Virginia to the Cabot Trail and beyond

[Dirt_Dad]

Time to put the Tenere to work. We finally took the trip we've talked about for nearly two years. There were many challenges thrown in along the way, but after 3,900 miles I can say my wife and I both are amazed at what we saw and very happy we took on this challenge.

Our route (at least most of it):

Our bikes ready for the trip (yes, the Strom stayed home):

Day 1 - Virginia to Port Jervis, NY
The only memorable part of this ride through the Poconos was the traffic and high hotel prices. I'm sure there must be something good about the Poconos, but we didn't find it.

Day 2 - Port Jervis to Lake Placid, NY
We absolutely love riding through the Adirondack Mountains. The mountains, the scenery, the forest smells and just the feeling of being there is special.

This was our second trip to the Lake Placid area. I kicked myself for not doing the bobsled last time. Could not make the same mistake this time.

It was a blast. There is something about being low to the ground that makes speed feel so much better. It's really something to be looking down the track, see the corner up ahead and think we're going to hit that how fast? It is a somewhat jarring ride, definitely not smooth, but very fun.

As part of our Lake Placid Olympic Passport we also were able to ride the gondola to the top of Whiteface Mountain and ride to the top of the mountain on Veteran's Highway.

The gate house on Veteran's Highway discouraged us from going to the top due to low clouds and zero visibility. Since we didn't expect to be back we went up anyway. It was the right thing to do.

As we stayed up there the clouds began to lift to give us a peek at the spectacular landscape below.

Day 3 - Lake Placid to Smuggler's Notch Vermont
Took the ferry from New York to Vermont. It was a short ride day due to all the time spent at Lake Placid. Another perfect weather ride day.

Day 4 - Smuggler's Notch to Gorham, NH

Through the notch.

On to New Hampshire. One of my favorite states to ride.

And up my one of my favorite roads in the country.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

This day marked the first of our challenges. We learned late in the day there had been an earthquake close to home. I found a 4 hour old text on my phone from a concerned college student who woke up to the quake, found her phone not working and was a little anxious to reach one of her parents. We called her, she was feeling better but told us she may get evacuated from an approaching hurricane...Irene. We gave her some instructions for evacuation.
The challenge was mainly for my wife who wants to be there when anything is happening to my daughter. I managed to talk her down.


Day 5 - Gorham, NH to Mount Desert Island (MDI), ME
We were warned the roads running East to West in Maine are full of traffic and lots of over sized loads. The good roads run North to South. After droning along behind a new wind turbine being carried down the road I just couldn't take it any longer and we started going north/south zigzags to make it to meet Barry, a friend from Stromtrooper.com at his work. He builds high end Hinckley yachts.

I'm not a boat guy and had never heard of Hinckley before. It was great to see how they build them from start to finish. A lot of very skilled people putting together a jaw-dropping craft. Very impressive.

After the factory tour he took us on incredible tour of MDI. He showed us things we never would have found on our own.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 5 - Mount Desert Island (MDI), ME to Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia
Realizing we had a hurricane chasing us we decided it would be best to get to Nova Scotia as quickly as possible. This meant a day long slog on the interstate through very strong crosswinds most of the day. I was impressed with how well the Tenere held the road in these type of winds.

During a break we heard from our daughter she was evacuating out of her college along the Virginia coast and heading for home. Again, hard on my wife not to call off the trip and head home to be with her. But she kept a stiff upper lip and realized Dirt Daughter would be fine.

We attempted to find a room in Amherst, NS. That didn't go well, so we figured we would just ride out on Route 6 until we found some motel. Let me tell you, it's a long, long way before you find any motels on Route 6. It was nearly dark when we finally found The Train Statioin Inn at Tatamagouche. This is a gem of a find. Some tenacious guy who really loved trains setup his own train station with boxcars, lots of cabooses, some dining cars and a station building. Turned the whole thing into a restaurant and Inn business. A really neat idea and very well done. We ate in the dining car and stayed in caboose #6.

Somewhere between Amherst and Tatamagouche my GPS was telling me a I had a call from our daughter. When I heard, "dad, can you talk?" I knew to pull over. She preceded to tell me about the fender bender she just caused 5 miles from home on the way back from college. Fortunately the entire thing was very minor and the woman she bumped was pleasant and easy on her. After a few more phone calls all was straightened out and even my wife was dealing with it just fine.


Day 6 - Tatamagouche - The Cabot Trail - Antigonish, NS
I had hoped to meet another Trooper (Fryman) in Nova Scotia and personally hand over the Speedohealer he had purchased from my defarkled Vee. This was looking less and less likely as I was getting paranoid about doing the Cabot Trail and getting back to the predicted west side of Hurricane Irene. So Fryman gave me his address so I could send the package while in Canada. Of course the one post office I found had computer problems and refused to take my package.

It's a long ride fron Tatamagouche to the Cabot Trail. I don't think I really appreciated just how large Nova Scotia is. It looks so small when compared to the rest of North America, but it's not small.

We stopped for lunch near the causeway for the Cape. I decided to check my email and found an urgent message from my Visa card provider. Seems someone had stolen my number and gone on a buying spree. Obviously this resulted in the need to kill my Visa card and left me with only an AmEx and good old American cash. They offered to overnight me a new card, but since we never knew where we were going to be, that was not possible. This adventure just keeps growing in ways I could have never imagined.

Cape Brenton - WOW. I believe this road needs to be done in both directions to experience all it has to offer. We did East to West, which looking back was probably not the best direction we could have selected. Regardless of direction, this road has spectacular scenery and was worth the effort to get there.

The Cabot Trail is worth the effort. Pictures are nice, but you must experience this place in person. Over the top gorgeous. The grass is greener, the sky is more blue and the landscapes are astounding. You should see it, too.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 7 - Antigonish, NS - Waterville, ME
This is the day we start the sprint for the west side of the storm. The forecast for Nova Scotia actually isn't looking too bad, but there is still one or two models that show it going east and hitting NS. But all of the models are showing if we can get to New York we'll be in out of the path completely. I've heard from Fryman and he thinks NS is the place to be. But at this point I have tunnel vision, get out of all possible paths of the storm.

One last check of email before hitting the road early this morning. Now there's an urgent alert from my AmEx card of suspicious charges. Oh come on, I can't lose both my credit cards on this trip. Nope this one is legitimate.

This was another perfect weather day. So far on the trip we've had less than 4 hours of rain.

Day 8 - Waterville, ME - Hurricane Irene
As expected the day begins with rain and is expected to rain all day long. These are the outer bands of Irene and contain no wind of note. Feeling good and so proud of myself for spending the money on getting the FirstGear rain gloves. They are comfy and seem too nice to be rain gear. About two hours later I realize why these expensive gloves were available on clearance. They have each gained about 2lbs of water weight and making a fist creates a waterfall over my fingers. The wife is having the same results.

We do lunch in Island Pond, VT. It takes about 5 minutes for us to get our gear off once in the restaurant. Both a little weary from so much rain, but only 3 more hours and we should be in NY. We can do this no matter how tedious it has become.

After lunch we found the wind had picked up...dramatically. We ride, but it's getting very hard to hold the road. Gust are pushing me towards the center line, time and time again. Trees are bending far beyond what would seem normal. There are little pieces of bark appearing in the road next to some of the trees. We keep going, but it's getting scary. Finally it's too much. I punch in nearest lodging into the GPS and we find the Jay Village Inn. Done. 5 minutes later we're there and they have one room left.

The Inn was great. They discounted a room for us, and had a great restaurant. After about 30 minutes my wife had all the gear wiped down and hanging to dry.

That's also about the time the first knock came on the door. We were told the headlights were shining bright on the Spyder. Odd, but thanks. I went down and had to start the machine again to get them to turn off. Very strange. 20 minutes later another knock...same thing. Once again, start the machine and get the lights to go off. Back inside. 20 minutes later my wife goes down to check, yep...they're on. I put on the rain soaked gear, grab my tool bag and take the Spyder apart enough to get to the battery. Pull the wire and head to the bar.

Day 9 - Jay, VT to Lake Saranac, NY
The next morning the sun is shining bright and the wind is mostly calm.

Put the wire back on the battery and the lights don't come on. Spyder starts just fine. But decide to go to the nearest dealer just to have it checked. That takes us near Montreal. After finding someone to interpret English to French for us the Spyder gets a clean bill of health. We were told to stop treating it like a SeaDo, and we chalk up the episode to the extreme conditions of the day before.

Since we are so close we decide to ride to downtown Montreal just to see it.

The Province of Quebec had significant flooding and we found several roads closed during our time there.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 10 - Lake Saranac, NY to Monticello, NY
The primary memory from this day will be the number of trees we saw that had fallen due to Irene. From the debris still remaining on both sides of the road it was clear that many had been large enough to completely block the road. It was also common to see them still hanging on power lines. And it was very important to not pull off the road without a careful scan due to power lines hanging down to just a foot or two off the ground. At times it was really shocking to see how many trees were down within a mile ride. I took some video riding through the area of just tree after tree. Sooner or later I'll go through and put together a video.

Upon leaving the Adirondacks gave us one more great sight.

Also unexpectedly ended up passing through here.

Lunch with Otto

Day 11 - Monticello, NY to Home
I had nearly forgotten that I wanted to ride through the Hawk's Nest while in NY, so the day started with going back to Port Jervis. Looks like a nice ride, but there was construction throughout the entire length of the Hawks Nest, and it was challenging to get the full appreciation of it.

One final quick stop at Hershey Park. That was the site of our first Anniversary, and seemed like an appropriate place to stop at on our 25th Anniversary.

Then home.

Depending on who you believe (GPS/Tenere/Spyder) we did 3,754 / 3,888 / 3913 miles on the trip. I'm going to call it 3,900. It was a great way for us to celebrate 25 years together. We (I) made some mistakes along the way, had more challenges than anticipated, but took it all in stride and ended up with new friends, great memories, and a pretty big accomplishment. Not sure how we're going to top this one, but we'll try.

Summary of places:
Poconos - I'm sure there's something worthwhile there, but we didn't see it.
Catskills - Very nice if you get off the main roads like the many storm created detours forced us to do.
Adirondacks - Love them. Just feels good to be there.
Vermont - Those poor people got hammered by the storm. I've heard it said there are no bad roads in Vermont. I'm clearly doing something wrong because outside of Smuggler's Notch I've been very underwhelmed with Vermont roads. I'm going to assume I'm just doing a bad job of picking roads.
New Hampshire - still one of my favorite states to ride. Love the White Mountains.
Mount Desert Island - Wow. Beautiful place. Spectacular scenery, ranks very close to The Cabot Trail for places that must be seen.
Maine - I need to have more time to explore interesting places. Outside of MDI it was not all that impressive where we rode. But I feel like given the time it would have been better.
Nova Scotia - Really barely scratched the surface of the very large land mass. I don't feel qualified to comment.
Cape Brenton - The Cabot Trail - Spectacular - should be a goal in life to see this place. Ride it from West to East if that is your only direction for the ride. Do both directions if possible. The very last section (or the very first section) of the West side is nice, but nothing to feel bad about if you miss. Overall the road is truly a world class stunning drive.


The S10 was flawless. The only failure was the 5 year old Hyperlight I had removed from my DL1000 and put onto the S10. It died during the hurricane. But the Tenere was perfect.

Cheers!

 

[spklbuk]

Spectacular adventure! Thank you for letting us tag along John.

And here's wishing y'all the happiest of anniversaries, but who is that gray haired ol' man hangin' out with your lovely wife? ;D

 

[mobyfubar]

Very nice, thanks for posting!

We rode from Ohio to Nova Scotia the first part of August. It was beautiful! I really want to go back and see more. We rode the Cabot Trail in one day. I think it would be worth it to take at least two days and stop at more sites. I'd have liked to tour the Alexander Graham Bell museum and Louisborg, and take a tour of the Glenora Distillery, among other things.

For those who go to NS, I highly recommend the Cape D'Or Inn at Advocate Harbour, and dinner at the Cove Motel in Port Hastings. There is a 6km gravel road to the Cape D'Or Inn, and a steep, rocky walk from the parking area to the inn.

 

[tomatocity]

You definitely know how to celebrate. Beautiful country, great photos, excellent report.

 

[Koinz]

Nice Trip - Happy Anniversary. You sure packed in alot of stops. Thanks for sharing.

 

[eemsreno]

Thanks for the report. A part of the country I haven't seen much of.

 

[Buckeye56]

Very nice, thanks for posting!

For those who go to NS, I highly recommend the Cape D'Or Inn at Advocate Harbour, and dinner at the Cove Motel in Port Hastings. There is a 6km gravel road to the Cape D'Or Inn, and a steep, rocky walk from the parking area to the inn.

Hey, that sounds like the trip I took! Oh, wait, we WERE on the same trip! ;-) +1 on Moby's recommendations. The wife and I would love to go again and have more time to see the sights. Too many cool places to go and not enough time....

Regarding Vermont, we travel there frequently as the in-laws live near Burlington, the roads ar not well maintained. On our trip to NS, we found HWY17 to be quite rough and that is generally what I have experienced in the 14 years I have traveled there. We found doing the Carbot Trail counter-clockwise best as it keeps the ocean on your right, YMMV. Crossing Maine on US was a nice ride. It is worth stopping in Skowhengan, ME and eating at the Hertiage House. That was one of the best meals I have had period!

Folks this is seriously a trip you HAVE to add to your bucket list, it is memorable!

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Folks this is seriously a trip you HVAE to add to your bucket list, it is memorable!

Well said. Glad I did one. May even have to think about doing it twice.

 

[Déavéhidé]

Thanks you for sharing your story, your pics and some time of your celebration. Glad your daughter was OK and wish you plenty of good times for your next 25 years with your beloved !

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Nothing is ever over with me until I complete the video. Had to make two. One for the wife and me for 25 years of history. The other for the rest of the world that is just about the trip.

Nova Scotia Ride

Now the trip is done. Great time, good memories.

 

[tomatocity]

Thanks for sharing. Helped jump start a slow morning.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Thanks for sharing. Helped jump start a slow morning.

Happy I could help.