I planned a bike ride on the Island Line Rail Trail for my June outing with OWA, and I had to reschedule it three times due to rain.  Not just regular rain, but heavy storms with lightning rain.  Rain came in last minute for tonight too but I was hopeful that it would go away after looking at the hourly forecast, and I didn’t have any other dates I could reschedule to in any case.  It wasn’t looking too bad on the drive there, but right as Rebecca and I pulled into the Leddy Park parking lot, it started pouring.  We waited fifteen minutes and when it didn’t appear anyone else was coming (for obvious reasons, but I had to be sure), we decided to go grab food and come back.  By the time we got back an hour later, it was only lightly sprinkling so we started the ride.

In the time between when this should have originally happened and today, construction started on part of the trail we wanted to ride, so we immediately had to take a detour onto roads.  It was only for two miles or so though and the traffic wasn’t bad.  Back on the bike path, we went through nice neighborhoods in Colchester and then passed through a few natural areas.

Then came the main event, the Colchester Causeway, where you can ride right out into Lake Champlain.  The rain had stopped by then and we had beautiful views all around, with the added bonus of only seeing a couple of other people the whole time.

The causeway goes out for a few miles to a cut, where you can take a bike/pedestrian ferry across to South Hero Island, with more riding opportunities.  The ferry wasn’t running at this time so we turned around and headed back the way we came.

We rode about 15 miles total and I’m glad we didn’t let the rain deter us.  I definitely want to go back out there again, and there’s even a loop that can be made around the lake with multiple ferries.