided to send us off away from there. It had the sulks and was not speaking to me - maybe it was also feeling the heat? We ended up making our way to a ferry on the shore opposite Ticonderoga without help from the GPS and from there it was only a short distance to our motel.

We met two other bikers on the the ferry 

In all, it was a long and tiring day. We were pleased to be back in our motel room. The local laundry was packed with a school camping group. We were lucky enough to find a washing machine and drier, so we juggled a meal and a beer at the local, friendly pub before retiring..