Vermont Motorcycle Trip
Jocelyn and I took a relatively long motorcycle trip over the weeked, mostly centered around the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont. I ended up doing 411 miles over the weekend, and Jocelyn somewhat less because she had to drive a short bit of the trip to fetch her motorcycle.
On Saturday morning we got up, packed up our gear, and rolled out to Orange, MA, partly to pick up her motorcycle which had been in the shop out there, and partly to check out the Orange Engine Show. We stopped at a local moto shop on the way there, and I grabbed a cargo net and some earplugs, and Jocelyn managed to score a free set of earplugs that had been given to the store as demo units by the manufacturer. We eventually made it to the engine show and puttered around a bit and ate some lunch. Met some of Jocelyn’s family, saw some cool old engines and tractors, pawed through some machine tool goodies one of the vendors was selling, and finally decided we needed to hit the road.
We took 78 north from Orange (nice moto road!), and picked up 119 in Winchester, NH. Following 119 northwards, we picked up Rt 9 east in Brattleboro, VT, and eventually made our way through the southern part of the GMNF. Route 9 took us across the park, and through a fair amount of rain. We stopped and donned our rain gear, and continued on, eventually hitting the town of Bennington, VT right around dinner time. We parked the bikes downtown and didn’t have to wander far in our search for food. Madison Brewing Company served up some tasty fare, including some of their own root beer (alas, neither of us drink alcohol when riding is on the schedule). Over dinner we finalized our plans for the evening, deciding to head north, looking for the Emerald Lake campground, with a few other options as backup plans. While we were suiting back up for our ride out of town, we got chatted up by a guy who told us about a motorcycle accident he had, and how he had sustained major brain damage but still rides anyway. He was a strange one, for sure.
We headed north out of town on Route 7, which gave me my first taste of highway riding. I suppose if you’re going to have to be on a highway on your motorcycle, you could do a lot worse than Rt. 7 in VT! It offers gorgeous views, and at that hour there were basically no other cars on the road so we had it more or less to ourselves. Not having solid directions in hand, we got off of the highway and took Rt 30 north, as dusk was approaching, thinking we’d find the camp site. After riding through some absolutely stunning farmland (and more rain), we eventually determined that we were not finding what we were looking for, and our cell phones with GPS/Google Maps were nearly useless with no signal. We decided to head back to Manchester, where we figured we’d have cell signal and could figure out where to go. Retracing our ride on Rt. 30 was no great punishment, as the road was equally beautiful the other direction, though considerably wetter on our way out. Arriving back in Manchester, we were able to obtain better directions, and discovered we just needed to go up Rt. 7 a bit further, and the camp site was right off of the highway.
A short jaunt up 7 later, we found the Emerald Lake Campground, in scenic and lovely Dorset, VT. It was after dark by this point, and starting to rain fairly heavily. We were past the normal hours for check-in, but helpful instructions told us to pick one of the open spots, and register/pay in the morning. Unfortunately, there was a distinct lack of helpful signage to tell us where the various sites were located, but we motored up some hills, through the campgrounds and eventually found an adequate, available spot, and hastened to set up our tent in the rain and get all of the gear off of the bikes. We got the tent set up quickly, and performed all of the necessary evening rituals before retiring, just in time for the rain to really pick up considerably. We both had somewhat restless sleep, but it was nice to eventually drift off to the sound of the raindrops hitting the tent fly.
Morning was a bit drier, thankfully, and despite a tentative and brief sprinkle, the sun was peeking through. After the all-important breakfast of oatmeal, we broke camp, and re-packed the bikes. Jocelyn wanted to see what all of the fuss was about with the lake, so she strolled down to look at it and came back reasonably unimpressed. Making our exit from the state park, we stopped to pay the $20 camping fee, but nobody was around, no forms were available, and nowhere obvious to deposit money was to be found. Basically we were left with no option but to skip out without paying, which wasn’t ideal, but sometimes life doesn’t present you with the option to do the right thing.
From Emerald Lake, we headed back down to Manchester in search of a more complete brunch meal. We found it at a place called Up for Breakfast, a small breakfast joint located upstairs in a building in downtown Manchester. The food was tasty, and the wait staff was friendly and enthused, and it made for a good start to the day. Heavily laden with our brunch meals, we executed on our roughly prepared plans that were made over breakfast. Remounting our faithful steeds, we decided to again head north on Rt. 30, since it was such a gorgeous road, and take it north until we could hook up with Rt. 4A, just south of Bomoseen. When we were looking at the maps, I had realized that I had been up to Bomoseen in the late fall, a couple of years ago, for a Rallycross. In fact, it was where the Corrado blew a coolant line during the race, and it had to be nursed back home with no heat after a bodge job. Good times!
Route 30 would prove to be just as gorgeous for our third trip, with the added bonus of being considerably brighter and drier than the night before. 30 is really a fantastic stretch of road, and full of what we considered to be quintessential Vermont: red barns, rolling farm land, cattle, hills, and not much else.
We encountered Route 4 more quickly than we expected, and hopped onto the highway, only to jump back off after one exit, preferring the slower pace and better scenery of Rt 4A east. Around Rutland, we decided to ditch our plans for a hike further north, and started to make our way south again so we could get home at a reasonable hour and not have any mishaps on the motorcycles due to fatigue. Route 7 carried us south, until we picked up Rts. 140 and 155, which skirted all along the northern and eastern borders of the National Forest. We found these to be some seriously great motorcycle roads as well, with many miles of fun twisties and trees. Perhaps not as scenic as Rt. 30, but every bit as enjoyable in different ways.
We eventually hooked up with Rt. 100, which carried us south, down into Londonderry, NH, where we found a seemingly out-of-place little bistro/cafe serving food, and catering to the froofy health/beauty/yuppie market. Interesting local beverages and other products were to be found, at least, and the wraps we had for lunch were actually quite tasty, if a bit pricy. With our stomachs filled and our energy levels improving, we headed south on a different chunk of Rt. 30, winding our way down through the eastern part of the park, and into Townshend, VT, where we rode up to the Townshend State Park headquarters. The last couple miles of the side road were unpaved roads, but pretty well maintained and neither of us had any real trouble. We rested for a bit, and decided we really couldn’t do any of the hikes they had to offer in the time we had remaining, so like true American tourists, we got back onto our bikes and headed out, continuing our journey home.
From that point, we decided it was probably not a bad plan to hook back up with Rt. 119 in Brattleboro, and follow 119 back to Massachusetts, back to my home turf. Before we crossed into MA, we stopped for a break at a little general store sort of place, where there was a small vegetable stand. Jocelyn picked up some strawberries, which we planned to have for part of a celebratory dessert later. Yet again mounted the bikes, and hit the road for the final push. We were both feeling a bit tired, but the riding was still nice, and we both commented to each other that we felt like we were in a nice groove cruising Rt. 119 through Ashburnham and Ashby in MA. Winding up through Rt. 113 in Pepperell, we stopped in at the grocery store quickly to grab dinner supplies, and made the last few miles back to my house pretty quickly.
All in all, it was a really good trip. We were both tired, but not too tired when we were done. It would have been nice to break up Sunday a bit with a hike in the middle, but we both felt we had to plan that better for it to work. I was pretty happy with the distance we covered, though by no means an iron butt type of trip. I’ve only been riding for around a month, but I’m fast approaching the 1000 mile mark.
The champions of the trip proved to be the Interphone F4 Bluetooth headsets that I picked up so we could talk to each other on our moto rides. I am rarely super impressed by consumer electronics, but these headsets really do the job fantastically. They ran for over 10 hours of road time, with the communications link “on” the whole time. We occasionally got pretty far apart, and except for one instance where I had rounded a hairpin and we had a big chunk of mountain in between us, there was no breakup in audio quality. I will do a more complete review of the product some time soon, but suffice it to say I am very happy with the purchase. It is really, really nice to be able to chat with your riding partner as you wind your way around, and discuss what you see, mention you need to take a break, etc. Highly recommended, both in concept and particularly that unit.
Date: June 28, 2010
Categories: Camping, Motorcycle Trip, Photos, Travel