2013 Go East boy. July 06 - 08

I must admit that lately I was very lazy at updating this blog. Some people asked me when do I write another update, so it shows that somebody actually reads this thing. So here goes.

Last week my Son and I decided to do a bike trip out East. The plan was to go East thru Ontario, cross into the US, cross New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, then cross into Canada again and then spend some time in New Brunswick. We had a total of 8 days available to make it out to New Brunswick and back again. To save money we decided to go 2 up on one bike.

The first day was all just pretty much hard riding. It was about 400km up the 401 highway to make it to the US border. Very boring ride, but it went fast. We got to the customs post round lunch time in the midday heat, and stood in line for about an hour. Midday heat and riding gear does not go well. We were boiling in our suits. But once we crossed and started moving fast, we cooled down.
Now we were in upstate New York, and riding become a lot of fun.

Once in New York we started looking for a campsite but could not find anything that suited us, but once we were in Tupper Lake we saw a motel with a pool, and we both decided this is what we need.

Did I mention that the motel had a pool.

The next day we woke to some cloudy skies, and after we packed the bike it started raining, so on with the rain suits. The rain stopped after about an hour, and we did some nice riding round the Lake Placid area.
Here is a video clip of the road and the scenery in the area.

We were heading for Flume Gorge in Franconia Notch State Park in New Hampshire.

You might ask, what is a Flume?

It is about an Hour and a half's walk from when you enter the ticket office to the top of the Flume and down again. Here are some pics of the gorge.

After our trek thru the gorge it was getting late and we had to find dinner and a place to sleep. We did a search on the GPS and there was nothing close. We just kept on riding until we hit a small town with a convenience store to buy some food. Wile in the lineup to pay we started asking round for a place that we can set up our tent. It so turned out that the guy behind us in line owned a camp ground. We paid for our food, loaded it up into the camp ground owner's van, and followed him to his place. Once we got to his place, he showed us a map of his camp ground, and told us to go in a pick any spot we wanted. What a great guy. Apple Wood Camp ground near Whitefield New Hampshire, if you are ever in the area and looking for a camp ground.

We slept that night in pouring rain, almost flooded the tent, and woke up to it still pouring. We packed up in the rain and took of for the border into Canada again.

We crossed Main in no time, hit the duty free to buy siggies, and we were in New Brunswick. I stayed at a motel on the Bay of Fundy 4 years ago, and wanted to find the same place again. They went and build a 4 lane highway all the way to Saint John, so I had no clear direction of where the motel was. I just looked at the GPS and as soon as I could see we were near the coast line, I took the first off ramp. How lucky could we be, after turning off the highway, we rode about 3 minutes an there was the motel.

We were both so happy to be at the sea. In Ontario we are surrounded by a lot of water, but it's not the sea. Konstanz spend his early years growing up near the sea in SA, and the happiness on his face when he walked on the beach was priceless.