August 16, 2021
We got a late start of riding today. I got up before Dan and went for a run. I did a bit over 3 miles on the country roads and along the way I found some snowmobile trails and did an out and back on one of them. A great way to start the day and see the sunrise.
Back in camp it was a slow rollout. The campground has really nice showers and I was able to take a long, hot one after I cooled down from the run. A leisurely packing up of everything followed by a small bowl of oatmeal got me road-ready. The plan was to ride an hour and then stop for brunch where we'd do the planning for the rest of the day. Dan was to be in charge of routing today and in finding us a campground so I was just a follower.
My only request was that we go out to Camp Drum, now Fort Drum, where I was stationed in 1973. I was in the army, fresh out of military police school, and was sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey in March of 1973. Not long after I arrived I was “volunteered” to go to Camp Drum to become part of the police force there. The Camp is mothballed most of the year but it was one of the prime training locations for Army Reserve and National Guard troops doing their 2-week summer trainings. I was to be part of the semi-permanent group that would man to police station as troops came and went during the summer, a summer that would last from March to October.
I got to know that area pretty well and wanted to cruise by the base. I know that when they upgraded to a “Fort,” meaning it was open year-round, that security was different and I wouldn’t be able to get on the base, but I at least wanted to park by the main gate for a photo. As it turned out, they had closed all but one of the gates and the new main gate is located on the other side of the base but we were able to park in front of the old gate and grab some photos.
On the way out we went up a highway that splits the fort into two regions and passed the old base cemetery. It was nice to see that it was still accessible to the public. During WWII, Camp Drum was partially a POW camp and several of the prisoners passed away during their stay and are still buried there, separate from in the other gravesites, right along the road. They were still there. I didn’t stop for a photo but have some I shot in ‘73.
Dan has a navigation tool on his phone that builds routes by selecting the curviest roads so our route was not the most direct as we worked our way east but it was the most interesting and fun. We went through many small towns, hundreds of dairy farms, and lots of cornfields.
We had an incident early on when I was in the lead for a bit. On a country road we came upon a FedEx truck with its emergency flashers on, driving very slowly on the extreme right side of the road. I slowed down, way down, and started to pass on the left when he suddenly made a left turn into a driveway. I was ready for it and crammed on the breaks but wasn’t that far from t-boning him. Dan said he got this on his GoPro.
We stopped a few times for photos, and to give us a break, and then got to Lake Champlain. We paused for a photo of the bridge before we went over it. About halfway across the bridge we got the “Welcome to Vermont” sign.
We rode a few more miles before stopping in Franklin for photos along their lake. Our campground was only another mile.
We got set up, had a great dinner (the Backpacker’s Pantry freeze-dried vegetarian options are great), a sat there looking at the lake as the sun set.
291 miles today.
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