Photo album will be updated tomorrow.Day 48 (20 Sep 09) Pulaski to Inlet 88 miles
First frost this morning. Us on our bikes and the Amish going to church in a horse-drawn buggy are the only people on the road this early. Jim and I wave to the buggy and to our surprise we see two small hands with straw hats wave from the back of the buggy. Are these kids curious about these bike riders? Are they curious about the outside world? No doubt; they’re children.
We roll down and pedal up sharp hills in the Adirondacks. It’s still cold at 10:00 AM. There’s a snap to the air that we did not feel at back in August on the West Coast.
It’s another long day on the bike. We stopped in Old Forge for a rest and snack at a convenience store. Len found an Adirondack chair and collapsed there for awhile and Toby engaged a couple of taciturn local guys in conversation - mostly Toby talking.
There wasn’t much to Inlet, but the folks at the Inlet Marina Motel were really nice and Jamie, one of the owners, drove us a couple of miles down the road for one of the best dinners we had on the trip. Guess there’s lots of old money in the area, so a high end restaurant can make a go.
Day 49 (21 Sep 09) Inlet to Ticonderoga 97 miles
We leave in a cold fog. Lots of layers of clothing and thankful for the hill out of town to warm us up. Len’s nose drips like an old leaky faucet (he wrote this, not me). The Inlet Marina Motel is run by a young couple. She is a Jersey Girl who goes back to Jersey to have her babies. (Len, a Jersey boy hears the Jersey accent in a second.) Henry is a stone mason trying to build a business because the stone work is breaking his body. Jamie drives a huge yellow Ford 250 with “MomsRig” on the license plate. Nice place to stay. He is restoring 7 fire places in local “camp” owned by the heiress to the Chase Manhattan Bank founder.
Fall colors are just starting to appear in the hills. We climb most of the day and then there’s a fast decent to Ticonderoga, NY and Lake Champlain. On the way we met a couple from Modesto, CA who are touring on a tandem. They are taking 5 months to cross the US. They have stoppped and stayed at National Parks and visited relatives in Ohio. We all agree that the toughest part were the headwinds in North Dakota.
The day is warm, but you can feel the edge of cold coming out of the forest on the side of us. Winter is around the corner.
Day 50 (22 Sep 09) Ticonderoga to White River Junction, VT
The $2 ferry across Lake Champlain arrives just as we reach the dock. Addie B’s captain flies the Jamaican flag. The owner of the ferry hires Jamaican’s to pick apples. “They can pick 5 bushels a day,” according to the Capitan. He shaves his upper lip, but nothing else. He left his teeth at home.
It sprinkles of rain off an on (never enough to put on rain gear) most of the day and is very humid.
Once again we go up and down all morning on our way to Middlebury, VT. Len is seeking a replacement tire and we figure a college town will have a good bike shop. The bike shop was ok, but no luck with the tire. The owner advises us to take a different route than the one we planned because the road is better. It turns out to be about 14 miles longer, but takes us by Lake Dunsmore where Jim’s son James went to music camp for two summers. Despite the overcast skies, it’s a beautiful ride. Getting over the Green Mountains turns out to be a real killer, Brandon Gap with a 12%-18% grade. We cross VT in one day and end in White River Junction.
Road signs in VT give distances in 10ths of miles, unlike Minnesota. In Minnesota, if there were a sign for a town, there was no mileage. Most of the road signs were for the next Lutheran Church. Information certainly useful to Lutherans
Day 51 (23 Sep09) White River Junction to Moultonborough, NH 79 miles
We start with a short tour of Dartmouth College. Jim shows us the beautiful campus; it is the sort of place that us public school guys dream of when we trip over cracked sidewalks at our poorly funded schools.
Jim gets a flat just outside Plymouth, NH literally across the street from the Rhino Bike Shop. These guys know what they are doing and replace 6 spokes on Jim’s rear wheel (two were broken when the repair began and the other four broke as the wheel was trued). They tell us that the Baby Jesus must have been with us for the trip because the wheel was not intended for touring. Thank goodness we did not have a such a breakdown in North Dakota where there was no food, no place to stay and no bike shops for 100’s of miles.
Our advice: if you plan to do touring find a bike shop that sells you the right equipment.
We are about 100 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, but we will turn north to take the diagonal route to the Ocean at Bar Harbor, ME.
Day 52 (24 Sep 09) Moultonborough, NH to Bethel, ME 74 miles
Last night the lighting knocked out the power in Moultonborough, NH. The owner of Berry Pond Motel offered flashlights, but we all just decided to sleep. He was kind and drove us to the North End Restaurant for a great meal and entertainment provided by our waiter Charlie. I doubt that half of what Charlie told us was true, but he was a great story teller.
It is unusually warm for NH and ME we head into the wind for most of the day. Jim finds two more broken spokes as we leave the motel. We stop for a great breakfast at Rosie’s on route 16 near West Ossipe. We cross the Maine border near Freyburg and ask directions in the local bank. We are told by the bank teller that we can take the “wicked hard” route or the regular route. We opt to avoid wicked hard. Besides, the regular route takes us by the sign with directions to everywhere - photos are in the album.
What a gorgeous day as the weather front moves in lowering the humidity and the temperature. The trees are coloring the skyline with oranges, gold and reds.
At the end of the day, we opt for the “wicked hard” short route rather than the much easier long route to Gerry and Jackie Bell’s house in Bethel, ME. That last climb included bare ground at at 12% grade. That end of Paradise Drive is hardly paradise for a road bike rider loaded with 40 to 50 pounds of stuff. The view at the top is worth the pain of the climb. After a short, gentle downhill we encounter Gerry walking is dog, Dakota, along the road.
Gerry is a classmate of Jim’s who, many months before, graciously agreed to put us up for a night. Jackie prepared a fantastic dinner. It was a welcome respite from the endless nights of motels.
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