railtrailing

Stowe, Morrisville, and Johnson, Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Sue started the day with, what else, a long swim. I stayed home and worked on, what else, the blog. It had been sadly neglected!

After a light lunch, we packed the bikes on the car and headed for Morrisville, the nearest jumping off spot for the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. This is a remarkable cooperative endeavor between a series of towns in northern Vermont.

The initial development of the Lamoille Valley railroad itself was championed by Horace Fairbanks, one of Vermont’s wealthiest residents, who developed an interest in railroads and proposed the line as an attempt to capitalize on commercial development that neighboring railways were bringing into the area. Contracts were secured by December of 1869 and construction was completed by June 1877. The line was originally known as the Vermont Division of the Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad that connected Portland, Maine, with Ogdensburg, New York, and points west.

The conversion work from railroad line to rail trail began in 2013; the trail was completed in 2022. It runs 93 miles across the whole of Northern Vermont from St. Johnsbury in the east to Swanton, near the shores of Lake Champlain.

We parked at Oxbow Park in Morrisville, just off the rail trail, and rode west toward Hyde Park and Johnson. There are a couple of street crossings in Morrisville itself that necessitate a dismount, but after that we rode 7 1/2 miles through forests and fields. The rail trail includes a number of substantial bridges across highways, rivers, and streams.

As we rode, views opened to the west of the big mountains of the Sterling Range.

It was a warm day, but there was a gentle breeze that was particularly evident as we rode through the forests. Much of the way west was a very gentle grade downward, with lots of coasting. The way back was, for the most part, a gentle grade upward, with a couple of steep climbs to road crossings; except for these spots, the trail never exceeds a 3% grade, the most a train can climb (compare this to the mountain stages of the Tour de France, where the riders climb 7-9% grades for miles at a time).

About three miles from Morrisville the grade rose enough to make us work harder…just as it got hotter! At the end of this stretch, though, a sun shower cooled us off and we were soon loading the bikes back onto the car.

Our fifteen mile workout called for a reward, in which we indulged at the Alchemist. A drink on their deck, with a view onto the meadow where young and old cavort has become one of our favorite pastimes in Stowe. The Alchemist has become a genuine community institution, providing a social and recreational center for the whole town.

Back home, a bit of relaxation preceded our dinner at Plate, a small farm to table joint in town. We had an excellent meal: we shared a suberb salad with sushi grade tuna, while Sue had a pork tenderloin and I had pork belly ramen. Both were delicious. And we topped it off with their famous banana pudding. Wines were very good, too: we shared a really nice Pouilly-Fumé with the tuna; Sue had a really good 2019 Elk Cove pinot while I had a 2021 Ridge Three Valleys Zin. I wouldn’t want to drink this Zin too often: it is rich, liqueroux, port-like, but it was a delicious departure from our usual quaffs.