August 29th through 31st
Rochester, Vermont; Orford, New Hampshire; Lincoln, New Hampshire
We left Upstate New York at Ticonderoga and took a ferry across Lake Champlain and entered Vermont. We were not intimidated by steep grades however and we crossed into New Hampshire in short order the next day.
Meet Bob Kingsley from Seattle. He’s been leapfrogging with us the last several days as he finishes up his Northern Tier ride as well. It’s been interesting comparing notes on our experiences, as Bob has taken some different routes than we did.
Vermont was, well … just beautiful as always. I have two distinct recollections of Vermont from a visit to the state a long time ago: The Green Mountains are aptly named as everything here was very green and the roads were some of the best I’d seen anywhere. I was pleased to see that pretty much the same holds true today and that’s saying something because few states have the funding necessary for road upkeep these days.
I caught the above picture in the afternoon looking west as the sun was angled just right above this slope to highlight the green in the forest. Please forgive the angle of the camera as I was riding at the time.
Of course Vermont has that New England flavor in their architecture and I caught this as the view one has as they enter a small town.
On the 30th we crossed the Connecticut River into New Hampshire. There wasn’t a state sign there on U.S. 5 to greet us, but our next turn put us on a dirt road for about a mile, so that was a way of greeting us sufficient to say we were no longer in Vermont.
A few miles down the same road however, we crossed an excellent covered bridge, so all is forgiven.
That night at our campground they permitted us to use one of the pavilions. Sallie’s has developed a fondness for pavilion camping where the tents are under the protection of an open roof. I will confess that despite my needling her about this new preference, it rained the next morning. Thank you Sallie for another day when we are not packing up wet tents!
In fairly short order we’ve ridden the Adirondack Mountains of New York, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and into the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
I believe Sallie is getting quite fond of mountain grades and as we crossed the Appalachian Trail today near Lost River in New Hampshire, I suspect maybe the Appalachian may be in her plans as an encore to the Northern Tier?
This photo shows two things:
This particular New Hampshire road was recently paved and therefore earns the benefit of recording this rare and unusual fact.
Based on the color of this leaf we are not long for this country and time grows short to complete our journey and get ourselves south where we belong.