COMING EVENT: The Backroads Fall Foliage weekend will be the end of September, the 26th to 29th. Friday night is at the Hotel Carlisle in PA. Saturday and Sunday nights are at Wisp ski resort in McHenry Maryland (by Deep Creek Lake). See the Backroads site for details or contact me.
Morton's Open House: October 11th. Plan on the Usual Suspects meeting at Abell's in Clements, MD to fuel up prior to the ride over.
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We pulled into our driveway in Leonardtown this afternoon after 3,598 miles and 17 days of adventure. We collected Angus from the Stalag, did what little unpacking we needed to do, and put our feet up for a little while. It was a great trip, but it's also great to be home.
In coming days I'll be posting some smaller photos to the site, so keep checking back.
Mark and Betsy
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The other day we surpassed our old record of 2,600 miles on a trip and are at 3,363 now. We may not quite make 4,000 miles on this one, but we will be close. It's day 16 and we're in Trexlertown, PA near the bicycle velodrome. I stopped by on the odd chance they might be racing and they were. The Chief Ref was my instructor at a clinic this spring, so he said "If you're going to stick your nose in, you're going to work." So Betsy was entertained by George McCary and his friend Ann (riders of a VFR and a CBR 600 respectively) while I watched cyclists go round and round for a couple hours in the 94-degree heat.
Catching up, we survived St. John, Armpit of Fundy, just fine. We crossed back into the US without incident at a place called Calais, ME (the whole Northeast is so culturally hosed up that it's no wonder there's a town in Maine named for one in France. Hell, they've got Norway, Mexico, et al.). The guy took our passports, looked at our bike, said "You can't have much to declare in there" and sent us on our way. Two minutes. We went to the Easternmost point of the United States, the lighthouse at Quoddy Head, Maine. It was fogged in, of course, and the marine layer that obscured the lighthouse was so cool that Betsy needed a jacket. The temperature swings have been dramatic: as much as 30 degrees in 20 miles or so.
From Quoddy Head, we went to Skowhegan, ME for the night at a family-owned motel suggested by Kim, the supernaturally clairvoyant guy at the Maine Rest Stop and Tourist Info Center. We came down through New Hampshire past the Mount Washington Auto Road, but didn't make a return visit since the wind was bad enough down at the bottom to blow us around and there were clouds around the top of the mountain. No way I want to handle that dirt road in the fog and wind with vanloads of Japanese tourists coming the other way. It was pretty from below.
We stopped at Whitehorse Press in East Conway, NH to see Jeff Adams, a friend from our previous trip. Jeff was great, as was his mixed-breed rescue dog Riley and the other office dog, Hudson, a cross between a Newfoundland and a standard poodle that the owner called a "Noodle." Animals and people at Whitehorse Press, a firm specializing in motorcycle books and apparrel, were all just as wonderful as we remembered. I got some socks that should dry faster than the ones I've been wearing. That way, I don't have to put them over the end of the hair dryer and fly them like little wind socks to get them dry.
Then it was off to the Kancamagus highway (NH Route 112) to Vermont and our old haunt of Brandon. It's said you can't go home again, and Brandon was a little like that. Some of the places we knew were closed and some of the ones that were open were less nice than we remembered. Some of it was the group of rednecks on the deck at Sully's restaurant who didn't know how to behave in public. Anyway, it was still as scenic as we remembered and the hot tub at the motor lodge still overlooked a valley farm and the Green Mountains, so it was all good. It killed us not to go back to the Gray Ghost, but that would have been an extremely long day.
Brian and Shira, the fantastic folks from Backroads, gave us a neat place to stay on the Delaware River in New York: the Carriage House Inn and Restaurant in the little town of Barryville. The Inn was old, but the tonic was cold and the room was perfectly fine. We met Alan, the groundskeeper with the Samurai Mohawk Topknot haircut, and Muntzy the German Shepherd dog who lives there. Both were very friendly and Alan gave us some postcards of the place in its heyday, which was a couple decades ago, but they have big plans if the Delaware River will stop flooding the place. Muntzy is very photogenic.
OH YEAH, I almost forgot, I have a picture of Betsy giving the Peace Sign at the monument on Yasgur's Farm in Bethel, NY where they held the Woodstock festival in 1969! It's not far from Barryville. The only problem is that they've turned the place into "Bethel Woods" a big concert facility complete with big white tents and fancy schmantzy parking areas and shuttle busses, solar lighting, et al. Backroads Brian says it's a fantastic place to see and hear a concert and that he saw Chicago and The Doobies there, but I still think a little amphitheatre on the hillside would be better. It is no longer, as Billy Crystal once said, the place "where 100,000 people got together and created a strain of VD that would kill penicillin." According to a guy we met in Prince Edward Island who was a rock band drummer in the 70's, Woodstock doesn't even surpass the current Canada Day celebration in Old Quebec City for sheer drunkenness, debauchery, and drug use. Hmm. Anyway, went to Yasgur's Farm. Peace and love: the 40th anniversary is next year.
We had a great visit with the Backroads folks at the impressive Backroads Central. They were doing the next issue in anticipation of going to Norway (and NOT Norway, Maine, either - the real thing). They graciously gave us some of their time. On the way there, we saw a female wild turkey and her six offspring. Last time we went down Jersy 521 we saw a black bear: so why is it that we see the best wild game in New Jersey? Go figure.
We didn't get far before I checked in at the Velodrome to find racing going on. That pretty much snuffed the day right there. So here we are, in a...chain motel...in Trexlertown, PA (actually probably Fogelsville) blogging you up on the penultimate day of the trip. We're to have a nice dinner at a fantastic Italian place called Paese Mio (My Neighborhood) tonight with my track racing teacher, then home tomorrow via PA backroads and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Hopefully we'll arrive in time to collect our dog, whom we miss a lot...er...I mean whom MRS. BYERS misses a lot. Ahem.
Than it's back to semi-reality, but not without lots of memories and lots of pictures. I'll upload some more photos for you later in a more compact format so they download quicker. The last ones are full-strength, so they may load slowly. I think you'll like some of them, particularly Betsy in the red pigtails. Of course, I have managed to erase all the embarrassing ones of me...
Gotta go: blog you later...from HOME!
Mark and Betsy
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Went to Cavendish, PEI this morning to check out Lucy Maud Montgomery's house on which she based Ann of Green Gables. Got a few postcards and had a Raspberry Cordial in her honor. Got a picture of Betsy in a goofy hat with fake red bangs and pigtails. She looks about how you would expect her to look in a straw hat with fake red bangs and pigtails.
Over the Confederation Bridge, which, despite its size, was underwhelming in that the view is pretty much just water and the bridge is just a road between two jersey walls...for 8 miles. Not impressive for the $16.50 toll.
Canada is really expensive: between all the National Park fees and up to 15 percent sales taxes we've paid, I figure I funded a gall bladder operation for a guy in Quebec and a quarter mile or so of the Cabot Trail. I know I paid for some green paint on that house in Cavendish.
We continue to see "McLobster is Back!" signs on McDonalds and we see that Wal-Mart has invaded the North Country. If Dunkin' Donuts is the franchise that ate Maine, Tim Horton's is the franchise that ate Canada. Picture a cross between Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, and McDonalds. Yeah. All the Harley dudes like them, though, and a woman told us "Timmies" is where you go to get directions.
We probably should have heeded the latter instruction. We came down through the Bay of Fundy park, stopping to get wet at Hopewell Rocks, where the tide changes by 48 feet from low to high. Betsy enjoyed toying with her camera while the water broke over the rock next to me, soaking me. I know it was on purpose.
Buuuuuuut...
Our destination for the evening was to be St. John. Not St. John's up in Newfoundland, but a more modest one on the Bay of Fundy. They have a thing here called the "Reversing Falls" which is a waterfall that ends up going either direction because of the difference in the tides. The trouble is, St. John is basically the armpit of the Bay of Fundy. We drove for at least an hour in the darkening fog looking for one that didn't cater to longshoremen, truckers, or professional service workers of the former two. We finally had to retrace our steps out past the airport and found an "Amsterdam Inn" from where I'm writing you. It's a big box with rooms, but at 9:30PM in a pea soup fog with darkening skies and a cold wife, all those high-falutin' airs about "no chain motels" go right down the sh***er like that slow duck on opening day.
Anyway, it's 1020 PM and we have a room and are waiting on our pizza so we can go to bed. Hope somone knows who won the Tour de France Time Trial today: Betsy thinks she and Suzanne used to babysit the guy who was second in yesterday's stage, Will Frischkorn.
Tomorrow we hope to make landfall back in Maine if customs will let us through with an empty Raspberry Cordial bottle from Cavendish. Quoddy Head light is a goal, although if the fog that's here now is prevalent down there, we may have to go further inland (Buffalo, for example).
Tomorrow leaves us only five days to get home. We're almost 2,300 miles into the trip. 331 today, second longest and about 40 of that looking for a room that didn't charge by the hour. Wish "Pizza s" would get here.
Ciao from the bay of "Fun"-dy.
Mark and Betsy
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Today was a day off for the pilot. We got up, had a leisurely light brekkie, and then walked the streets of Charlottetown, PEI. Not a big deal: lots of shops that cater to the tourist trade, but a nice harbor (or harbour as they spell it here). We did a mess of laundry, which will be the first and only time this trip, probably. No, we don't stink, we wash stuff out at night. We'll do a long-distance touring for first-timers thing some day.
We walked along the waterfront down to Victoria Park. Children were running under fountains down there and having a blast. We met some nice doggies, including a large, wet black lab (with attendant smell). We took in an art gallery and the St. Dunstan's Basilica.
Unlike Baaaaah Haaaaahhhbaaaahh, we had a nice Post Office experience where the guy taped our package for us (we were ready, though, thanks to Baaaaahhhhbara the Baaaaahhh Haaaaahhhbaah Post Office Nazi). Anyway, the guy at Post Canada taped our packages and even suggested a way to save some money on postage. We got some more Audrey Hepburn postcard stamps and sent our stuff on its way. Hope you are getting the cards...
Off to do some more official farting around before dinner, then back to semi-plan tomorrow, our Anne of Green Gables visit to Cavendish, and our trip across the 8-mile long Confederation Bridge to New Brunswick and the road home. There's a beemer dealer in Moncton: maybe we'll get a T-shirt (or not). They should put up a sign over the entrance to Canada: "Canada, it's not cheap." If you bitch about taxes back home, try a 13% sales tax in Nova Scotia and a 15% tax here in PEI. Yeah.
A word about the money: they take American here. It's a pity our border states don't do the same for Canadians. They don't have one-dollar bills in Canada, just a coin with a loon on it they call "loonies." They have a two-dollar coin that's really attractive they call...a "toonie." The first bill starts at five dollars. It all makes so much sense. Loonies and Toonies. I love it. I just wish it didn't take so many of them to do anything here. Oh well.
Blog you later, loonies and toonies.
Mark and Betsy
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