Labor Day weekend arrived and it both came out of no where and couldn’t come soon enough. I was certainly ready for a break and seeing as how COVID has seemed to distort time, let’s just say I was happy to see the calendar advance. For the first part of the weekend, we joined a crew of friends for some camping on Burton Island, a state park located south of Saint Albans Bay in Lake Champlain. Maddie and I paddled out there on Friday night and had planned to stay until Monday morning. I’d made plans with Brad to do a shortened version of a ride he’d invited me on and through his kind flexibility, he agreed. Sunday afternoon, we heard that Monday would be quite windy (*spoiler alert*: it was) with waves of 5-7 feet. So we headed out around sunset and got back to the mainland just in time to load our stuff and not get locked into the parking lot! Word to the wise: Kill Kare state park closes at official sunset. Anyway, because of our early departure, we could ride the full route that Brad had planned. It was going to cover the right territory to be a 251 ride, plus it would be my longest ride ever!
So the next morning, we met in East Fairfield under ominous skies and blustery winds. Things got off to an inauspicious start when Brad’s chain fell right off in the parking lot. However, it was quickly fixed and the riding improved from there: we headed north out of town on Egypt Road (which has both stellar riding and a stellar story behind the name). At this point, I had made one request of Brad to deviate from his planned route so we could hit Bakersfield. We passed up the fun technical Class 4 of Mitchell Road in favor of the Class 3.5 of County Road. We had an easy cruise down to Route 108, turning east to begin working up and over towards Montgomery. We’d already checked that one off the list, but the views made it a must.
We zipped down Longley Bridge Road and into Montgomery. After a bucolic stretch of more views from the bottom, we were greeted by the Longley Bridge proper. One thing I didn’t touch on in the Montgomery entry was the proliferation of covered bridges in the town. There are six in the town limits, and one crossing the town line with Enosburgh, making it “the record-holder for most covered bridges in New England and the United States at large.” As recently as the 1940’s there were 13 in town! This one is a beautiful town lattice that was recently rebuilt with new trusses in 2016. From there we enjoyed some speedy pavement and sunshine on Route 118, a road I remember well from my college days driving from Burlington up to Jay to ski. We re-entered Enosburgh and I didn’t get a picture, but you can always tell when you’re in that town due to their bovine road signs. If it weren’t for Brad’s knowledge of a shortcut, we’d have gone all the way into East Berkshire, but the Class 4 he routed onto was a ton of fun. We climbed up and over some rough stuff: a good challenge of loose “baby heads“, cobbles, bedrock and muddy puddles. We made it through, again greeted by another smooth ride. This time it was the double track of the Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail that we glided down into Richford’s downtown. We stopped at a gas station to rest, have a snack and restock before we made a run west up along the border.
After our refuel, we crossed the Missisquoi River through downtown Richford. We passed under their welcome sign and along the town’s streets that hold abandoned storefronts, but also architectural gems and untapped potential. One such gem is the Grey Gables Mansion Inn. Built between 1890-1892 for successful entrepreneur Sheldon Borigh, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It looks like something out of a children’s book and is a true show-stopper, just screaming for your attention as you pass by. After getting over the shock of the house, we headed up Pinnacle Road. Normally, we’d have loved to pop into Canada which you can easily do on this road, and I did a few years ago as part of an overnight tour with some friends. However, international relations being what they are, we stopped short of the border at the intersection with Berry Road, drank in the view and continued west. It was some classic back road conditions and the climbs and descents were all moderate. Per usual, there were punctuation marks of views, including a stunning stretch of Skunk Hollow Road that gave sweeping views to the south in which you could see all the way down to Mount Mansfield. We tackled a few more paved and Class 4 roads, eventually calling an audible to join a partially constructed portion of the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail after climbing out of East Highgate. Fun side note: the Governor just announced that this rail trail will be fully funded and hopefully completed by the end of 2022. Once done, you’ll be able to ride the 93 miles between Swanton and St. Johnsbury all on trail! This small section carried us into Sheldon Junction where the Lamoille and Missisquoi rail trails come together. It’s also where we began to get hungry again. We stopped to check out Papa Noel’s which it turns out is mainly a pizza joint and creemee stand. So we decided to detour over to Sheldon Springs for a proper gas station stop.
At our second gas station stop of the day, I immediately spotted a kid’s lemonade stand across the street. Content to pay for any kind of sugar water, I figured I may as well support these kiddos. It turns out is was even fresh squeezed! So I had them fill a bottle of mine and headed into the Valero to restock with a cliff bar and some chips. I went with salt and vinegar against Brad’s advice of barbecue and I almost immediately regretted it. The salt was too much and as Brad said: you need the sweet to balance it out. But I got to the bottom of the bag and soon we were off again, back down our rail trail spur to continue. Things continued to stay pretty rural through this stretch, and the wind really became more of a factor. Without the shelter of small “dales” as I call them, it whipped around us. It also wasn’t super consistent. Our direction changed but we always seems to have some version of a head wind. It really grinds on you, and I admit to slumping a bit here. Despite more views (of which I didn’t take too many pictures) and more history (of which I didn’t get too excited at the time) I just had to get into grind-it-out mode. Looking back it was some solid Type II Fun. Plus there actually was some cool history: was passed right near the birthplace of Chester A. Arthur one of two Presidents to come out of the Green Mountain State. We also saw a bunch of quilt patterns on barns. We’d seen them all day, but they finally registered in my brain here. It turns out there’s a “Barn Quilt Trail” throughout Franklin County. It’s a subtle way to bring a continuity to a community. We continued trading off lead to try to pull one another down the road and eventually reached Fairfield. This was an inflection point. I’d seen on Brad’s route that we could turn left here and take the paved, main road of Route 36 back to our starting point. However, Brad was very excited about this last section and with some gentle peer pressure, encouragement and a rest taking shelter in a baseball dugout, I was convinced to go on. I was so glad to do so too. It ended up being an amazing stretch of road and out of the wind too! Route 36 would have been miserable: busy and blustery. The route we took had us head up Ridge Road and up to some freshly hayed fields. It would be a prime spot to check out come foliage season. We even chatted with a guy outside his house who had an ATV and clearly knows the Class 4 in the area. With confirmation that our route connected and that there was more to explore there later, we crossed over to Romar Road and bombed down to East Fairfield. We had done 73 miles and I’d done my longest single ride ever!
The Details:
https://www.strava.com/activities/4027049632#kudos
https://ayvri.com/scene/gdkz16el5z/cket2509400013g68vbzfo1yw
Dirt 251 