H14 and Campcook wandering aimlessly 2-up

just gettin this into my control panel

Thanks Jack.


We wake up Monday morning to a pretty brisk 42 degrees. We woke to bright sunshine, my first thought was oh man I can't believe we slept in. We had a lot of riding planned and wanted to get an early start. I rolled over and checked the clock thinking it was probably 7 or 8 o'clock, it was 5:15.
This would be a typical morning for us, most mornings we would pack, eat breakfast and be riding by 7:30.

Out west they have mountain passes, in our part of the country we call them gaps, here they are known as notches and today we're riding as many as we can. First up was Smuggler's Notch, not Snuggler's Notch like SOMEBODY thought . By the end of the day we had ridden Smuggler's Notch, Franconia Notch, Crawford Notch, and Evans Notch.



We rode RT 100, the Kancamangus Highway, and Hurricane Mountain Rd. The Kancamangus was beautiful, there were places along the way that reminded me so much of riding out west. Hurricane Mtn Rd was a freaking roller coaster, I liked it but I don't think the Strom's suspension did though.

We took a quick break at Beaver Brook along the Kanc.





Next up was Mt Washington. I wasn't sure if we would be up to it or not, I was afraid Rhonda would not enjoy the climb on the back of a bike. But she wanted to try it, it had rained there the day before and a system was moving in that night bringing a couple days of rain. We knew this would be our only shot so we went for it.

About 2/3 of the way up where the pavement turns to dirt we start seeing snow.



I like how our bike stands out in a crowd.










Somebody's happy we made it to the top.



Hey, time to put all your crap back on, we've got to ride back down this thing.

Hey Steve, that night was the best accommodations of the trip by far.

Hi Chris, I've spent a lot of time lurking your posts of your new riding area. I'm jealous.

We get to the bottom of Mt Washington and we are only 12 miles from Timberland campground in Gorham, NH where we are planning to camp. The weather reports say a system is coming overnight bringing two days of rain. We're both ready to stop for the day but we know every extra mile we ride today will be a dry mile versus a wet mile tomorrow. We decide to push on another 90 miles to Rangeley Lake State Park in Maine.

These signs started getting a little worrisome especially once evening started approaching.



And they weren't kidding.



What was really unnerving were the moose warning signs with flashing yellow lights saying use caution high moose collision area next 17 miles.:huh
I noticed in Maine they will have a couple mile stretch with moose crossing signs then the next couple miles with deer crossing signs. So riding along on the bike I'm thinking, so deer don't cross where moose cross? Because I busted this guy in a moose crossing zone.



Couple hours later we get to Rangeley Lake, set up the tent, eat dinner, and wait for the rain to come.

.....

great so far. subscribed

It's been a few years since I last went, but if I remember correctly, you were there right about the same time as Laconia Bike week in NH; that might explain all the Harleys.


Great start to the RR Kevin; can't wait to see the rest of what you got!

Thanks Denis.
We didn't know about bike week. What a cluster that was.

Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk 2

Great report thus far!! Keep it coming

Wife and I did almost the same trip back in 2009, same time frame too but I think we were the week before bike week. I know it was Americade in UpST8 NY at the time :eek1

Great report thus far!! Keep it coming

Wife and I did almost the same trip back in 2009, same time frame too but I think we were the week before bike week. I know it was Americade in UpST8 NY at the time :eek1

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=475380

hey Kevin,

if Campcook liked the northeast, she would really like it up here...reporting from Valdez.

you better get more maps.

This is awesome Kevin! I wanna be like you and iDave someday.

Guess that means I'll eventually have to get married...

Oh yes. Nice
Great report.
Looking forward to more.

Quoted for prosperity reasons

Campcook--Guess the next step is for H14 to find you a little bike of your own

I'm glad you like it so for. Your trips to West Virginia were some of the first ones I followed here.

LD, I'm flattered you took time from your cherries to read our RR. I need to catch up on yours now.

Hey Russ. You need to come down and ride with us this year.

Alaska is somewhere on the list Dave. We need to get back to Maine and cover the spots we missed this time due to the weather. And there's Nova Scotia and then there's the need for funds to finance this. We're learning and I'm sure we could of had just as good of a time on less money if we did it again. Have a safe trip up there, I'm enjoying you RR.

I want to be like you! You're like the coolest person I know even though you where pink goggles.

Yes, she is quite the seat hog.

I still have to get 2013 RR's up ...
I'm way behind... Maybe once the garden and the cherries are set ..
I can get back at it...

I miss Maine... I wish I had taken Dad's cabin over...

Chris, I read your RR last night at work. If you think we took almost the same trip just wait. About the only difference is you took better pictures.

Hey Kev! No, I came back last weekend. We've been trying to get the house ready for our pack-out on Mon/Tues. It's been a major pain in the ass. The report is great. Keep it coming!!!

We went to bed Monday night waiting for the rain to come. Well the weatherman nailed this one. It starting pouring overnight and didn't let up for the next two days. We packed up in the rain, lucky for me I learned from scottP last month at Rick's RDV how nice it is to pack in the rain under a tarp.



We rolled out of camp at 7:30, pouring rain, and 44 degrees. Lance(GSA_PILOT) laid out a route for us to Millinocket that would take us around Moosehead Lake and the Debsconeag Lakes Wilderness Area. My GPS is the cheap non-waterproof Garmin from Campcook's car so I had to pack it away, my printed directions in the tank bag map holder quickly started getting wet so we couldn't use those either. Cool, now we can just ride.:eek1

I tried memorizing the directions a couple turns at a time. The first turn was about 30 miles out Route 4, after travelling for quite awhile I started feeling like we should have turned by now. We're pretty cold by this point, luckily we found this.



It's a laundry-mat, it's open and the heat is on. While I'm outside in the rain trying to get satellite reception on the GPS without getting it wet Campcook's taking advantage of the free heat.



GPS gets signal and tells us our turn is 1/2 mile ahead,

We get to the town of New Vineyard and we're cold again. It's still pouring, visibility sucks and neither of us are particularly enjoying this day on the bike and we still have 196 miles to go. If I tell Garmin to take us directly to Millinocket it's 118 miles. We hated to do it but we decided to bail on our original plan and bee-line to Millinocket.

The one bright spot of the day was Lance had told us we could not go to Maine without having a bag of Humpty Dumpty potato chips and a red snapper hot dog. We took care of that along with another hot cup of coffee in North Anton. Thanks Lance.

We finally get to Pine Grove campground where we planned to pitch the tent along the East Branch of the Penobscot for $22. After the owner told us the tent area may be evacuated because the area was under a flood watch and he had a heated cabin for 52 bucks, we went with the cabin.



Got the Strom stuck in the mud so it had to spend the night out by the main road.



The plan for tomorrow, the weatherman will be wrong, the sun will be shining , and we'll be riding to Fort Kent.