Exploring Lake Champlain

We are way behind in getting travel posts published this summer because we're having too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

September 14, 2022

It's rainy this morning, but we can't stay in the motor home to catch up on computer work because we have no cell service at Onion River Campground. It's a moving day, and we can't check into our next campground until 2:00. So we drove the motor home 45 miles to the Walmart in Burlington, Vermont, for some shopping and then computer time inside the motor home in the parking lot in the rain.

We had blue skies by the time we left Walmart and headed to our campground. We are staying at Apple Island Resort, which is actually on an island in Lake Champlain. As we were crossing the causeway we could see Vermont's largest lake on both sides of the road.

Apple Island Resort is a Passport America campground. That means we got the half-price rate of only $40--instead of the usual $80 rate. The half-price rate is still considerably above our average, but we need the full hook-ups to do laundry. We took a tour of this very nice resort, where some of the camp sites have a view of Lake Champlain. 

But those sites rent for over $100 per night, and we're planning to spend our time exploring the area rather than sitting at our camp site anyway. So we chose one of the cheaper sites that are tucked into the hills among some of the permanent homes in the resort. All of the sites have access to the resort's marina, and we're hoping to use it to kayak on Lake Champlain during our stay.

Our friend Mary from New York has given us good advice on things to do while we are in New England. So when she mentioned the Colchester Trail near our campground, we knew we wanted to try it. We drove a few miles to the trail head, and started on this section through the trees.

Very soon the trail broke out of the trees, and we were pedaling our bikes on the old railroad causeway that connects Grand Island with Apple Island. The old railroad bed gives hikers and bikers views of Lake Champlain on both sides. 

We stopped often to take in the views. Lake Champlain is one of the largest fresh water lakes in the United States. In fact, it is the sixth largest, right behind the five great lakes. It is 107 miles from north to south, and 14 miles at its widest from east to west. It separates the states of Vermont and New York.

Our biking trail ended right here at this view point. As we looked across the water, we could see where the trail continued not far away. How could we continue?

On a bike ferry, of course! By raising the orange flag, we could request that the boat pick us up and take us to the bike trail that continues just 175 feet across the water.

That bike ferry runs regularly during the summer. But in September it is only available on the weekends, so it isn't available to us today. We walked down to the boat dock, but we've come to the end of our bike trail--for today.

The clouds were gathering, and we could see that rain was falling not too far away across Lake Champlain. So we made the return ride back to the pickup faster than usual.

We did stop for another lake view. If we looked east, we could see the Green Mountains of Vermont. If we looked west, we could see the Adirondack Mountains of New York where we are heading in a few days.

Back on Apple Island, we explored a little to see how this island got its name. Sure enough, we found several apple orchards. This orchard had a whole trailer of just-picked apples. But we still have plenty of apples, so we bought a peck of just-picked pears today--along with a maple creamee.

We also found some rain, that ended with a nice rainbow across the sky.

We passed a sign that alerted us to a farmer's market today, and two u-turns later we finally found it. It's getting late in the season but we found some produce. The flowers are still putting on beautiful blooms, and we found a local bakery that participates in the market. So it was a delicious stop on our tour of the Lake Champlain area.

Once the rain cleared, we took off on a drive to further explore our new home. While we are camped on Apple Island, we found out that Lake Champlain has more than 100 islands scattered across its 107-mile length. Highway 2 runs north-to-south, with bridges that connect several of the bigger islands. We drove 25 miles north on Highway 2 until we were only three miles from the Canadian border. That's where we found the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge.

It was a beautiful oasis of water and trees and wildlife. We looked up to watch three different eagles in the sky above us.

The visitor center was closed. But we found a hike through the woods and ferns, on a trail just wide enough for two.

The Missisquoi River runs through the wildlife refuge, and it would have been a great place to kayak. But the clouds are already turning pink this evening, and we're 25 miles from home.

We took the faster inland highway back to our campground. It runs parallel with Lake Champlain, and we watched the sunset over the water. We've seen this new-to-us lake from a bike trail, from driving across several different islands, and from our campground. From all those angles, we have wandered into more of God's wonders known as Lake Champlain!