Category: Places

19th -21st Sept

Go on. Have a snigger and get it out of your system. It IS a funny name, but honestly isn’t the reason that we used this as our base to visit Amish country…yeah, right.

It seems an odd name for a place that is home to a devoutly religious community. It is was originally called Cross Keys, and renamed in 1814. There are 3 main theories why:

1. There was originally a race course at one end of the town, the entrance of which was referred to as ‘enter course’. This might have gradually changed to Intercourse
2. The town is at an intersection, or ‘intercourse’ of several important roads.
3. The term ‘intercourse’ was historically used to describe ‘fellowship’ and ‘social interaction and support’.

Whatever the reason, it’s still amusing.

The deeply religious Amish, and Mennonite, communities that live in this area are fascinating, bizarre and confusing to the modern eye.  Many of them live such simple basic lives, devoid of technology and combustion engines, instantly recognisable by their clothing and headwear. Traditional gender roles are played: a hard physical day’s work in the fields is normal for the men and the women become wives, raise (lots of) children and keep the home. We didn’t see any overweight Amish. The close-knit communities sell foodstuffs like preserves, jams, cheeses and sauces, and homeware like quilts and good quality simple furniture. Light horses pull buggies around the streets (Black for the Mennonites, grey for the Amish) and mules and heavier horses pull carts, ploughs and slashers around the fields. And all this plays out surrounded by bus loads and bus loads of tourists who come to places like Intercourse to gawk at these people quietly going about there lives, minding their own business and to shop at dedicated emporiums of foodstuffs, homewares and tonnes and tonnes of tat. It seems it’s just not a day out without consuming a mega soda, a triple scoop ice-cream cone, a giant pretzel and buying a commemorative T-shirt with the logo “I ‘heart‘ INTERCOURSE”

Coming to a place like this as a tourist leaves me conflicted. I know that in many respects we are the same as the hoards that pour off the coaches, but I  comforted by the fact that we are definitely better dressed and we haven’t lost the use of our legs as a transport option.

The best part of our visit here was breaking out the bikes and spending a day cruising through the back roads between the small towns and villages. Away from the main roads this is a beautiful place to cycle. There are so few cars and trucks, and the ones that are around are very used to giving wide berth to non motorised traffic. It’s just part of life here.  The land is divided into one-family farms each with a large farmhouse, barn and grain silo. The men were cutting corn, dressed in shirt, slacks and their characteristic broad brimmed straw hats. (Seemingly skin cancer in the communities is very low due to this garb.) Women and children were travelling to and from school and chores on large wheeled push scooters. Girls dressed like their mothers in plain long dresses and bonnets and the boys little clones of the men.

Seeing people stubbornly carving out their existences free from modernity seems both bonkers and entirely sensible at the same time. I understand the low tech wholesome living, but struggle with the woman’s status and role in the society. Also, those dresses and bonnets are a bit too’handmaid’ for my liking.

Our bicycle journey had a destination 10 km away from camp: Lost World Mini Golf. A classic of the genre with pirate ships, waterfalls and caves. This was our second match of the trip. I omitted to write about my victory over Hampson in Nashua, NH. A victory with dignity and good sportsmanship. This day saw Hampson score two holes-in-one (Impressive), and beat me fair and square. He was insufferable. The scores are now levelled.

The 10km cycle home gave us time to reflect on the significant period of time that had elapsed since our regular bike riding of last year. This was manifest in sore ‘seat bones’. Very sore.

We don’t have any photos of any Amish people. It’s rude to take them. You can find some on-line if you are interested.

I did take a photo of this hot air balloon that passed by the campsite. It seemed to be slowly falling from the sky. I assume less trust was being put in the science of hot air being lighter than cold air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14th – 18th Sept

Just before midday on the 14th we rocked up at the mechanics shop to collect BD and TC. All was finished and fixed and they looked raring to go.  Big D had had a full service and the unplanned new steering gearbox. He needs 2 new front tires too, but we need to get that done at a truck tyre place. The full rig is 7 tonnes and too big to fit onto a normal car hoist and re-alignment facility. It can wait. TC had all his seams checked, the generator serviced and one of his slightly wonky legs straightened. We paid the bill and we were off. First stop: Manchester Airport, about 10 km away, to drop off the hire car. After that, we were really off.

Our first stop was a camp in Brattleboro, VT. A short 60 mile hop with a stop on the way for food, beer and a few bits and pieces. There always seems to be ‘bits and pieces’ to buy. There won’t be room for us inside the camper one day. We arrived mid afternoon and like a well oiled machine, we ‘Set Up’. It was scorchio hot. Despite the sweatiness, it was great to get back into the camper, unpack and get settled in again. It definitely felt like coming home.  We spent a very pleasant evening sitting out, cooking pork on the campfire and drinking the aforementioned beer. Bliss.

Our next stop was for 2 nights at a riverside park in Bainbridge, NY.  It was still very hot, but nice to have some water to gaze at. Florence is now tracking north and will be with us in 2 days There is no avoiding her. Luckily she is no longer windy, just very wet. It was hard to imagine that the weather was going to turn to custard as we baked in the 30+ degree heat and sunshine. Our next camp will be chosen to as to be within coo-ee of civilisation and on higher ground away from rivers and creeks. We enjoyed our last full day of nice weather by pottering about and getting a bit more sorted.  Rather preposterously given the heat we unpacked our winter and ski gear parcel that we had sent from ourselves in NZ to Greg and Gigi’s. We will need this later on in this trip. Behold the power of vacuum packing!

The camp had rental canoes and kayaks and we broke our ‘3rd rule of a happy marriage’ and in the afternoon took a 2-man Canadian canoe out for a hour. This comprised of a 45 min slog up river, including a five minute period through some deceptive mini-rapids where we definitely remembered why rule 3 exists, followed by a very pleasant 15 minute whizz home.

2 more evenings, 2 more campfires. Life is good.

Note:

The Hampson’s 3 rules for a happy marriage:

1. Do your own ironing. (Rule 1 is null and void when one party is working full time and the other is not) 
2. Shut the door for number twos. (No exceptions) 
3. Where possible, never share a double kayak or canoe. 

This seems to be working for us currently.

Our next 2 nights were in Whitehaven, PA.  A nowheresville selected as a good spot to sit-out the rain that was a’coming. We had plenty of food, beer, DVDs, and the site was close to the office and bathroom/laundry block. We arrived in the light rain, and were sorted just before the deluge started.  We shut the door and hunkered down. In the end it was all-over-rover in 12 hours. Noisy with the rain on the roof, but happily undramatic. The next day and second night were dry and we headed off on the 18th to our first real destination stop: Amish country.

 

What we have been up to. 

Hello again everyone. Nice to see you.

We are back in the USA for Tin Can Travels No. 2, and raring to go.

It has been 11 months since we packed up Big Dave and Tin Can into Vault Storage, Merrimack and headed back to NZ via the UK and Hong Kong.  We arrived back into NZ and reclaimed our beautiful home from the cleanest tenant in the world. (You know who you are 🙂

It was great to catch up with  our friends. I did some work but not enough to break out into a sweat and I entered a marathon which forced me to get off my behind and do some training. The biggest happening of the summer, however, was that we sold our house.

We hadn’t planned to do this, but one thing led to another and after a whole 2 days on the market it sold fully furnished. Now we were voluntarily homeless. The generosity of friends kept a roof over our heads and we sold/donated/chucked about 2/3 of our possessions. Mid-life crisis? Maybe.

This is our storage unit containing our worldly possessions. (Minus car and boat)

I ran the Rotorua marathon in 5 hours and 13 minutes.

Our vague itinerary for our second USA trip had us arriving back in Boston in September to head to the deep south via the west side of the Appalachian mountains, then across the Southern states to the Southwest parks.  We didn’t want to do this trip in summer and tornado/hurricane season.  France was calling us back, and the thought of skipping another NZ winter was very attractive. We booked an apartment in Sète, a fishing port on the Med, and spent a very hot summer living a simple life of eating, drinking, walking, sitting, watching and french lessons. It was blissful. The last 2 weeks of August we met up with our UK families in a big holiday home near Bergerac and had a noisy fortnight of eating, drinking and fun. 24 of us at full occupancy. Madness! We had 2 nights in Paris after our goodbyes then flew to Boston.

Close by, in a storage facility, sits a camper called Tin Can, sat atop a truck called Big Dave. Our home.

 

3rd – 5th Oct: Days 178 – 180

It was a surreal morning that began with the short 3 mile drive from the Holiday Inn to Vault Storage which was to be Big Dave and the Tin Can’s bedroom for the best part of the next year.  Storage options in this part of the world are limited, and the winters are very harsh so we had bitten the bullet and decided to book a (moderately expensive) space in this very good quality storage facility which is heated and provides trickle charging.  After doing the paperwork, paying for the whole year up front, giving them a quick jet wash and disconnecting the camper battery we backed into the far corner of one of the enormous sheds, put the legs down, grabbed our bags and walked away.  Definitely a bit sad.

The shed is currently almost empty but over the next few weeks it will fill up with ‘summer cars’, boats and RVs and we will be completely boxed in.

Next challenge. How to get into Boston, about 60 miles away?  With the miracle of modern technology, a few taps on the phone summoned a very nice Uber driver called Rick who turned up 4 minutes later and took us to Boston in one hour for $75. Well that was easy.  We had 2 nights booked at a small waterfront hotel at the end of a wharf, right in the heart of the city It was close to the action, away from the hustle, had great views and enormous rooms. The bathroom was bigger than TC’s living space.

We had a lovely couple of days mooching around town. Boston has a 2.5 mile walking route called the Freedom Trail which takes in a lot of the historic sites associated with the American Revolution. We did this in two halves on the 2 days, not moving very fast obviously.  The first evening we had a tapas style dinner sat up at the bar of a very cool place in the centre of town and the second evening we had a posh Italian meal in the buzzing ‘Little Italy’ district which was a hop and a skip from our hotel.

The sun shone the whole time we were in Boston and I think that we saw it at its finest. It is a great little city and was a great spot to end our trip.  It was with slightly heavy hearts that we did our final pack up and headed to the airport.  The small consolation was that we had perhaps our greatest ever journey to a city airport. The hotel had its own dock and we were collected directly from it by water taxi and taken the 10 minutes across the river to Logan Airport.  So civilised.

The process of leaving the country was without drama and we headed to the UK to spend a month with our families before returning to NZ.

For the few of you that are regular followers of these warblings I will do one final post over the next week or so keep an eye out!

 

 

 

 

25th Sept – 2nd Oct: Days 170 – 177

It was sad to think that this was our final week living on the road and that we were approaching the end of this epic and amazing road trip.  After our fun weekend with Greg and Gigi we had 7 days before Big Dave and Tin Can were due to be tucked up into a storage unit in Merrimack, New Hampshire.

By the time we got up on Monday morning Greg and Sam had already left the house and half an hour later Gigi had hustled the younger two and herself out of the door too.  We had a couple of hours to ourselves to tidy up, do some laundry, search online for somewhere to stay that night, pack up the rig, put the dog away and go. It was still unseasonably hot.

Nick was really keen to see if he could visit his old school, Wilbraham and Monson Academy in Mid-Massachusetts, so we found a camp within striking distance of that.  This was in the village of Wales and had a swimming pool but not much else going on. In this heat we didn’t need much else.  We arrived to a beautiful wooded camp which had lots of long term RVs in situ, a bazillion squirrels but almost a complete absence of human beings. Tragically, despite the 90 deg F temp the pool had been shut down for the winter. No, no, no!  The heat was sapping and we ground to a halt for two days. We couldn’t even be bothered to cycle the one and a half miles to the pub for dinner. Yup. That hot. Complete idleness is a skill that requires plenty of practice. It has taken me a while to come even close to my husband’s level of expertise but I think I can sit still for several hours at a time now.

Nick called his old school and arranged a meeting with the ‘Director of Alumni Relations’ for late morning on the day of leaving the Woods of Idleness. It is some indicator of how highly American institutions, such as expensive private schools, value their past students that they have a person whose entire job it is to liase with, meet, greet, and schmooze its alumni. Good for us. I have heard so many of Nick’s anecdotes from this place that it was great to finally see it in the bricks and mortar. The school completely dominates the small Massachsetts village of Wilbraham and is beautiful. Red brick and white weatherboard buildings, perfectly mown lawns and trees just starting to turn to their fall colours. We met the Alumni director, the Headmaster and had an hour’s guided tour from 2 students.  Nick was in sensory and emotional overload. Interestingly he remembered his clandestine smoking spots but not the library; was hazy about the classroom areas but had good memories of the canteen and the swimming pool. His eyes didn’t go misty until we went up to the dorm area and he found his old room. That area was completely unchanged. The current incumbent was in residence and we said a brief hello. After our tour we had lunch in the canteen with the alumni director and a couple of other staff, surrounded by the melee of the students. The food selection was a bit more diverse than in our past school days. No ‘slop’ for the modern private school kid.  Our visit was more than 2 hours and we had been made to feel so welcome. We said our goodbyes with promises to return again next year, although that probably was just the nostalgia talking.

We headed north from here and had 3 nights at a park just outside a village called Bernardston, still in Massachusetts.  The heat continued.  One day we off-loaded and took Big Dave for an oil change and then took the opportunity to visit some of the lovely picture-book New England towns in the area. Bernardston had a couple of eateries which were close enough to cycle to for dinner. It may be hard to believe but it was not until now that I ate my first pizza of the trip.

It was excellent but so big that we didn’t finish it all and had to get a carry-out box (aka doggy bag) for the left overs. Cycling in the dark whilst carrying a pizza box was a skill that I didn’t realise that I had.

That evening the Indian summer left us and a cold snap arrived. With rain. It went from 92F (33C) to 49F (8C) within a few days. We packed up in the cold and wet and set off.  Our last 2 nights two nights in Tin Can were about 60 miles away in a small campsite in Brookline, New Hampshire. It  was chosen purely for being within coo-ee of the storage facility. The weather was so miserable that we opted to stop off at a movie theatre (to see Kingsman) en route hoping that the rain would ease off later in the day. It did, and happily the next 2 days were dry, mild and sunny. Perfect for ‘the big sort out’.

The 46 hours we had here were a bit of a blur.  We cleaned out the lockers, cleaned the bikes, cleaned the bathroom, kitchen, living room and bedroom (aka ‘inside’), did multiple loads of laundry, ate up some food, threw out the rest. I cleaned the roof, Nick cleaned out the truck.

We liberated our travel bags and tackled the packing conundrum.  What to take? What to leave? How to fit 3 bags worth of stuff that we brought with us into 2 bags to go home? For the last tasks we drained and flushed the holding tanks and drained the plumbing, bought bikes came inside to be stored on the beds and I mopped us out.  We finally left the campsite an hour later than check-out time with apologies to the management, our packed bags on the back seat and having had our last night’s sleep in the Tin Can. Washing the outside of TC and BD was the last thing we needed to do before we went to the storage place the next morning so we set off to find a large bay self service carwash…

After several disappointing hours of driving around visiting a myriad of car washing facilities and multiple kerbside google searches it became apparent that this part of New Hampshire has no large bay carwashes.

A phone call to the storage facility revealed that they do have a hot water pressure washer. Excellent, we could do it there. Now we could head to our next port of call, a room in a local Holiday Inn. We checked in and the rest of the day involved some well earned loafing, a bath and a meal in the pub down the road before a good night’s sleep.

 

 

 

19th – 21st Sept: Days 164 – 166

In the end hurricane José was not as bad as all that, and our premature departure from Newport was, in retrospect, not really necessary. But you know what they say: better a storm in a teacup than trying to make tea as the side of your RV is ripped off by 100 mile an hour winds. We located our next home, a small RV park on a river in Portland, Connecticut which was part of a sizeable marina. The facilities were questionable but the sites were nice, flat concrete pads and it was quiet and wooded. It was the time of year when people start pulling their boats out of the water for winter using a huge motorised cradle.  It gets so cold here that anything left in the water gets crushed by the ice. Even the floating docks get pulled out.

On the surface this might seem like a random place to stop. But, oh no. Nothing random about our visit to this town.  One of our favourite TV shows is a car show called ‘Chasing Classic Cars’ and it is hosted by an affable chap with an excellent moustache called Wayne Carini.  He locates, buys, restores and sells classic cars for himself, but also acts as a broker for very wealthy clients, going to top end auctions and doing valuations for estates etc. Great show. His base for his business and for the TV show is a shop and yard called F40 Motorsport in, you guessed it, Portland CT. It is on the main road into town only about half a mile from our camp.

We had a foray on the bikes across the river to the neighbouring town of Middletown where we found a great authentic diner for lunch and then took ourselves up to F40 Motorsports, chasing Wayne Carini.

The TV show is exported to 30 different countries so I imagine that fans and car nuts from all over the world do exactly the same as we were doing: just call in to see if they can look around the showroom and perhaps bump into the man himself.  However, I can be fairly confident that almost none of them do it by bicycle.

We arrived and wandered into the small showroom which was manned by a chap called Mike. He was politely welcoming, encouraged us to look around and commiserated with us that we had JUST missed the boss who had gone for the day. As we signed the visitors book he dutifully gave us an A4 flyer with a promotional photo of Wayne.

There was a small but perfectly formed display of mint condition cars in the showroom including a 1934 Bentley, a Ferrari California, a Dino, two classic Porsches and a very sexy Mercedes 300SL Gullwing. It was cool to be there, but we were a teeny bit disappointed to have missed the man himself.

Our disappointment was soon to be a distant emotion though. A combination of us being marvellously interesting and beautiful people and having arrived by bicycle meant we got chatting in a bit more depth to Mike.  I imagine that he must have been having a quiet afternoon as he uttered the words ‘I don’t usually do this for visitors, but do you want a look at the cars in the sheds and workshop?’ Yes please. Yes. And he let me sit in the Mercedes in the showroom.

$1.6 million of me looking very cool.  An hour later we emerged from the backroom tour thinking that that had been a very worthy consolation for not meeting Wayne Carini himself.  The highlight was seeing a very rare Ferrari Daytona Spyder that had featured prominently on one of the show’s episodes. So, we were happy campers. Quite literally.

Otherwise our 2 day stay here was very lazy. It was warm and disgustingly humid so we sat in watching TV. The only channel we could get was the ‘Dick Wolf’ channel, so we watched back to back Law and Order and Criminal Intent for HOURS!

17th – 19th Sept: Days 162-164

Rhode Island was a short trip to the west of Cape Cod and we arrived at our campsite, about 2 miles from the swanky coastal town of Newport, at lunchtime on Sunday. It was the last afternoon of the Newport Boat Show weekend so we parked up, had a quick sandwich, leapt on the bikes and headed for the waterfront.

The next 3 hours was a delightful theatrical production of pretending we were in the market for a 38ft motor yacht. So many shiny beautiful toys. So much speaking of half truths. So many business cards collected to be thrown away at a later date.  Entirely worth the $20 entry fee. We mentally spent about $500K over and over again which was a very pleasant way to spend a sunny afternoon. There were some utterly bonkers boats there.  For example: the 53′ centre console sport fishing boat with four 627hp 6.2L V8 engines, each worth $100,000 fitted. Those folks obviously need to get fishing fast and very fancy.

The next day we cycled along Bellevue Avenue, the road along which the fabulously wealthy industrialists of the late 19thC, like Cornelius Vanderbilt, built their summer ‘cottages’. (Paff. Ostentatious mansions). Several are now museums and you can pay to go and marvel at the complete and overwhelming excess of the ‘Gilded Age’.

Loads of the houses on the street are still privately owned, demonstrating that there is still a lot of money in this neck of the woods. Also on Bellevue Avenue was a small private car museum called Audrain with a few choice specimens. Cool to see a Bugatti Veron in the flesh, but the star of the show was this quite gorgeous Ferrari Europa. A cool 6 million bucks worth.

Back in town, most of the boat show vessels had been taken away and the harbour looked pretty empty and forlorn. We did find his little collection of ships berthed at a private apartment complex. Probably not used much as they were all blocking each other in.

We managed to fritter away enough time to get to an acceptable drink o’clock and found an open air waterfront bar for a G&T and a natter with a young Texan couple. They were in town as they had tickets to take some pieces to The Antiques Roadshow USA the next day, which was a trifle obscure. We got a few top-tips for our visit to Texas next year and then set off to find a restaurant for dinner. After a few false starts we ended up at a BBQ joint and indulged some delicious ribs and various other very tasty parts of previous animals. No chance of a conversion to vegetarianism in the Hampson household, I am afraid. We cruised home in the dark, thanking Newport for their nice wide cycle lanes.

We were meant to be here 3 nights, but Hurricane José was forecast to be coming this way, and coastal Rhode Island potentially could get quite a pummelling with high winds. We hemmed and hawed, but decided to play it safe and headed off a day early to our next stop in Conneticut.  A lost night’s accommodation seemed a small price to pay for peace of mind.  The rain had started by the time it came to pack up. We got wet, changed in the car and headed off.

 

11th – 17th Sept: Days 156 – 162

To get to our next destination, Cape Cod, we had to navigate our way south to the other side of Boston. This was a bit of a white knuckle experience as we were relying on Google maps and that lady in the phone has NO idea of the most sensible route. Only the shortest or fastest. Anyway. The road surfaces were awful, the lanes were narrow, it was busy and we ended up going pretty much through the centre of Boston at high speed surrounded by crazy city drivers. There were some tense words spoken. Hunger didn’t help. I blame the lady in the phone.

So. Cape Cod. Heard of it but never quite sure where, or what, it was.

I now know that it is an easterly jutting peninsula off the lower coast of Massachusetts with an upturned hook at its eastern end and a knob pointing south on its lower westerly aspect. The islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are off the southern coast. It seems to me that it is quite likely a normal place for 9 months of the year, with an influx of summery holiday money madness for 3 months. Our roost for the next 6 nights was to be the interestingly named Sippewisset Campground, just outside the town of Falmouth. This is about halfway down that southwesterly knob. The campground was right on the most perfect of cycle trails. 11 miles of straight, flat, smooth black-topped rail trail. This led up to a great beach, 2.5 miles one way and down to Falmouth and Woods Hole, 2.5 and 5.5 miles respectively, the other way. We stocked up on provisions before we arrived and installed ourselves at our sweet little elevated site in the woods. An afternoon of not much rolled seamlessly into a nice evening around the campfire.  That night the downside of camping under a large oak tree in autumn became noisily apparent at regular heart stopping intervals. Acorns+gravity=disturbed sleep.

Over the course of our 5 full days here we cycled about 55 miles up and down the cycle path.

Day 1: We went to Falmouth, booked haircuts, walked around in the heat, looked at some nice homes, went down to the marina, saw racks and racks of boats out on dry stacks, had a coffee, went to the library and printed out our remote voting papers for the NZ general election, came home, packed our towels and togs and cycled up to the beach. It was small but perfectly formed sheltered beach. We caught some rays, read our books, Nick had his first Atlantic swim, and a few hours later we came home for a campfire dinner.

Day 2: Cycled down to Woods Hole, home of the Woods Hole Oceangraphic Institute. It has been a lifelong ambition of Nick’s to visit this place after he read about it in a National Geographic magazine when he was a kid. There was a small aquarium, a museum and an exhibition centre for the tourists, but I am sure the actual institute is where all the impressive stuff happens. We were a bit underwhelmed but it was still a lovely place and we had a good day. Woods Hole is where the ferry for Martha’s Vineyard departs from, so we bought some tickets for the next day before heading back to Falmouth where we stopped in for an early dinner.

Day 3: Back on the bikes, we whizzed back down to Woods Hole to catch the 9.30 ferry to Martha’s. We opted not to take the bikes over as it is actually quite a big place, with an excellent and cheap network of bus routes around the island. We left Woods Hole in the fog but 45 minutes later we disembarked in the sunshine at the town of Oak Bluffs.  Here there is a collection of ‘gingerbread cottages’, a collection of small ornate brightly painted wooden house all built in the late 1860s and 1870s. They are all very well preserved but form a bizarre little community with tourists like us snooping around. We forgot to take any photos, so more stock footage.

We wandered around and then hit the buses. Nick selected our spot for lunch, a fish market at the other end of the island. 1 hour and 3 buses later we arrived at Menemsha Harbor. This apparently was used as the location for the harbour scenes in the movie Jaws. It certainly looked familiar. We found the fish place and shared a crab cake, a bowl of lobster bisque and a lobster roll for lunch. We ate it perched on a small bench at the wharf in a foggy breezy atmospheric gloom. The wind blew some bisque off my spoon onto my clean trousers. I’m sure Roy Scheider didn’t have to put up with this sort of trial and tribulation whilst portraying Police Chief Brody. We explored the harbour and caught the 3 buses back to the ferry port.  This was a great way to see the island. Away from the 4 main towns it is really quite rural. The permanent population is about 16000 but this swells to 100,000 in the summer. We were glad to see it a bit quieter, but again, were underwhelmed.  Not sure what all the fuss is about really. This is not on our list of places to come back to. The trip home was sunny until just before we got back to Woods Hole, where we hit the fog bank again. Our plan to sit outside a bar and have a late afternoon beer suddenly didn’t seem so attractive, so we went home and lit the fire instead.

Day 4: We were back in Falmouth for 10am haircuts and afterwards did a few chores. We found an amazing french bakery, bought a big baguette and cycled home to make a ham and cheese sandwich. Felt like we had been transported back to La Belle France for a moment. The afternoon was a riot of laundry and laziness.  At 6pm we pocketed a few beers and scooted back to the beach to watch sunset.

A bit of a treat to be able to catch a sunset on the east coast. After dinner we finally finished the last series of Breaking Bad. We are bereft. Walter and Jesse have been fairly constant companions on this trip. We will miss them.

Day 5: Another lovely warm sunny day, so after brunch we hit the beach again. These days will be few and far between from now on, so all bikini time is time well spent. The sea was amazingly warm, calm and clear. Very eerie to have no waves at all. That evening we headed back to town for dinner and sat out at a lovely Italian restaurant. I had the most spectacular shrimp pasta. Our ride home was the first trip up the cycle trail in the complete darkness. We had lights, but a few rabbits had close shaves. Idiots.

So that, in a nutshell, was our Cape Cod sojourn. Falmouth and surrounds was a jolly nice place, entirely enhanced by an amazingly utilitarian cycle trail.  Next stop, The USA’s smallest state, Rhode Island.

 

 

 

 

4th – 9th Sept: Days 149 – 154

So Rick’s planned short 7 day visit was now curtailed to whistle-stop 5 days and was to start with an 8 hour, 350 mile drive from Burlington to the Maine coast. A 3-state day for us, but actually a 4-state day for Rick who woke up in New Jersey.  We drove across Vermont, a small sliver of New Hampshire and into Maine. We had 2 stops for fuel, 2 stops for coffee  but at lunchtime found ourselves in that rare place in America: the doldrums of fast food.  We managed to find a supermarket with an amazing self-service fresh salad/deli bar, each assembled a container of deliciousness (the boys’ containers somewhat lacking in green), then drove on to find a nice spot to pull over and eat it. We were starving, but unfortunately there were no cute little riverside picnic areas. Or even any lay-bys. Or any pull-out spots of any kind. We drove on for 40 minutes, the food warming up on Rick’s lap, all getting a bit testy. FINALLY we found a bit of dirt big enough to park on and inhaled our lunch without even getting out of Big Dave. Spirits and blood sugars boosted, we continued to head East.

We eventually rolled over the bridge onto Mount Desert Island at about 5.30pm. This was our first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean, and so the completion of our transcontinental journey, a bit of an emotional moment. Mount Desert (pronounced ‘dessert’) Island is home to Acadia National Park and the reasonably well known town of Bar Harbor. The island is shaped a bit like a pair of testicles, although this was not promoted by the local tourism office. Acadia occupies most of the body of the right testicle (as you look at the map), Bar Harbor is in the upper right testicle, and we were staying on the tip of the lower left testicle in a small village called Bass Harbor. Bass Harbour is a very small working fishing village with only a couple of restaurants and a shop/petrol station. Our campground was equi-distant from the village one way and a light house in the other direction, so after we set camp we grabbed a beer each and walked the 0.6 miles up to the light house point to watch the sunset. We weren’t the only ones to have this ideas, as you might imagine.

We had a campfire that evening, and the boys did the predicted brotherly catch-up over ‘a few beers’.

The first night sharing our space was quite tolerable. The dinette became Rick’s bed, and no-one snored too badly.

The next day we off-loaded TC from BD, and took the bikes over to Acadia.  We had bought Rick a cheap bike from Walmart, as this was going to be much more convenient and not much more expensive than renting a bike each time he needed one. We had also bought him some accessories.

Acadia has a great network of bike trails, based on the original old carriage trails, and we cycled about 12 miles through the woods and around some lakes.

We found a lakeside perch to eat our packed lunch and despite the clouds-a-gathering, the rain stayed away. On the way home we stopped in at Bar Harbor. This is a pretty spot, but the town has been taken over by tourist ‘tat’ shops. So we bailed and drove up to the top of the tallest point on the island, Mount Cadillac. Unfortunately the peak was in the clouds so not much of a view, but apparently this spot is the first in the USA to see the sunrise. There was no risk of us experiencing this. After getting back to Tin Can we had a wash and brush-up and risked the rain by cycling to the village and had a seafood dinner at a charming restaurant on the front.

We managed a few drinks outside before it got too cool and then ate far too much inside.  The rain stayed away and we groaned all the way home with full stomachs.

The next day we headed back to Acadia with walking shoes on and a few planned hikes. The first destination was a blow-hole called ‘Thunder Hole’. It was a picturesque 2 mile coastal walk from the carpark to get there but it was singularly unimpressive as there was no swell and we got there a bit too close to high tide. We grabbed a sandwich lunch and then embarked on a second walk in the afternoon. Unfortunately the forecast rain eventually arrived and we were soaking after 5 minutes.

The committee voted to turn around and go and find the car museum instead. Good decision, and the car museum (located mid left testicle) was fantastic with an amazing collection.

That evening the committee decided to go back to the same local restaurant, (and to eat a bit less). We went by foot rather than by bike as the rain continued and umbrellas are a bit more effective at low speed.

The next day we moved down the coast to our next stop, New Harbor, about 150 miles away. Lunch was a highlight of the day: a lobster roll at a waterfront lobster shack.

A local delicacy of basically the meat of half a lobster, mixed with mayonnaise, served in a buttery toasted roll. Expensive, but worth every cent.  It was delicious. Our campsite was a wooded site aptly, but slightly oddly, named Sherwood Forest. We hastily set up then took advantage of the beautiful late afternoon sunshine by cycling the 3 miles down to the Permaquid lighthouse.

This lighthouse features on the Maine quarter, the design winning a vote by the Maine residents.

Back at camp we set in for another evening of campfires and booze, introducing Rick to the fine game of  Weasel Bag. He was a natural.

We had an early start in the morning as we had booked a boat over to Monhegan Island from New Harbor.

We had to be at the wharf by 8.15am, which was a 15 min cycle away. It was a lovely sunny day, but breezy with a good running swell. Luckily I had some seasickness tablets because the next hour was ‘challenging’ and my eyes did not leave the horizon for the whole trip. Even Nick was a bit green by the time we arrived on the island.  Monhegan Island is about 12 by 1.5 miles and has about 40 full time residents.

It is criss-crossed by hiking trails with a rugged coastal loop trail around its perimeter. We had 5 hours on the island before the return boat. We started with coffee and then did a 2.5 hour hike around the lower perimeter loop.

The coast was amazing and rugged and stunningly beautiful. As we returned to the village there was a small ‘oasis-in-the-desert’ moment as we stubbled across the Monhegan Brewing Company. The boys had a couple of pints of the beer and I had some of the finest ginger beer I have ever had.

Lunch was more delicious seafood offerings from a small shack on the beach (Lobster BLTs: or LBLT, and haddock chowder) and after another coffee and a mooch around a couple of small galleries and shops we were back on the boat. The trip home was much calmer and we had another lovely evening by the campfire.  Dinner was breakfast sandwiches. Crazy.

Sadly Rick had to leave us the next day. We packed up and headed towards Portland airport. We deposited him at departures, and reassured the parking official that we wouldn’t be cluttering up the drop-off lane too long. He looked worried enough to make me think that he was half expecting us to start the generator and put the awning out. We didn’t need a big emotional goodbye as we will be in the UK next month and be cluttering up his spare room for at least a week.

We headed down to our stop for the next two nights, York Beach, on the southern Maine coast. Our hostess was a very chatty affable chainsmoker called Diane who had a tiny dog which looked more like an animated fluffy slipper. Both were lovely. The town was a cute little seaside affair with a cool beach, lots of eateries, ice-cream shops, a small arcade (We converted $25 of cash into 30 minutes of fun and 2 very plastic LED yo-yos) and, you guessed it, another light house.  We cycled around, admired some large summer homes, visited the next little village (with lots of other sunday afternoon day-trippers) and did a small coastal walk (none of the advertised seals, lots of people looking for seals) and generally blithered about.

Tomorrow off to Massachusetts.