The Airline Trail

The "Queen Stage" of the bike trip was arguably Day 5.  The plan was to ride about 55 miles, mostly on the dirt Airline Trail, which follows a section of the path of the old direct rail route from New York to Boston, the Airline Railway.  I wasn't quite sure how this part of the route was going to go, particularly for the kiddo because

1) It was longer than the other days and we would have accumulated fatigue in our legs.  40-ish miles a day really isn't much, until you start carrying luggage!

2) We would now have deviated from the East Coast Greenway, and thus be on a weird Anna-route rather than a more sanctioned normal route. (I'm sure this is my version of my mom's tendency to follow little gray dotted lines on the map...)

3) It was dirt.  Hope there is no torrential rain.

4) It wasn't clear whether the northernmost section of trail would be passable, as the trail development was still a work in progress.  I found some accounts of people riding it on bike forums, generally suggesting that one might prefer a mountain bike.  Being optimistic, I decided that we weren't wimps and that loaded touring bikes with wide tires would be fine.  (I was, however, prepared to swap bikes with Nim for this bit if her narrower tires proved to be a problem.)

After 35 or so miles of that trail, it looked like it might connect to the SNETT, or Southern New England Trunkline Trail, for which I could find even less information about riding conditions.  Like pretty much zilch beyond the fact that the trail existed, bikes were allowed, but the surface might suck on a road bike.  It went through the woods in the right direction, so I put it on the route.

Of course Chad and I were looking forward to this part of the trip -- the unknowns and relative wildness appealed to us.

 We started the day with a wee challenge finding our way onto the trail, as the connection from the road we took from the B&B to the trail was a little bit overgrown.  This leads to the teen being suspicious of our judgment.

However, it didn't take long for things to open up a bit, 

and soon we were riding on a perfectly respectable trail beelining northeast across the state.

We did encounter the occasional obstacle, but by and large this section was easy riding.

Random glamour shot of Chad's bike.  Can you tell how it was standing up?  Clearly it is a sentient cartoon bike.

The kiddo was still somewhat suspicious of riding through the endless woods, but the adults were quite happy.  We were also most impressed with her handling of the bike with skinny tires on the trail surface, which was ever-so-slowly degrading in quality the further we went.  At this point we had moved out of the improved packed crushed gravel surface section to dirt with ever-increasing numbers of rocks poking up through it

insterspersed with occasional more overgrown spots.

Eventually, we popped out in a town and followed roads for a mile or two, based on talking to another cyclist who corroborated my vague knowledge that the piece of the trail through town was so close to the river that it was a mud bog.  It was lunchtime anyway, so a stop in town was a good idea.

Bike shop in town with good window art.  No, kid, we will not provide this service for you.

We did find ourselves back on the trail in relatively short order, and rode right past the tri-state marker -- the point where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island intersect.

At this point, the trail changed from being the Airline Trail to the SNETT, necessitating a quick map check.  I did have paper maps for the trip (and generally prefer them), but also had made myself an offline route on the phone, which was often a quicker way to tell the kid with confidence how many miles it would be to the next potential ice cream stop.

Thoughts of ice cream made the kid happy, even in the face of a trail surface that now started to contain large sand pits in between the bits with rocks poking up.  Or maybe she was just laughing at me saying SNETT over and over again.  SNETT, SNETT, SNETT.  SSSSSSNNNNNNETTTTTTT!

Distraction from sand.

And I suppose there were the few sections that were just old railroad ballast.  Blargh.  Thoughts of ice cream propelled us forward.

Turtle crossing!  

One of the things that was nice about being off in the woods was that there was a bit of wildlife, shown in Nim's doodle for the day.

 Bicycle crossing.

Somewhere in here, we were attacked by caterpillars falling from the trees.  At one point I had one dangling from the visor on my helmet in front of my right eye for a couple of miles.  I sort of wondered how long he could hold one with his little hind feet, but eventually took pity on him and stopped to escort him onto a more stable surface.

At about 40 miles, we finished our dirt adventure and headed into town to find the promised ice cream, which fueled us for the remaining 15 miles of rolling micro-hills.  (Imagining what the teen thought of rolling micro-hills after 40 miles of dirt is best left as an exercise for the reader.)  Still, it was a successful day's riding, and by far the most interesting riding of the trip.  And there was ice cream.