What you see is around 250 feet or so, with about 1000 feet left to go. After working up a sweat in the woods, I decided a ride on the trails was in order. Much like the snowmobile trails, Vermont has several areas where there are ATV trails. You must get a registration and trail pass as well in order to ride on them. In our little town, you can also ride on most of the class 3 and class 4 roads (dirt roads). I headed down Pumpkin Hill Road, and saw Don our driveway guy cutting his grass. He asked where I was going, and I told him just for a buzz around the neighborhood. He said the lawn could wait, so offered to take me on a tour of some of the lesser known trails, so of course I said "YES"- always best for the locals to show you where its safe and prudent to go.Down the back roads we went, and soon I realized something that I never had to deal with following someone on a snowmobile. DUST! You have to keep a little more distance between you on the dirt roads. After traveling down some of the dirt roads, Don took me through the cornfield, which would get us up to the main road. Here there were a few gates we had to open and close in order to keep the livestock from escaping.
After passing through the gates, we crossed the main drag, through the local farmers front yard,(generously donated to allow us to get to the gas station), through his yard and back field. Then as we came out of the field, I recognized where we were-snowmobile trail 51, leading right to Marty's, our favorite gas and snack place-they have the best soups in the winter!
After a quick stop, back into the woods we went, traveling on a few smaller multi-use trails, onto the roads again, past cornfields, farms, and coming to a stop where there was an awesome view of the hill where our property is. The large building in the center of the picture is the big red barn across the street from us.
As we looped around some of the sites looked very familiar, seen in the past from snowmobiling. I even "borrowed" a technique to capture a self-portrait as I traveled down the back roads:
September was busy, but I did take a solo ride up in late October to volunteer for trail cleanup with our local snowmobile club. It is sometimes difficult to get up to Vermont when the work parties go out, but this worked out well. I left after work Friday, and along the way noticed that there was still a little color left, but we had missed peak season.As the days were starting to get much shorter, it was near dark when I got close. The moon was full, and there were just a few clouds circling the moon, causing the brightness to fade and then brightly shine. I stopped at the scenic overlook, and snapped this picture:
The next morning, I rose early and grabbed a quick breakfast sandwich and Hot Chocolate @ Marty's and drove to the designated meeting place. It was cold! 18 degrees and the wind was blowing. I made some small talk with some of my fellow workers, catching up with familiar faces, and introducing myself to the folks I didn't know. Soon we headed to the woods, and it was actually a little warmer. Our assignment for this day was to de-brush one of the newer trails. This consisted mostly of cutting low hanging branches so they don't damage the groomer, and cutting any branches that were hanging out into the trail. Using chainsaws and pole saws, we covered about a mile or so of trails and then regrouped and went to the other end of the trail to see how the other party was doing.
After several hours, we called it quits, satisfied with what had been accomplished. I later found out that my helping out qualified me for a discounted "volunteer" trail pass! What could be better? I went back to our place and did a little trail management of my own. I moved the snowmobile trailer out closer to the garage for the winter, and took the lawn mower over to trim down the high grass to clear our feeder trail, and make the transition to the main trail easier.
Our next trip up was right after Thanksgiving. This year just seemed to be so busy, we weren't able to get up any earlier to mark the driveway for plowing. We arrived to a little snow. Nothing major, but it brings hope that it will be a good snowmobile season. After marking up the driveway, I had to add my Christmas decoration-which doubles on back as a snow depth gauge.
Snow continued throughout the day, lightly coating everything. The next morning we rose, and spent some time rearranging the garage-snowmobiles up front, lawn mowers to the rear. Everything is almost ready to go riding-we just have to wait for a little more snow and Opening Day. Even our guardian looked like he was enjoying the weather:
I ended up back the next week. A bad storm and high winds caused several trees to come crashing down into the yard, and I wanted to get them cut back before winter. Dad and I drove up for the day and made short work of them. I was a little sad to see the snow was almost gone.
So we had a few small storms up in Vermont before Christmas, but the trails were thin. They finally decided to open the trails, but due to the holidays and our son getting married January 1, I was unable to break away. On January 1, a warm p arrived and melted almost all the base. Rats! So today-January 8, we just received a foot of snow here in CT. Everything is covered nicely. But all my snowmobiles are in VT. And here is what our front yard in VT looks like today: 
Irony to be sure-but I have hope things will turn around and we will be riding soon! The trails close April 15 if there is snow that long so there is always hope. And here is hoping you all have a great year!
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