I’m up at 6:30, pretty well-rested and ready for the day. It rained a bunch last night so I have no idea how this day is going to pan out against our plans to ride bikes for a chunk of it. The trails up here drain incredibly well but I also don’t know how much rain has been coming down. Time will tell.
But first, breakfast, and more importantly, coffee. I head into town and park across the street from where we got dinner last night and check out The Bakery. The place is a little roomy inside which gives it a sparse feel. But it does the trick and the espresso is decent.
I bring back a chocolate croissant for D and a blueberry muffin for myself. It was fair.
We stay in for a bit because the rain is coming down more than planned. We both have plenty of work we can be doing so we toss in a few hours each to pre-load the coming week’s vacation. There’s really not much for us to do in the meantime because our plans are centered around riding bikes outside. So this needs to wait.
We head into town to hit the Price Chopper late morning, which is the supermarket up here. We stumble upon a farmer’s market and walk around a bit where we buy a block of cheese. Then we go food shopping and head back to the apartment.
The rain keeps up so we work some more and take it easy. Not the ideal plan but eventually the rain dials back and we gear up to ride. The plan today is the Slate Valley Trails, specifically the Fairgrounds sector which is in Poultney. This is a totally new system we had not even heard of until recently.
When we get there the rain has been stopped for a while and the roads coming in were dry. So I’m optimistic.
The trails were moist but not bad at all. There was no mud and very little standing water. The roots & rocks were slick however, and some of the trails ended up being a challenge, especially the Big Top/Carnie loop. We probably did about half of the proposed loop but it was a good ride. We’ve always got the option to come back in the future when we have more time. Like next Sunday.
In all we did 12.5 miles in just under 2 hours. The Strava link can be found here.
We head back to the house to shower up then head right out to Brix Bistro in town for dinner. It’s marketed as a tapas place but it’s sort of a mix of that, but not exactly. We make it work.
We get roasted cauliflower, baked brie, chorizo, a flatbread, and grain salad. Decent mix of things.
The meal was very good, though a few of the dishes were not keepers.
After dinner we walked across the street and found a geocache, which D has been motivated to do again. I think it’s cool and does make you see nooks & crannies (often literally) that you wouldn’t ordinarily see.
We then hop into Walmart to grab a few things we forgot at Price Chopper earlier.
Then we drove to the next geocache which is under this railroad car that’s an original from the early 1900s in Rutland. Pretty neat history when you think about it.
After that we head back to the apartment and wind down for the rest of the night. Day 2 of 10 in the books, and trail system 2 as well.
Traveling Normandy 