Leafing it to Vermont

We do love New Hampshire, but we're headed to neighboring Vermont this weekend to attend the jazz festival in Burlington. If you've never been, Burlington is a great place to visit. Lots of good restaurants, Church Street Marketplace (a pedestrian mall) in the heart of the city, and of course, Lake Champlain.

Burlington is known for its natural hippie vibe; folks here just seem to have a laid-back attitude. Did they invent the "green movement" in Burlington? I'm not sure...but it seems like they were tuned in to saving the environment long before the rest of us.

And here's a cool fact I learned on wikipedia.com: Burlington is the largest city in Vermont. But with just under 40,000 residents, it's the smallest U.S. city that is the largest in its state. That's right...it's the smallest of the largest.

While we're off to Vermont to take in some jazz, I hope you'll take out your bikes or kayaks and head to some of our favorite spots this weekend. You can find details right here on New Hampshire: Love it or Leaf It.

• Bike the Nashua River Rail Trail


• Paddle Dubes Pond in Hooksett


• Paddle Gilmore Pond in Jaffrey

And if you do get out there, be sure to send us a comment and tell us all about it!

Kayaking Hoit Road Marsh

We spent a couple of peaceful hours this morning paddling Hoit Road Marsh in Concord. This is a true marsh--distinguished by its abundant vegetation and shallow depth. We recommend that you plan a trip here before too long. By mid-summer, the outer reaches of the pond will be choked with water lilies, reeds, and grasses and you probably won't be able to paddle far at all.

Hoit Road Marsh was a different type of paddling experience for us-- compared with Gilmore or Willard Pond, for example, which are both crystal clear and easy to navigate. Here, the water is murky, you're hitting tree stumps, and sometimes hitting bottom. Still, we thoroughly enjoyed the marsh.

It's the type of place where you can just sit and drift, watching and listening to all the birds and other critters, including snakes and a snapping turtle. We saw Canada geese, tree swallows, and most captivating of all, a Great Blue Heron from fairly close range.

How large is Hoit Road Marsh? An interesting question. I found four wildly different facts on this (ranging from 71 acres to 217!) , but I'm going to go with the NH Fish and Game Department and say 101 acres. The Fish and Game oversees the marsh as a "Wildlife Management Area" and they've placed abundant bird houses throughout. While we never did see any wood ducks which are supposed to be plentiful here, we were quite content to spend time watching the amazing Great Blue Heron.

Things to Know Before You Go: The Marsh is peaceful and quiet. There are no motor boats and limited road noise. There's a gravel put-in and ten parking spaces across the road. This place is easy to find and has easy access. There are no bathroom or other facilities.

Directions: Take I-93 north to exit 17. Take a left onto Hoit Road and drive for 2.5 miles. The marsh is on your left.

Basic Paddling Technique

Are you left-brained (analytical, logical) or right-brained (artsy, creative)? I'm about to offer links to some basic paddling techniques and depending on how your brain works, you may prefer one link over another. I'll start by saying this information is for beginners. We're barely scratching the surface here.

Kayaking is like many other sports--you can get by just knowing the basics, but you'll probably enjoy it more (and be safer) as your knowledge and skills expand. First, here are four brief tips I learned from watching a demonstration at the New England Paddlesports Show:

• Sit up straight and tall in your kayak


• Use your entire upper body, not just your arms and shoulders


• Watch the hand doing the work; This means your shoulders move with your hands


• Your paddle should be vertical as it's going into the water

Paddling Instructions for Left-Brainers
Some folks will find this helpful, so I'm adding this link to GORP's article on River Basics: Strokes and Strategies. It describes forward strokes, the stern draw, and forward sweep, among other things. I'm quite sure the author know's what he's talking about, but not being a left-brained person, most of his instruction is lost on me.

Paddling Video for Right-Brainers
And for the rest of us, national champion paddler Lloyd Reeves has produced some short instructional videos available on a site called expert village. There are actually 13 short videos in the series. Topics range from how to get in a kayak safely, the correct way to hold a paddle, and basic strokes.

Take a Lesson
All this being said, I think the best way to learn paddling technique is to take an in-person lesson. Many rental and touring places offer them; check out some of the links in our sidebar under Kayak Rentals and Tours. The "grand-daddy" of outdoor instruction in our area seems to be the L.L.Bean Outdoor Discovery Schools. I love that they offer a choice of long (more expensive) instruction and shorter (less expensive) "walk-on adventures." You can get a full course meal or just the appetizer!

Confession Time...This is our third season on the water and we've yet to take a lesson. Up until now, we've had fun just playing. But I'm ready to learn how to get more efficient at paddling so we can take longer trips. How about you?

New Boston Rail Trail is a Challenge

Remember when I said we're amateurs when it comes to both kayaking and biking? Well, I have a lot to learn about rail trails. We read about the New Boston to Goffstown Rail Trail on the internet, loaded the bikes in the back of the pickup, and set out with great anticipation to find it. The information I'd read online gave no details about the condition of the trail, so I wasn't sure what to expect. (This photo taken at the beginning of the trail is misleading...it's practically the only smooth section we encountered.)

What we found at first was an abandoned rail bed that was impassable with our hybrid bikes. There were huge tree stumps, deep gullies and rocks (shown at right). To an experienced mountain biker, maybe this is tame -- but we didn't have the right gear or experience to tackle this terrain.

Luckily, there were some locals nearby who pointed us toward a connecting portion of the trail that wasn't too bad. We still had to watch out for tree stumps and some rail road ties, but there were some easier sections, too. This was a short (maybe 1.5 mile?) section of trail within New Boston that meanders along the south branch of the Piscataquog River.

While I don't plan to return to this trail anytime soon, there were some positive notes: New Boston's town center is quintessential New England. There's a white steepled church, a gazebo, and a vintage country store where we bought lunch. Plus, there's one of those picture-postcard views of valleys and mountains as you drive from New Boston to Mont Vernon.

Understanding Trail Designations: After we biked here, I found this trail on a NH bike map designated as an abandoned trail bed. Other trails are classified as "Rails to Trails." I'm guessing one is unimproved and the other is improved/maintained. If you have more knowledge about trail designations, please send us a comment.

What to Know Before You Go: The New Boston trail is better suited for walking. If you want to bike, hybrid or mountain bikes are highly recommended. For us, this turned out to be a short 3-mile ride over some fairly challenging terrain. Hardier, more experienced types might be willing and able to tackle the longer section (8 miles round trip) which ends at the Goffstown town line.

Directions: From the center of New Boston, take Route 13 North for a short distance of about 1 mile. Turn left just past a small gas station (on the right) to the 4-H Fairgrounds. There's parking there. We actually entered the trail at Lang Station, further down Route 13. Turn left on Gregg Mill Road to Lang Station State Forest. Lang Station is the small stone house originally built to shelter RR passengers. The section of trail we biked was on the same side of the road as the parking lot.

Two Cool Biking Websites

Just discovered two informative websites about rail trails. Thanks to Tim Jones, outdoor columnist with the Nashua Telegraph, for mentioning www.traillink.com in a Telegraph article today. There's detailed information about some of the trails and limited information on others. But the rider reviews seem to be quite helpful and there's more useful info here than anything else I've been able to find on the internet so far.

Also discovered www.nashuacitystation.com/trails.php which focuses on recreational rail trails of southern New Hampshire. This site has fewer details, but it looks like a good starting point and has links to some of the rail trail websites.

Do you have any favorite biking trails to share? Be sure to submit a comment and let us know.