I love Vermont

After another day in East Burke and the Kingdom Trails, Luke and I drove to Montpelier, Vermont's capital. It's a small town, but sooooo pretty and lovely. It has a beautiful downtown, with lots of public art and cast iron bridges going across the river that winds through it. Luke has lots of photos of it on his blog [blog.photonstudio.net]. Check it out.

We stayed just outside of Montpelier, in a little town called Barre. They have a trail area, called Millstone, where one of the trails has a bunch of really nice carvings in the rock.

And here's the view at the end:

There are several old quarries in the area, that are all filled with water now. And you can swim in them! Here's the one I swam in:

I've never swam anywhere that obviously deep. There was a little ledge and then it dropped down about 100 ft...and you could see all the way down. Awesome.
Here are some other quarries too:

We also rode at Perry Hill, an area recommended by a trail builder Luke ran into a parking lot. Lots of climbing to get up there, but the super fun payoff makes it so worth it!

That weekend we drove to Montreal, to visit Luke's brother and his family. The wait at the border to get into Quebec was brutal--it's really not big enough for the people wanting to pass through it. But we had a wonderful visit!

We had a day off before we were due to be in Ottawa....so we turned around and went back to Vermont for the day. That's how much we love it there. The border was still awful, even on a mid-morning on Monday. We stopped in Burlington because you can't not stop there.
Then we went on to Wains, to the Camel Hump State Park. We were in the clouds all day, so there was a nice drizzle/mist the whole time keeping us cool.

The next day we drove to Ottawa to see my brother and his family. We learned our lesson and opted not to cross at the Quebec border but drove over to Cornwall to cross instead. We had a great visit with them as well, and went to the Museum of Nature to see the ultimate dinosaur exhibit (yay!).

After Ottawa we stopped in the Belleville area to meet up with our friend's dad for a visit. He took us to Goodrich Loomis for some riding and then we had a great lunch, with great conversation, in Trenton. After lunch we stopped by the fantastic bike shop of the area, Bloomfield Cycle, to pick up some new grips for my bike (I feel like I'm always buying new grips).

We also stopped in Cobourg to go to the beach. I had no idea their beach was so good! It was a super hot day though, so even in the water I was toooooo hot. I stayed and played in the waves as long as I could though :)
Then we headed back to London for a week to visit and regroup for....our trip back out west!