Photo Tour:
Bicycling the Upper Valley - by Karl Meyer
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Bicycle Tour photos and captions ©2004 - 2009 Karl Meyer
In July 2004, I made my latest bicycle tour to the headwaters of the Connecticut River. The trip began as I cycled north along the river from East Lunenberg, VT, where a friend was headed in his Jeep. This was a five-day trip. I stayed near the headwaters for two nights, and had cycled all the way back to my home in Colrain, MA, after two more nights on the road. For a white-haired guy, I was pretty happy to make 273 downstream river miles--toting tent and sleeping bag, in three day’s riding. It was glorious run, though I won’t pretend it wasn’t tiring…
This trip was one of five cycling excursions I’ve made to the headwaters and back. I saw my first New England black bear--a gangly yearling crossing the road six miles from the headwaters of the Connecticut in 1986. I saw my first moose there that year too, now one of many. Ten years later a common loon popped up ten feet from where I was swimming in Third Connecticut Lake, and I watched an otter family frolic in near the headwaters just a short walk from Deer Mountain Campground. Two years later I saw a fisher take a run at a summer-coat snowshoe hare in the middle of Rt. 3 at midday--just a mile from where our watersheds divide in the spruce/fir border with Quebec. The fisher missed.
The following photos are samplings from my 2004 trip. They’ll give you a flavor of what it is to bicycle the secondary roads north to where our river home begins, and return south along that spectacular corridor to where a human home awaits. The photos end at Bellows Falls only because rain had been forecast for mid-morning on that third downstream travel day. I woke before dawn on the Connecticut in Vermont’s Wilgus State Park, and shot south early in hopes of beating the rain. As it worked out I stayed dry all the 80-plus miles back to Colrain, MA, by 3 pm--only dallying to snap a last photo at Bellows Falls. Once I reached Greenfield, MA, I could “smell the barn” so I stopped for a salutary Chinese lunch.
Rest assured, the Connecticut is beautiful in southern Vermont too—as it is all the way through Massachusetts and Connecticut to Long Island Sound. I’ve bike those miles to Long Island Sound too, at one time or another. Each cycling trip has brought me a new understanding of the river, and a new respect for it. Mostly though, I think spending time along a river teaches you something about yourself. I still have plenty to learn. This travelogue begins over the border in our sister watershed: the St. Lawrence Valley and its broad vista greets you a few hundred yards from northernmost New Hampshire at Chartierville, Quebec.
- Karl Meyer, April 2009
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Photo credits (top): Karl Meyer
Image Credits at Right - Illustrations: Bill Singleton; Photos: ©Al Braden www.albradenphoto.com, CRWC Staff
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