Highway 2 across New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine is a very different experience from Highway 2 west of Lake Superior. In the west the road was straight and wide and fast; in the east it’s curvy and narrow and slow. However, it was a beautiful green ride through the Green Mountains, the White Mountains and the Mahoosuc Mountains as I drove from Burlington to Acadia National Park. As usual, I only wish I’d had more time.
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I’ve a penchant for riding along waterfronts. While spending the night in my solitary confinement cell, I realized that today I could do something really special. Each of the towns I was visiting today had tremendous waterfronts and all three I knew had great bike paths. Montreal I’ve biked before, Ottawa I have toured extensively and via satellite images I was able to confirm that Burlington had a waterfront biking trail. I had a goal for the day!
To pull this off I had to start early. My first ride started in Ottawa at 7:30AM. With lots of hustle and a good measure of luck, I was able to finish my ride in Montreal by 3:00. This put me in Burlington by 5:30 which gave me a couple of hours to enjoy those trails. All-in-all I managed to put in over 27 miles of biking across three rides in two countries … all in a single day!
Have I mentioned how much I enjoy having my folding bike with me?!
See maps of my rides …
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My drive across the great middle of this country ended when I arrived at Duluth on the extreme southwest shore of Lake Superior. For a city whose average annual temperature is 37 degrees, I found the climate in mid-April to be very comfortable.
So much did I enjoy being in the Duluth area that rather than check-in and regroup I decided instead to keep driving along the famed North Shore Drive. It was a beautiful excursion! The road shoots north from Duluth along water’s edge. I followed the road to Two Harbors where I found its namesake lighthouse. As usual at day’s end I was fighting the fading sun so I opted to take this silhouette shot of the lovely light. Two Harbor Lighthouse now operates as a bed and breakfast and, had I only known, it could have been my home for the night! The sign which read “Rooms Available” still burns in my brain.
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Why don’t I remember the great flood of 1997? Apparently the entire region of Grand Forks was flooded that year and much of the downtown burned. As I rode along the waterfront I couldn’t help but notice the imposing new levee system built by the Corp of Engineers. Also, it was unavoidably apparent that the river was flooded again as my bicycle path periodically disappearing into the river! The Red River can really wreck havoc on these poor peoples’ lives.
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Arrived in Spokane in the late afternoon but before finding my hotel I visited two spectacular parks: Manito and Riverside. The former was designed by the firm that did NYC’s Central Park while the latter was done for the 1974 World’s Fair. Both are varied, beautiful, well-maintained and very appealing.
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Let me set the stage. Kelsey hadn’t been to Oregon since 1998 when she was six years old. She’s now 16. Most of my family lives in Oregon and after a 10-year gap they all had expectations of seeing her … in the 20 waking hours we had scheduled for Kelsey to be in the area. We had a LOT of ground to cover. Ready. Set. Go!
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Hold on to your hat because the crazy-fast pace isn’t slowing yet! In the next twelve hours we entered Canada, ferried across two bodies of water, drove 180 miles, and toured two cities before reentering the U.S. Where we done then? No! We still had sixty miles to drive till we reached our hotel!
We awoke in Port Angeles very early to get in line for the 8:00AM ferry but thankfully I was able to get Starbucks coffee to help me pass the time in line. As we pulled away from the dock I looked back to see the town and rising quickly behind it the Olympic Mountains. An awesome site.
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A few weeks ago I rode my new foldable bike along riverside paths in Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock, Albuquerque, and Sacramento. For midwinter I enjoyed amazing weather. My memories of these rides are of having a fantastic time (except Knoxville) in beautiful settings and, as I started across the country again, I found myself yearning for a repeat.
So why not?
In Memphis I took the picture above. Yes, again the weather stayed near-perfect as I also rode in Nashville and Little Rock. While Memphis was almost an identical experience my other rides were fairly different. Little Rock was done in the bright of day rather than at dusk which provided a different perspective on the city. Nashville was a different route along a riverside park across the Trinity River. All were fantastic rides.
With experiences so good you can expect to see my red bike in the future!
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Several times I’ve driven segments of the road around Lake Tahoe. Over the course of three visits I still hadn’t driven the western shore. Today my goal was to make it happen … and it didn’t.
But I get ahead of myself!
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The title of this post is adapted from my favorite National Parks T-shirt. The pun is obvious; this is the world’s mecca of red rock landscapes. The circuit of the entire set of red rock parks in this region is known as the Grand Circle.
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