Peddling the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail

We're up here in the mountains of Vermont to spend a 2 week vacation with our daughter, who rented an AirBNB locally.  She still has to put in workdays, though, so we have lots of time to explore and do the things we do in our vagabond lifestyle.

We are camped at Mountain View Campground in Morrisville, Vermont, in the heart of the Lamoille River Valley.  One of the most interesting attractions here is the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, a 12.6 mile trail constructed on the bed of the former Lamoille Valley Railroad.  The entire right-of-way is 93 miles and, when the trail is completed, it will extend across five counties, connecting 18 towns, from St. Johnsbury to Swanton.  The railroad was constructed between 1869 and 1877 to serve the summer tourism industry. Some passengers traveled to their summer camps such as those on Caspian Lake in Greensboro. Others traveled and stayed in the railroad hotels located along the route.  The railroad lost business through the 20th Century until, in 1973, the State of Vermont purchased and operated it. Important businesses such as talc and asbestos companies closed in the 1970s. Excursion trains ran in the 1980s, but the track was not maintained. The railroad ceased operation in 1994, and in 2002 the State of Vermont began converting the railroad line to the present multi-use trail. 

We chose to ride an 8-mile segment between Morrisville, near where we are camped, and Johnson.  Morrisville has done a good job of developing the signage and amenities where the trail runs through it -- except that very little parking is available for trail users once the local businesses have used up available spaces each workday.

Here we are at the Morrisville trailhead.  David is trying out the camera on his new Google Pixel 6a Pro smartphone, and already we can see how crisp and clear the photos are compared to the prior phone.  Colors are rich and the exposure is modulated in high-contrast situations.  That lets us share more of the original experience with you!

 

 

Here's a view at trailside of one of the historic buildings that are preserved in downtown Morrisville -- and still being used by active businesses:

 

 

The town has erected a cute map mural where we began, to present a cheerful welcome to bicyclists passing through or stopping for refreshment:

 

 

A colorful birdhouse forest graces a park next to the trail:

 

 

We soon crossed the Lamoille River on an old railroad bridge, not far upstream from where the dammed river forms Lake Lamoille.  Kathy was disappointed that the nearby Lost Nations Brewing wasn't open for us to have lunch after the bike ride, but she found a very good alternative (more on that later).

 

 

This was our view downstream from the bridge --

 

 

-- and this the view over toward a small bridge for one of the streets in town:

 

 

The trail handed us many pleasant surprises, including these colorful flowers at the back of a garden shared with free-range chickens:

 

 

Halloo, Hallay, O frabjous day!  We hadn't pedalled more than a mile or so when we spotted...THIMBLEBERRIES!  We first discovered thimbleberries in 2013 on a ranger-led tour in Glacier National Park, which you can read about here.  The berries are so luscious, delicate and rich that, since then, we search out thimbleberries wherever we can find them -- and we've found them along the Canadian side of the Great Lakes, in Alaska, on the U.P. of Michigan, and most recently near Cooperstown and in Ausable Chasm in 2021.  Here, Kathy shows proof of the discovery.  We don't have any berries to show you because we munched them all as soon as we picked them.

 

 

In another mile or two, the trail brought us alongside an old abandoned log cabin and spring house, which we thought might make a nice forever-and-ever home:

 

 

Because the trail follows the Lamoille River, it also parallels and crosses a number of roads, but, to our pleasure, we found that most of the roads are dirt roads and not highways.  In this case, it appeared that the trail was in better condition than the road it crossed:

 

 

And farm after farm.  While the corn wasn't yet as high as an elephant's eye, it sometimes stretched to the horizon (or nearby hills) -- 

 

-- and the farmhouses and barns poked up out of the cornfields:

This pretty flower demonstrates how crisp and clear our new camera's photos can be:

At Mile 7 of our journey, we ran across a sign for a wayside at "Dog's Head Falls."  Not having heard of this, we couldn't contain our curiosity and hiked down the trail to get this view of the falls:

Just below the waterfall (to the left of Kathy in the photo above, off-photo, a massive rock presents the profile of a dog, which is the reason for the name.  This waterfall is actually known as Upper Dog's Head Falls to some. Lower Dog's Head Falls, sometimes called Sloping Falls, consist of two sections of 5-foot cascades and rapids downstream of these falls. It is said that during low-water conditions, the entire volume of the Lamoille River travels hidden underneath a wide natural bridge that spans the entire river.

This video will give you the best overview of the falls, the rocks and the surrounding area.  If you're curious, you can see the dog's head in the last few seconds of the video.

In only another mile from Dog's Head Falls, we reached our turnaround point in the town of Johnson, which also decided to build a sign with the stylized map of its community:

We elected not to bike further to explore the town, but grabbed a snack and a short rest before hopping on our bicycles and returning the 8 miles back to Morrisville, where Kathy had found a wonderful little Nepalese cafe from which we ordered take-out lunch.  One of the shortcomings of Morrisville's trailhead is that it provides no seating or picnic tables in the shade; so we retired to the air conditioned coziness of the Jeep and ate our lunch gazing at the trail and listening to our favorite music on the radio.

Life is good.