Today will have more food stops.
From my stealth spot near the tiny Albert C. Lord State Forest in Cavendish, it was only 8 miles into town to eat at Singleton's grocery store in Proctorsville. I edited the route to just bomb down Vt 103 for 3 miles instead of doubling back to the gravel roads after eating.
I got a kind of pricey sausage, egg, cheddar, hash brown english muffin sandwich for $11 at Singleton's. It was tasty, but dang! $11 for a sandwich that I could easily hold in one hand? Bought a few homemade brownie/blondie options for the ride. I've been burning 3,000 extra calories per day biking, so I need riding fuel to get up the hills. By the heft, I could tell there wasn't a ton of oil/butter in them. Will see how much they help energy-wise.
after the morning fuel up, it was onto Lowell Lake for a swim
I'd learned to wipe out the inside of the tent with the blue towel in the morning before packing it up. My tent is made out of Dyneema, which is totally waterproof, so it gets coated with condensation on the inside in the mornings. I never had time to let the sun take care of drying out the tent, or to set it up the tent during a food break. Besides, I usually took a break in the shade somewhere. The towel would dry after a few hours spread out on the rear rack, and I'd pack it away. I think I'm going to look for brightly colored Crocs, so drivers can see me better.
Here I am at Lowell lake, doing the dirtbag yard sale, cleaning up my gear. Maybe the angry guy at Sharon Tradepost was right! I'm a homeless dirtbag! LOL The lake water was clean, so I gave my bike clothes for the last day's ride a proper wash.
First bucket with water and Dr Bronner's soap. Manual agitation.
dumped the soapy water in the woods, then got two more buckets to fully rinse off the soap (also dumping the rinse water in the woods), and then I used the sun baked rocks for drying the clothes, while I went for a quick swim. I used my towel to take off my padded cycle shorts and then slipped my running shorts back on. The water was spectacularly warm. I only swam for a few minutes, but it felt great! The jogging shorts I wear over my cycling padded underwear make good swim trunks too. I waited for the people launching their canoes/paddleboards to clear out before swimming. After my quick swim, I ate some snacks, packed up and headed on to my next food stop in South Londonderry Vt. Talked to an older paddler for a couple minutes after offering to help him load his kayak, but he had a short 8-10 ft white water kayak he managed just fine on his own.
At South Londonderry, I probably had the best food of the trip; although the croissant place in North Bennington was a close second. The Corner Market's Gobble Gobble turkey sandwich was top notch, as well as the raspberry crumble I bought to eat later. You know a crumble cake is good when the paper bag they put it in is completely soaked through from the oil/butter an hour later. Also got a powerade drink and chips. I saved more than half of the chips for dinner later. Dumped them into the stainless container I brought, which worked well; it's air tight. Still I won't be lugging that 13oz/368g container again. Dumb in retrospect, but I like it too much to throw away. I'll lug it to my meetup with Jacqui.
Continuing on. There's a rail trail that's nice from the South Londonderry corner market to a State Park with overnight camping, Winhall Brook Campground. It's < 4 miles and easy pedaling. If I got Jacqui to try camping there, I'd try to get her to bike into town for food with me. Dangle the carrot of yummy baked goods.
I've thought about one of these for her bike too, https://bimotal.com/products/elevate to upgrade her bike. And I like you can store the motor and battery inside your locked car so the bike isn't a theft target when stored on a rear hitch rack.
Anyway, back to pedaling!
Before getting to my next food stop, I spotted Stratton Mt in the distance. Here's a short vid of that. I like my snarky, "oof! " at the end.
Stratton Mt in the distance (mt Doom to me, lol)
I stopped at Rawsonville's convenience store. Jeff and I often drive by it when we move from camping in Somerset to the dispersed sites on Forest Road 10. In retrospect, I should have gotten their pre-cut cheese and pepperoni but didn't see it until I was walking out, it was by the entrance in a open air cooler there. I'd already bought the slim jim version. Sigh next time. I got a small ice cream while I was there and some cold water. Filtering water takes a long time.
As I was leaving, I also spotted Honeypie, but I'd just eaten that Turkey sandwich an hour or two earlier. https://www.eatathoneypie.com/ My friend Jeff used to do roadtrips with his wife all the way from Central Mass just to eat there (they've found new fav spots since then).
After Rawsonville, you pedal on a river road away from the main road. More climbing, but almost no car traffic. There was a state/county fair thing going on in town when I had to cross the main road to get to back road route I'd climb up to camp on. I should have snapped some photos, but uggh people!
Loved this old stacked stone fence, I wonder how old it is?
And this final shot shows the 8 mile climb I had. I loved the shade and peace and quiet at first, but it did get monotonous after awhile. It lasted for 8 miles, 3/4's of it was uphill, and it was bumpy. The green growth made it hard to spot rocks at times. In the winter it's a xc ski trail I think (per signage I saw). With a couple feet of snow on top, rocks don't matter. Might have to share with the Snowmobiles too. There were VT7 signs
But it reminded me of the saying that unless you're the lead dog, the view never changes; that's what it felt like. On funnier note, during the pedal up, I kept finding snacks that must have bounced out of a bicyclist's bag that was going downhill, doing the VTXL from South to North. It was like the bikepacking version of Hansel and Gretel. I kept finding snacks and if I didn't lose too much momentum, I'd stop to pick them up. I actually ate them the next morning, more on that later. I also finally used one of the LMNT salt packs I'd brought as I started to feel muscle cramps approaching. W orked perfectly. My legs felt rejuvenated a half hour later.
