Friday night – low point on the Long Trail

I tried to take today as a vacation day.. which i sort of did.. i managed only to work about 8 hours.. hey.. you gotta take the small victories where you can find them.

it was a momentous day it turns out.. today was the day that the green mountains club officially opened the footbridge over the Winooski river that allows the Long Trail to skip the 2.5 mile road walk through Janesville and our house. I have to admit that I’m gonna miss the steady stream of year round skiers who have goone by the house for the 33 years I’ve lived here. Who knows ho many showers we’ve given. water bottles we’ve filled, dinner we’ve served or yard we’ve provided to weary through hikers.

We found out about the opeing today when this group of green mtn folks came through repainting the blazes on our part of the trail from the main White blazes to the blue side trail blazes. It was a bitter sweet moment.. who knows how many hikers we’ve water, fed and asked in the 33 years I’ve lived on this trail. in fact until today, our house was officially .. ‘the low point on the long trail’

around 2:40 we jumped on our bikes and headed towards the bridge about a mile and a half down the road (which washed out 2 nights ago in a flood). As Diane suspected. all the festivities were on the other side ! We were able to slip across before the speeches started.. we took advantage of our quick walk across to get the first kiss (maybe) on the bridge.. who knows 🙂

on the other side were about 100 very vermonty looking people.. and a long line of dignitaries who wanted to talk about the new 1.5 million dollar bridge..