Prouty Beach

Our last stay within the US before entering Canada was at Prouty Beach, in Newport, VT. The travel day wasn’t too long and we took advantage of driving right past the headquarters for King Arthur Flour. This has been a long time favorite company and I had no idea they had a physical place you could visit where they sell all their flours, plus a host of amazing things that can be made from those flours. I was in overwhelm mode as soon as I entered, and definitely in dangerous calorie territory. I am both impressed and surprised with myself that we made it out of there with only gifts, lunch, a cinnamon roll, and the best cinnamon crunch coffee cake I have ever had. Oh yeah, and oatmeal cookies.

As we track ever northward, we are again struck by how lush and green everything is. There is, of course, a reason for this, and it has to do with this stuff called rain. As I write this, we have already moved on, and I am sorry to learn that Vermont has gotten hit hard with flooding. I guess we should pre-apologize to the region we are in now, because severe weather seems to have followed us across the entire country. In any case, our stay at Lake Memphremagog didn’t get too rainy until the day we left. I mean, there was a whopper of a lightning storm after we pulled in, but I guess we are getting used to that.

We had an inkling to do a day trip across the border, and at first we thought we could hike it. We calculated ten miles total, and that would have been a lot, but all flat and potentially doable. We got all ready for it, but by the time we got to the actual trail, we’d already gone over a mile, and the sign was saying 5 1/2 miles to Canada. I called halt and we walked all the way back and got our bikes. Doing 13-14 miles on a bike is a way more reasonable venture.

Even on a bike, you still have to cross the border checks for both the US side, and the Canada side. They asked us questions about what we were carrying, but they could also see that it was obviously very little. Immediately, everything was in French. That reminded me that I would soon need to navigate traffic signs in French. It also reminded me to re-learn how to change the car’s navigation system to metric. We didn’t do much beyond find a park where we could eat lunch. Our cross border mission had been accomplished and we headed back through to the bike trail to return to Dory.

The humidity was intense and the fourteen mile venture kind of kicked my ass. I napped while Richard went out and refilled our propane. Later, we went out to top up as many Chobani yogurts as we could fit because Richard knows Canada doesn’t stock those. We then stopped to pick up dinner to go from Dusit Thai so we could share a dinner with Jack and Lee.

The next day, Richard went out bicycle exploring and I took care of laundry. I saw a giant groundhog looking creature hanging out by the laundry, and Richard found a Strava loop around Newport. Afterwards, we went into Newport together and got ice cream at Pick and Shovel Hardware store. I know. It seems an unlikely place to find premium desserts, but the line was down the block, and they actually had pretty good ice cream.

We also took a Dory picture at a place called “The Hole.” It was worth it if only to read the Google reviews. We followed with a short drive up to Eagle Point Wildlife Management Area to see what we could spot. I did see either an Osprey, or an Eagle nest high atop a pole. It was too far away for me to tell. After that, it was back to Dory to get ready for another travel day.

I’ll cover the gist of the travel day here, rather than on the next destination post, because it fully sucked. It was nonstop drenching rain the whole day, sometimes torrential and intense. We hitched in the rain, and dumped in the rain, and arrived in the rain. The border crossing was fine, but the guy did ask a lot of questions about food. We went through the same tiny crossing at Beebe that we had done before on our bikes, but it was a different border guard. He didn’t make us get rid of anything, and accepted all of my answers, but there was a moment there when I thought I was going to have to walk back into the US to throw away a frozen chicken breast.

We started by traveling on highways, and I pretty quickly asked Richard about finding a route that avoided them. There were a lot of trucks on highway 55 going way too fast for my liking in the rain. However, as soon as I took the first available turn to exit, we found ourselves on an unpaved road with no way to turn around. You’d think this would be a short term situation. But it went on for more than ten miles. As unpaved dirt roads go, it wasn’t too terrible, but it left a front wall full of mud on Dory, and I worried a lot about whether we were going to hit a section that was flooded or washed out. We did not, and we returned to highway driving, where I was committed to toughing it out for the next hundred miles. I pulled over once or twice to breathe and calm down, but eventually we pulled in safe to our pre-rally-rally campground, surrounded by friends. It was not a pleasant travel day at all, but we made it safely through. The next post will be all about Altoistes joy and fully loving the decision to make this crazy trip.

Total miles from Schodack: 249.4, 17.2 mpg, 6 hours 53 min. Site 2 full hookups. Very little cell service for both, but very good free campground wifi. Good dump. Could have been solar except for all the rain.