Burlington (Aug 15)
We rolled into the RV repair place in Gananoque around 8:30 a.m. and rolled out at 10:30 a.m. with a brand new toilet. These days it is generally cheaper to replace than repair – I presume they send the old one back to the factory for refitting, but who knows? In any case, we have a new toilet and it has a feature we like.
The “black tank” on the RV is essentially a mini-septic tank. As such, whenever we empty the tank, we need to add enzymes to the tank and enough water to make them happy. Our previous tank could be filled either by repeatedly flushing the toilet (which likely contributed to the valve failure) or by using the shower hose (which we figured out several weeks into the trip). The new toilet actually has a “fill” mode, making this task, which we do almost every time we move, much easier.
Usually when we move we hit the road around 11 a.m., so moving out at 10:30 felt very good – especially considering that we had already travelled 1.5 hours. We were in good spirits, especially when we realized that our good friends Don and Mindy were also headed to Burlington. Unfortunately, our schedules did not mesh, because we arrived too late and they left too early. Fortunately, they live in State College and we will see them next time we are home.
The trip was uneventful but long. We were struck by how aptly Vermont is named. At this time of year, it is all green, green mountains in every direction.
We pulled in around 4 p.m. and set up in Lone Pines RV Park, close to Lake Champlain. There are a lot of bicycle trails in and around Burlington, including one that is right across the road from the RV park.
After a long drive, Chuck usually spends the next day resting. I did some grocery shopping, and then checked out the bicycle trail, which proved not to be the main trail, 
but did take me to the lake. My work was beginning to pile up, so I also spent some time on data analysis for an urgent project.
On Thursday we were both ready for a long bicycle ride. The Island Line Trail starts a few miles from the campground, goes along the Colchester and Burlington waterfront and then takes the Colchester Causeway 3 miles across Lake Champlain to South Hero on Grand Island, the southernmost of a chain of islands that stretch up the lake to the Alburgh Peninsula. This is a rail trail that goes over huge marble blocks from the quarries in Vermont (discard, I presume).
A swing bridge on
the causeway that opened to allow boats through came down in the 1970’s and has been replaced by a bicycle ferry, that takes you across the gap (perhaps 20 feet) for $8 round trip. (Chuck is standing in the doorway if you can make him out.)
Once on South Hero, you can actually do a loop – if you are willing to take the on-road bike path and use the bridge on Hwy 2. We found even the regular roads on the island to be a bit bicycle unfriendly, though, especially as the main bicycle route, which has a wide bike lane, was being repaired. We wended our way through relatively quiet and very hilly side roads to detour around the construction, returning to the main route to get a dish of maple ice cream at a snack bar. (Maple flavored soft-serve ice cream seems to be a Vermont thing.)
We noticed on the bike trail maps that there is a hiking and biking trail through the John Roy Wildlife Management Area – off-road and parallel to the main street – so we decided to return on it. It turned out to be as rough as the mountain bike trail we followed in Gravenhurst – flat but lots of big roots and also possibly logs that had been put down to keep hikers out of the bog. Lots of mosquitoes, too – we felt that we did our bit for the food chain. However, it was pretty, and when we got back to the road we were past the construction.
Returning on the Causeway, we saw a number of wild minks running across the trail and along the marble blocks. No photos of the minks as they are too fast and too small – just us viewing them.
There are lots of bicyclists in Vermont, and no shortage of bicycle parking. Some of the bicycle stands are very imaginative, like this dinosaur stand near a playground on the Island Line Trail.
On Friday we decided to go into Burlington to do some sightseeing. A wrong turn took us to a small park on the pretty Winooski River.
When got to the downtown, we found that most of the main shopping area is a very nice pedestrian mall – Ithaca on steroids. It made for very nice walking and window shopping.
Continuing to the waterfront, we learned that there is a dinner cruise on Lake Champlain. Once we boarded, we discovered that we could have signed up just for the cruise, and ordered a good, but lighter dinner from the snack bar.
This would also have put us on the upper deck for the cruise. However, we did have a very good dinner buffet on the lower deck, where we stayed warm behind the large windows. The main dish was lobster, which Chuck does not like and I feel so-so about. However, they also had beef, which Chuck ate. I figured that since I had paid for lobster, and was headed to the east coast where I would feel obliged to eat lobster at least once, I might as well have lobster for dinner. It was nicely cooked, and in the end I had a second helping (i.e. a second lobster).
Dinner took up only about an hour of the 3 hour cruise, so we had plenty of deck time. All in all it was a lovely evening. The dockside restaurant was rightly lit up making a pretty sight as we docked.
Being right next to Lake Champlain, we of course needed to get the kayaks out on the lake. Fortunately, the campground was next to Malletts Bay, a large and somewhat protected cove. On Saturday we went for a long paddle and enjoyed the lake.