A first-ever guest post on my blog, from my brother Kip!
I've been visiting my Mom in snowy Vermont. For Hanukkah, or something, even though we're not Jewish. Anyways, we noticed the nearby town of Stowe has a 5 mile long "Stowe Recreation Path" that I thought would be fun to run.
It turns out that the trail wasn't cleared of snow, but the snow was packed down for skiers and snowshoers. And what about the folks wearing smooth running shoes? Well, it was a bit slippery, but I figured I could still traverse the trail OK as long as it never became too steep. Fortunately for me, the trail followed along a river and so it was mostly pretty flat. I had to alter my natural running gait a bit to stay upright, but I managed to "run" the whole thing (out and back) without ever falling. It just took a bit more energy than a normal run.
I ran pretty well from the start of the trail to the far turnaround end. Then I decided to just take it easy on the return trip, and I stopped to take a bunch of photos on the way back.
Starting with the Brookdale Bridge. The far end of the trail dumps out onto a road right near this bridge. My route on the trail didn't actually cross this bridge, but when you get this close to one of Vermont's historical covered bridges, you just gotta take a photo of it, you know?
Bridge "10". The first of many bridges the trail goes over. Since I hadn't been paying attention on the run up, I wasn't sure if these bridges were labeled in numerical order, or not. Guess we'll find out soon enough:
A festive horse and carriage! They were doing carriage rides on a trail that crossed over the Recreational Path that I was on. Fortunately I was there in time to catch a photo before they rode off into the distance:
Horse and carriage #2! This one was further down the trail, and definitely different than the first one I saw. I waved at the folks as they passed by, and they were friendly enough to wave back at the random weirdo who was taking their photo:
Bridge "9". Okay, it looks like the bridges are numbered in descending order. So I'll get a nice countdown as I run back to the car:
The sign on the shed behind me is a bit hard to read, but it's for the "Percy Farm Corn Maze". I gotta say, this maze looks pretty easy to solve, to me. Though I will concede that it's likely slightly more difficult in the summer:
Bridge "8". I was trying to get both sides of the bridge entrance in the photo, so that there would be two "8"s in the picture. So that I could say I was part of the "Crazy 88's" (that's a "Kill Bill" reference). But I failed to frame the photo correctly, and only got one of the eights. I guess I'm not crazy enough:
Behind me is Thompson Park where they have a ski lift chair just hanging around. I might have gone to sit in it, but didn't feel like walking through the fluffy snow and getting my shoes wet:
Bridge "7". This time I was successful in getting both "7"s in the picture. So I guess I belong more in the "Silly 77's" than I do in the "Crazy 88's"
The signs aren't that interesting, but this was the one time the path went under a road (Luce Hill Road), so I took a picture of it. It turns out my bar for taking pictures on this journey was pretty low:
Bridge "6". Get your kicks on Route 66:
This is a view of the frozen river, taken from atop Bridge "6". There were a bunch of cool animal footprints in the snow on top of the ice. But I'm not smart enough to be able to tell what kind of animals made the tracks:
Bridge "5". I can't drive 55:
Bridge "4". Not all of the rivers were covered with ice; here the water flowed free. All the more reason to appreciate all the nice bridges:
Bridge "3". This one had a green flag on it, for some reason. I guess it's a checkpoint, then:
A couple of mildly deformed snowmen along the trail:
And a few feet away there were another couple of snowmen. Snowwomen? Snowchildren? I didn't ask for their pronouns:
Pete's Place had a couple of statues on a bench. This would have been a good Urban Clue race checkpoint:
Bridge "2". Getting real close to the finish. Which is good, as I'm definitely moving slower now. Turns out that running while constantly worrying about slipping is somewhat tiring!
Bridge "1". Yay, I didn't forget to take a photo of any of the ten bridges along the trail! I bent down to take this photo so that I could also get the Stowe Community Church in the shot:
And here's my GPS track for the run:
Happy Holidays, everyone!
[Thank you Kip!]
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