New Discovery State Park

Marshfield, Vermont

This is our one and only stop in Vermont. First, Vermont is a very small state. You can pretty much drive across the entire state in a single day. Second, there aren’t a lot of choices of places to camp and ride with your horses. There are two - TWO- state campgrounds that allow horses in Vermont and New Discovery is the only one of the two that has trails to ride.

For $34/night (state residents pay less), you get a campsite with two 12 ft x 12 ft pipe corrals. After the standing stalls in Frontier Town, these corrals were downright luxurious. NO hook-ups. We relied on our generator and back-up batteries for electricity and filled our water tank for water. There are public restrooms and a shower house at the equestrian campground.

There is a single shared water faucet in the center of the campground - but it doesn’t have threads. Which means you can’t attach a hose to it. The ranger told Ari that the faucet is on a well and they don’t allow you to attach a hose because backwash from the hose could contaminate the well. This makes sense to us. So, we put our spare water tank in the truck bed, drove it to the RV dump by the park entrance and filled from the potable water faucet that had an attachment to prevent backwash.

We rode two days. The trails were just lovely. We were riding in Groton State Forest, the second largest state forest in Vermont with over 26,000 acres to explore.

Trails were easy, not too muddy, no water crossings, a few bridges, but nothing awful. No moose sightings or really any other wildlife to speak of. On Saturday, the park was hosting a marathon race, which confused the heck out of us and the horses. We kept being passed by joggers, which isn’t that unusual, but once we are several miles from the trailhead we usually stop seeing anybody else. Then, we came across a group of people sitting around a folding table with snacks and water on the side of the trail. It reminded me of Day of the Horse in Woodside, where you go from table to table trick or treating on horse back. The tables were check-in spots for the runners. Our horses were confused. At Day of the Horse, tables like that had apples and carrots for them. Where were their snacks?

On Sunday, we went into Montpelier, the state capitol, to play tourist. This is the smallest state capitol in the United States, boasting a population of 7,000 people. It’s a charming town with lots of shops (all closed on Sunday), but still people were out and about, enjoying the lovely weather.

On to New Hampshire…