The Connecticut River valley looking south from Mt. Sugarloaf
For his 68th birthday on Sunday, my husband decided he wanted Chinese food for lunch and a road trip afterwards. So we found a restaurant open at noon and got our food. We thought we’d go up on top of Mt. Sugarloaf to eat, as we’d not been up in a few years.
The Connecticut River valley looking northeast from Mt. Sugarloaf
The Connecticut River valley looking east from Mt. Sugarloaf
The other side of the river will forever be Africa to us. The Connecticut River is a rift that did not break when Pangea broke apart. This is where Africa joined the North American continent.
These hills to the west formed the edge of Lake Hitchcock 10,000 years ago. Mt. Sugarloaf was an island in that lake, formed by a glacial moraine down in Connecticut.
This is the 7 Sisters range formed by volcanic activity. They would have also been islands.
An old pine’s roots on Mt. Sugarloaf
In the process of eating in the car (no picnic tables available these days) we managed to spill duck sauce all over the console. We also had food left over so we decided to go back home (10 mins away), clean up the mess, and head out again.
The Green River in Vermont
We’d heard how the swimming places along the Green River Road had been closed, so we decided to go up that way. Turns out the private land has been posted and is shut off, but it seems Massachusetts has bought up a lot of the land along the river as a Wildlife Management area. This is still open to the public. But there were long stretches and nobody around, so it was a pleasant drive.
Even though we’ve gotten a good deal of rain in the last couple weeks, we are still under Level 2, Significant Drought status. The river was pretty low.
We saw these wild wood roses in many places on the drive. We also saw a lot of red bee balm alongside the road.
One can always tell when they cross the border into Vermont. Restrictions are much looser there than in Massachusetts. One of the first places we saw was this lovely homestead. This was their front door.
Well into Green River, VT along the road, we came across these wild turkeys.
Normally turkeys, and especially turkeys with poults, are very skittish.
But these didn’t seem very alarmed by us.
They slowly meandered their way back into the undergrowth.
The temperature when we left home was 88F and at one point well up into southern Vermont it had dropped to 77F.
We followed the River Road into Halifax then took small back roads heading south again. The idea was to pick up a small back road that came back into the River Road and then head home. But we managed to miss the turn and ended up going home through the small towns near us.
We had the moldies (rock from the 60’s and early 70’s) playing and it was a lovely drive, lots of cool things to see and plenty of green and water.
Monday he will be back at the east side putting up siding and I have paperwork and laundry to do. Our son will be clearing the fenceline on the back 40.