Day 33 - Fairlee, VT to North Woodstock, NH 6-23-2011

At the end of our ride yesterday we unknowingly ended up crossing the Connecticut River and back into Vermont to spend the evening at Fairlee, VT. We arrived in Fairlee at 1:00PM and we were unable to check into the Silver Maple Lodge B&B until 2:00PM so we picked up some refreshments and pretzels and went and sat at the time square before checking into our B&B. We had a very enjoyable evening and went out to eat at a pizza place a block from the B&B. We were back from dinner by 5:30 and ready to call it a night. I think we were both sleeping before 6:30. If you ever see t-shirts that say “Bike, eat, sleep, repeat…” believe me we know where that comes from.

The alarm went off at 4:30 this morning (we were already awake before it went off and raring to go) and we got packed up, stopped at convenience store for a sandwich and headed out of town by 5:15AM. We bicycled back a crossed the Connecticut River to Orford, New Hampshire and then followed the Connecticut River on the New Hampshire side along highway 10 to Piermont and enjoyed the beautiful scenic views of Vermont on the other side of the river. It started raining yesterday just before we got to the B&B and it pretty well rained most of the evening. This morning it wasn’t raining but it definitely was wet and damp, foggy, and very humid when we first started out.

We biked 15 miles to the little town of North Haverhill where we stopped at a convenience store and had a delicious breakfast sandwich. One of the best we have had at that type of a store. We also enjoyed good conversation with the gal working there and also another man that does a lot of biking in the area.

After breakfast we continued on from North Haverhill on Hwy 116 climbing between Cobble Hill and Black Mountain about 8 miles. Only to encounter steeper terrain climbing between Mount Moosilauke and Kinsman Mountain (elevation 4,353 ft.) where we intersected the Appalachian Trail. We stopped briefly at the intersection and low and behold along comes a lone lady hiker chewed to pieces by insect bites and planning on hiking the entire Appalachian trail but on the happy side of misery. She was nice enough to take our picture by the sign and we visited briefly. Her trail name is “Newt”. This was also the top of our climb for the day - from here on down to North Woodstock we enjoyed a very refreshing downhill grade to the Autumn Breeze Motor Lodge in North Woodstock.

John thought he had finally arrived in Utopia as the convenience store next door to our hotel advertised that they have 393 varieties of beer. He was quick to get the bike and trailer in the hotel and walked right over to pick up some beer while I cleaned up. His comment was “We have finally arrived”. lol

We hadn’t been at our hotel for more than 15 minutes and it started to rain so we were really happy that we started as early as we did.  After cleaning up we took a walk downtown to check out the town - it was sprinkling a little but we had our rain jackets so it was a very nice walk.  We checked out the local shops and

Tomorrow we have our last really serious climb to Kancamagus Pass which is approx. 12 miles from North Woodstock. Elevation is 3,728 ft. Tomorrow we will be spending our first evening in Maine and will have less than 222 miles to Bar Harbor.

Life is good!