RV Trip to Lake Champlain, VT 2016

 

Day 1-3:
We wanted to take a break from the summer heat in TN so we loaded up the Winnebago RV and headed towards Lake Champlain, NY for a couple of weeks. Primo has never been on a RV trip so this too would be a acclamation adventure.

We’ve always wanted to explore this area as it combines mountains, lakes, biking and hiking. Lake Champlain shares it’s borders with New York and Vermont. The Adirondack mountains lie to the west in NY and the Green mountains are to the east in Vermont.

Once the Minnie Winnie was fueled and groceried up, we headed north on II-81 from TN into NY. After 2 days of interstate highways, we were glad to reach Plattsburgh, NY. We spent several days exploring the area with hiking and biking the country side and lake shore.

A day was spent exploring AuSable Chasm, a unique geological area.

We then traveled to the top of the lake via the shore road to within a few miles of the Canadian border before turning south onto North Hero Island. Both North and South Hero Islands are in the middle of Lake Champlain and can be easily accessed by highway bridge or car ferry.

We stayed several days on South Hero Island enjoying some great bike rides with beautiful scenery and visited two local wineries before heading to Burlington,VT.

Three days were spent exploring the Burlington lakeshore via their great bike paths leading into the city. After a quick trip inland to Waterbury, VT to visit the headquarters of the Ben&Jerry Ice Cream phenomenon, soon we were heading south in the RV. We spent a day exploring Shelburn Farms.  The next day we headed west and crossed back into NY.

We thought that a trip to Lake Placid, site of the 1980 Winter Olympics would be a great detour into the Adirondack mountains.

The site is still used for Olympic athletes to train. We visited the skating and ski jumping venues to see the athletes perform even without snow and cold. We also took a gondola ride to the top of the mountain to view the downhill courses.

From Lake Placid we traveled further west in the Adirondacks for several days of camping in a remote lake State campground, Fish Creek. Tipper Lake was a couple hours stop for a unique peddle rail car trip.

 We biked 20 miles along an old railroad bed on these peddle cars.  We then continued on to Fish Creek  for two nights.  After hiking and biking the area, we rejoined I-81 and started heading south towards home in TN.

A detour in VA resulted in a trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway and a visit to the Shenandoah National Park.

Several days were spent hiking the Appalachian Trail that runs through the park. We also saw several black bears feeding on apples in the park trees.

Coming down from the cool temperatures of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we slammed into the summer heat of VA and TN. Soon we were back home in Chattanooga and began packing for going back to Idyll Time in October.