heading out to maine today

dean owens

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in a few hours my father-in-law and brother-in-law will be here with their bikes. we're taking the week and starting here in north carolina and trying to make it up to maine and then head back. my f-i-l has done most of the planning so i'm sort of along for the ride. i'm looking forward to it... except that it looks like i'll get plenty of use out of my new rain suit. i'll try to take pictures and give a trip report when i get back. wish me luck. :D
 

LERecords

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good luck and safe travels man... maine is beautiful (well all of new england).. nights are still a bit cold, but they are not to bad.. if your comming though CT and need something (or have an emergency) i can pm you my cell if you'd like.. dunno if you have family or friends up this way.. post pics and have fun :thumbup:
 

chaskell27

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Ya the forecast isn't looking too great for this weekend up here. If you find yourself in the bangor area and are looking for a place to dry off gimme a shout. If you're interested pm me and I'll give you my cell. What are your ride plans?
 

dean owens

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Hey guys. Thanks for the offers you made. I actually saw it while on the road and wrote a reply. I was going to tell you where we were actually heading (and some other great info) and then the hotel i-net kicked me off. Then I lost my post. Since I only had my phone I didn't feel much like re-typing my post.

As you guys know the weather wasn't great. It was really bad at the beginning of the trip. Here's what we were supposed to do.

Friday - Pittsboro, NC to Winchester, VA
Saturday - Winchester, VA to Binghamton, NY
Sunday - Binghamton, NY to Burlington, VT
Monday - Burlington, VT to Augusta, ME
Tuesday through Thursday - make our way back to NC.

But what did we do? Well day one we went on the skyland drive in VA. The fog was awful... couldn't see but about 20 ft in front of me. This is not good on a mountain road that you don't know :eek: And not only was it foggy outside, but my "no fog" visor fogged up. This meant I had to open it up and let my glasses get all wet from the mist and hard to see through. This put us a little behind. We made it to Waynesboro, VA.

Saturday we hit more fog in the mountains in PA. So we hit the interstate hoping it'd be better... it wasn't. Only difference was now we were going 60-70 mph in a straight-ish line. We took a stop off at Gettysburg, PA for a bit. That was pretty nice. Wish we had more time there. By the end of the day we were about an hour shy of Binghamton, NY.

Sunday was HORRIBLE. It was cold and raining. We called it a day about two hours short (at 3:30 pm) of burlington, vt. in Glens Falls, NY. My brother-in-law was so wet and cold that he could just squeeze his fist and water would pure out of his gloves.

Monday started out bad. Bad enough that we almost just turned back south. But about 30 minutes down the road it stopped raining. It was cloudy, but livable. But we lost enough time that rather than going through the northern parts of VT and NH we went south over to Portsmouth, NH.

This was a good day. VT is an AMAZING state. If it wasn't for the winters I'd be very tempted to move there. For lunch we stopped at a little corner-store in Hillsboro, NH for lunch. Great people and great burgers. Once we got to Portsmouth, NH we went into the southern most part of ME. We went and got some lobster for dinner. Because of the rain we didn't get many pics, but i did snap this one.
6BE7E3EC-orig.jpg


from then on it was heading down i-95 to make it home. this lead to riding through NY City on i-95. that was fun. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. The final leg of the trip put us going down the Delmarva peninsula so I could drop in and see my mom for a bit in Chesapeake, VA. Pretty cool going over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel on the bike. Even cooler that my dad happened to be in town and I got to see them both. My parents are split and he lives out of state - totally wasn't expecting that.

Anyway, there were some pictures taken. When I get a hold of them I might add to this post. In general, it was a great trip. I'd like to do it again in the future. New England is a great part of the country. I'm not envious of your winters, but I am envious of your roads and scenery.
 

ELIZABETH

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Sorry to hear your trip was crappy, weather-wise. I hope the company and experience made it worthwhile.
 

dean owens

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Sorry to hear your trip was crappy, weather-wise. I hope the company and experience made it worthwhile.

even with the bad weather it was a great trip. if i knew the weather was going to be like that, i'd go again. i'd just work harder at the start of the trip to go further so we could see more of maine. that was really the only bad part of the trip to me. i didn't get to see much of main at all. i hear it's a great state, but i only saw a small strip of highway 1. what i saw was nice... just would have liked to see more.
 

LERecords

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sounds like it was still fun.. i spent 7 years in vt and loved every second of it.. i would go back if not for lack of employment up there.. maine is also very very pretty.. especially that route 1 drive.. you'll have to make it back up some time :thumbup:
 
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