Bicycle Tours

From: Brattleboro, VT
To: Bennington, VT
Mileage: 42



Wilmington by 9:45 am, Bennington by 12:30, piece of cake. . . .yeah right. The temperatures reached 95 degrees today. The Rear Admiral and I were finishing off breakfast at the Royal Diner, which is located at the base of Hogback Mountain, at 7:00am. We knew it was going to be hot as we climbed the Green Mountains of Vermont. We also knew that it was motorcycle weekend in Loudon, NH and Rte 9 would be a major route for people coming back and returning to their homes in New York. Only about 35 vehicles pass us as we climbed up and over Hogback Mountain. It was so quiet at times, we could not believe our luck. On the west side of Marlboro, we got our first flat tire of the trip. It had been such a long time that we had a flat (over 1700 miles). We pulled into the highway department's area, I found a small stream and located the small hole. We were patched and on our way in about 10 minutes, not bad for being rusty.

We continued to climb, and Mary spotted a fawn by the side of the road. I was looking out for moose, but didn't see this shy creature today. Once on Hogback, we tried to absorb the 100-mile view. We felt on top of the world, for now, knowing that Searsburg Mountain was 15 miles to the west. Riding into Wilmington, we stopped at the Shaw's supermarket for some oranges and Gatorade.

As we climbed out of Wilmington, the traffic increased, the temperature rose, and the grade got steeper. On the last part of our ascent up Searsburg, we were (barely) passed by two elderly gentlemen, each riding their own moped/scooter. I think they were maxed out at 10 mph. When we reach the top, they were waiting for us and cheering us on! What an experience.

We stopped in the General Store at the top of the 3-mile downhill, that would lead us into Bennington, for another Gatorade and some more stretching. Then the fun began. We reached 46 mph going downhill. We would have reached higher, but the Rear Admiral put on her brake a couple of times. She has to feel safe, or this trip is no fun and I agree.

We rode through main street in Bennington, past the Hemmings gas station and up the hill leading out of town, then turned and rode back through town. We didn't want Katelyn (who picked us up and brought us home) to experience the Sunday traffic (parking lot) jam.

I have a couple more days of school, then Kate will drop us back in Bennington to continue!

From: Milford, NH
To: Brattleboro, VT
Mileage: 64



Getting up Saturday was easy. Our goal today was to get to Brattleboro from home, with a stop over in Fitzwilliam to visit our friends, Perry and Roberta Nadeau. We have ridden most of today's roads before. We followed Rte 101 until the bottom Temple Mountain, and turned left after Gary's Harvest Restaurant. It is quieter going to this way west in New Hampshire. When we entered Temple center, we were greeted with a road closure sign for West road. Stopping in the Temple Market, we were given great work around directions that eventually led us back to West road and towards Jaffrey. We continued riding through the very hilly Monadnock mountain range. We circled Mount Monadnack (old baldy) as we road toward Fitzwilliam.

We arrived at the Nadeau 'compound' on Laurel Lake just in time for lunch. Roberta made sandwiches, and we had a picnic lunch on their boat in the middle of the lake. THANK YOU NADEAUS! What a great couple of hours. With full bellies, and a pretty nice down hill ride, we were off following Rte 119 towards Hinsdale. The ride was quiet for the most part, but still pretty hilly. In Hinsdale we took a break at the town park. The park had a friendly "welcome and stay" feeling, and we sat and enjoy it. Getting back on SeeMore, we rode to about a mile from Brattleboro when a few drops of rain begin to hit my knees. SeeMore immediately made a hard left turn into Tastefully Done, an Ice Cream and Sandwich Shop on Rte 119. SeeMore enjoyed sitting under the porch, and Mary and I enjoy some GREAT ice cream while the water came pouring down from the heavens.

The rainstorm was heavy but short, and we continued over the Connecticut River into Brattleboro. Our night was spend at the Dalem Chalet Motel (which was also on top of another hill!) and had dinner down the hill, and across the street. A good challenging day to test and see how fit we are. Tomorrow, the Green Mountains!

From: Portsmouth, NH
To: Milford, NH
Mileage: 83



New Hampshire in the spring! Our views were filled with old farm houses, continuous stone walls, forsythia and azalea bushes, flowering cherry trees, white churches, and rolling hills to name a few. We do not take for granite, living in New Hampshire ;-)!

The trip home on Sunday was just as pretty, except for our slight misdirection, which forced us through what is normally a pretty bad section of road. It turned out to be not quite so bad (after all), and the drivers were courteous. We didn't get home until around 5 pm with a total of about 83 miles for the day. We actually averaged a better speed on Sunday but were really delayed because we stopped to visit with a guy who was out working in his yard. We stopped to ask him about his new motor home and the next thing you know he offered us a tour. He and his wife had just retired and purchased this 2006 Lazy Daze class C motor home, 26.5 footer. So naturally we had to check it out. They will be traveling to Cheyenne, Wyoming this summer to the same rally that Noel's parents are planning to attend. It's a small world. One thing about being on a bike, you seem to meet some of the nicest people.








From: Milford, NH
To: Portsmouth, NH
Mileage: 79.5

Cycling tradition has it that if you do a tour across the US you start by dipping your wheel in the ocean on one side and then when you make it to the other side you dip your wheel into the other ocean. Well I'm not sure if we are going to make it to the Pacific ocean or not but we did officially start our tour this weekend by riding from Milford, NH to Portsmouth, NH to stick SeeMore into the Atlantic Ocean. We originally intended to make this trip a little closer to our 25th anniversary on May 23rd but the weather was perfect and we were ready to go.

Portsmouth is about 75 miles from Milford, traveling the back roads. We have maps for NH that indicate the best routes for cyclist to travel. For some reason the Rear Admiral picked all of the best roads and we traveled through some of NH most beautiful places. We did not pass a single bad dog, dump or waste water treatment plant. There wasn't a cloud in the sky on either Saturday or Sunday and we only got slightly lost for about 5 miles. We started at about 8 am on Saturday and we were in Portsmouth at about 3 pm. We stopped for directions to the hotel at a bike shop and ended up chatting with the owner of Papa Wheelie about his bike tour last year in New Zealand.

We were able to get a reservation at the Courtyard Marriott in downtown Portsmouth. It was awesome. We had the pool and Jacuzzi all to ourselves! We went downtown and had dinner at the Gaslight restaurant and sat and watched the tourist on Market and Congress streets. Just before dinner we rode down to the pier and did the official wheel dip. Then took a short walk through Prescott park, a pretty little park right across the street from Strawberry Bank.

The Rear Admiral and I enjoyed our winter break in Georgetown Texas with my folks. We arrived in Austin by airplane on Saturday evening. Sunday we arranged with Mike at http://easystreetrecumbents.com to rent a recumbent tandem for 3 days.
Finding Easy Street Recumbents is not hard, if you know what you are looking for. Mike's shop is inside his house, so my image of a "bike shop" didn't work so well. Mike kindly printed out maps of Austin so we could have an easier time getting out of town. He set us up on a Bike E tandem with carrying bags, mirrors and a kick stand. He even invented a handle bar lock to help the bike stay in place, once we were parked.


THANK YOU MIKE!


Bike E tandems are no longer built. The main differences between SeeMore and Ernie (yes I gave the Bike E a name) is that Ernie has smaller wheels, weighs more, and the Rear Admiral sits father back from me. The first two points, illustrate why it a slower bike than our RANS Screamer. Since our seats were father apart, it harder for the Rear Admiral to hit me, when I make a silly comment. If you are going to be using Ernie for " around town ", then the Bike E would fit nicely in your riding fleet.


After a short test flight; and with Mike's highlighted maps we made our way through Central Austin towards Georgetown. It was Sunday morning, and we traveled under blue skies. In New Hampshire the temperature was a balmy 20 degrees. While in Texas, we had to suffer with it being in the high 70s low 80s for the whole week! There are MANY bike routes through and around Austin, Lance Armstrong's home town. Riding a bike through Austin is fantastic. Driving through Austin in a car (after 4:00 pm) stinks! I would recommend leaving the car behind. Here is our route north from Easy Street Recumbents to Georgetown: 45 1/2 Street, Caswell Ave, 50th Street, Duval Street, 56th Street, Avenue F, Skyview Road, Guadalupe Street, Bentwood Street, Grover Ave, Tisdale Drive, Wooten Drive, Lazy Lane, Beckett, Kromer Street, FairField Drive, Clairwood, Hunters Trace, Colony Creek Drive, Parkfield Drive, Bittern Hollow, Metric Blvd, Ceder Bend Drive, Park Bend Drive, Waters Park Road, Adelphin, and then onto West Parmer Lane.


West Parmer Lane is a four lane road that goes north through Cedar Park. This road is very busy but has a wide shoulder. We saw a number of cyclists on this route. In Leander, Parmer Lane turns into Ronald W Reagan Blvd and then into Williamson Co Rd 268. W Parmer will soon (in a year) replace these roads.


We were forced to ride on route 29 for a short bit, but thanks to Dad, we were able to follow some less traveled roads into north west Georgetown. Lake Georgetown and a number of quarries force you to travel in either a westernly or easternly direction, if you are trying to get to Georgetown from the south. We did not have a odometer today, but we believe we got in a 45 mile ride, YES!


Monday we did a short ride (about 20 miles round trip) to downtown Georgetown. We picked up a bike trail near the Georgetown Lake Dam, following it into town. This trail is a great place to ride or walk. My mom rode by herself, and then wanted to try the tandem, so about halve way to town, we switched stokers. Our goal was breakfast afterwards walked the main streets, before the Rear Admiral and I continued back on our journey back to my parents home.


Tuesday we followed Sunday's directions, backwards back to Easy Street Recumbents in central Austin. For these three days we got in about 110 miles of riding. It was great to see what kind of winter shape we are in!

This May, the Rear Admiral and I will be married for 25 years. We decided to do something big to celebrate our life together. We are planning on loading SeeMore up, and heading west.

On May 20th, we will ride east to Seabrook New Hampshire. There we will touch the Atlantic Ocean, and stay overnight before returning back home. School lets out around June 20th. Then we will continue this adventure.

Our first night will see us ride route 101 then 119 towards rte 9 in Brattleboro Vermont, and our second or third night will hopefully see us on the other side of the Green Mountains, in Bennington Vermont. From there we will follow the Erie Canal system across New York. We have traveled this way before, and are very excited to do it again. We plan to visit Dustin in Rochester, New York and then head into Fort Erie, Ontario across the Peace Bridge.

In Ontario we will be traveling through the towns of Dunnville, Port Boyer, Port Stanley, Wallacetown, and Marine City. Next we will cross into Michigan and travel through the towns of Capac, Silverwood, Bay City, Midland, Coleman, Lake George, and Ludington. At Ludington we will cross Lake Michigan via the ferry to Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, we will be traveling through the towns of Wrightstown, Shiocton, Shawano, Mattoon, Crandon, Eagle River, Conover, Boulder Junction, Mercer, Butternut, Clam Lake, Haugen, Cumberland, and Osceola. We cross the Mighty Mississippi River in St Paul Minnesota, will ride across Minnesota visiting towns named Dalbo, Milaca, Royalton, Long Prairie, Clitherall, Battle Lake, Pelican Rapids and Hawley.

We will cross North Dakota at Fargo, and visit the towns of Erie, Hope, Cooperstown, Binford, Warwick, Minnewaukan, Esmond, Rugby, Granville, Minot, Makoti, New Town and Williston. We will spend a while in Montana, while visiting Big Sky Country, we plan to do a night ride. We will also travel through the towns of Bainville, Colbertson, Poplar, Wolf Point, Frazer, Glasgow, Hindsdale, Saco, Malta, Wagner, Harlem, Chinook, Havre, Kremlin, Inverness, Lothair, Shelby, and Cut Bank.

From Cut Bank, we head north into Alberta Canada, before going across the "Road to the Sun" in Glacier National Park. Continuing our Montana experience, we will travel through the towns named Whitefish, Olney, Eureka, Libby, and Troy. Crossing into Idaho we will travel from Clark Fork to Sandpoint.

Our last state will be Washington. We will be traveling through Newport, Ione, Colville, Kettle Falls, Republic, Wauconda, Tonasket, Okanogan, Twisp, and Mazama. We will explore North Cascades National Park and continue through to Anacortes Washington where we will touch the Pacific Ocean.

That's the plan. We hope to finish by the end of August.

From: Belliveau Cove
To: Yarmouth
Mileage: 45

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Today's four-letter word. . . . wind! Boy oh boy did it blow! We averaged 3 mph less then normal. I once got blown off the road onto the sidewalk outside of Yarmouth.

We began in Belliveau Cove, after getting a lift off of rte 101 (around the traffic). We could have ridden it, but why spoil a great trip. We started at a very large old church in Belliveau Cove. The fog rolled in and out, and the wind blew. We traveled through Acadian country. This is where the Acadians returned to after being deported out of Nova Scotia (to New England). The Acadians are very proud of their heritage. We saw lots of the ocean as we traveled through the small non-busy towns. We had lunch at Misha's CafÈ in Port Maitland. What a great find, we finished off our sandwiches with homemade lemon cheesecake. . oh my!

We are staying at a hotel in downtown Yarmouth (across from the Cat). We walked downtown (window shopping) then on to old town with the beautiful old ship captain's homes. We visited a little part of the Yarmouth County Museum, then had dinner on the waterfront. To celebrated another successful bike trip, we had a round of double margaritas.

Tomorrow we ride the Cat (ferry) back to Bar Harbor.