The Road To Alice's Restaurant - Day 9, Maine to Vermont

Well, we finally saw the Coast of Maine, and had a chance to ride up it for about 40 miles this morning. It's pretty much how we had pictured it for the most part -- rocky, with lots of harbors and bays. US-1 runs along the coast for almost the entire length of Maine, but we only took it for a few miles, and I'm suspecting that it gets much prettier, and much quieter the further North one goes. The stretch we rode -- indeed the common denominator for all the coastal roads we took in MA and NH as well as ME, was that they consisted of strings and strings of small towns, and endless rows of motels and resorts and "crab shacks" or "lobster shanty's", and tons and tons of tourists. The towns are quite charming, and we actually have plenty of time to study the architectural details as we are stuck in traffic. Case in point, this picture, taken in Camden, ME. This is at 10am and the traffic is stop and go for the entire length of town. It's tough on the nerves and on the hands constantly riding the clutch. We were very glad to turn inland and head north up to Bangor.

We pulled out of the Hampton Inn, in Rockport at 915am -- it was tough to get up as the bed was without a doubt the most comfortable one we've been on this trip, and this hotel the nicest as well. Harry Potter was good, and the dinner before the movie had spectacular. Now when you think of Maine, you think of Lobster right? Well next door to the hotel was an Applebee's, which we didn't want to go to unless we had to. The front desk suggested a place a mile up the road in the restored train station. As you know, if it has anything to do with trains I'm a happy guy, so up the road we went. This small train station has been restored, and the restaurant quaint with outstanding food. It always pays to ask the locals. While this place wasn't a seafood place, we did manage to have a spot of Maine lobster -- in a lobster rangoon appetizer.

Growing up the TV show M*A*S*H was a big part of my life, and if you know the show, you know that Hawkeye Pierce came from Crabapple Cove, Maine. Well, there is no Crabapple Cove listed -- but I suspect it looked a little like this. Growing up I always thought Crabapple Cove sounded so far away and romantic, and I had it pictured in my head. It's funny how pop culture can do that to you (there is no Shawshank either, from Shawshank Redemption, but I digress.) Maine, like Washington, also has a propensity for unpronounceable place-names based on Native-American words, although the Washington ones aren't as tough. Where out in Washington we have "Snoqualmie" and "Salish", and "Walla-Walla" -- in Maine it's a tongue-twisting nightmare with places like Ogunquit, and Skowhegan.

We turned off the coast road and north onto US-1A aimed for Bangor, Maine. The moment we turned off the coast route the traffic vanished, and we were able to make good time up to Bangor. As I often say, my motto is that I ride on the road to have a good time, not to make good time...BUT, there are exceptions, and sometimes you've got to let those big V-twins run! And you don't have a good time constantly clutching and shifting and braking despite the scenery. Bangor was the furthest north-east point on this trip -- and when 1A ended, we turned west on US-2 at it's beginning in downtown Bangor. Actually, it felt like turning home -- as we are now officially on the way home, having gone as far as we could on this trip. Heading west on US-2 really is homeward bound too, as US-2 -- if we were to follow it off into the sunset-- would take us home, eventually going up and over Stevens Pass and dropping down to the Sound to end in Everett, WA. The pull of that left turn was a pull towards home, and being on the road for 9 days it's good to aim for home at last. I admit, there is something that draws me to highway numbers, and I can't explain it, except that its a symbol of both the open road and it's draw, and the connection that we have to home. So when I see a road that I know leads both away from and back to the places I love, it becomes attached to me for some reason.

So we headed west into the sunshine on a glorious day in Central Maine, aiming ourselves to Montpelier, VT. US-2 was quiet and pretty much devoid of traffic and lucky for us, freshly repaved. Riding a motorcycle down a newly paved road is like skiing on fresh untracked snow, or skating after the zamboni smooths out the ice. We stopped for lunch at a small local "Dairy Barn" drive in -- sitting on a picnic table under a tree and enjoying the day and the rest. A nice older couple came up and the husband asked if we'd been to Sturgis (not yet we told him), and he gave us suggestions on roads to take and reminisiced about his friend who once had a '47 Harley after the war and headed out west on it. We roared out of the parking lot to the waves of his wife and himself, and kept ourselves pointed into the sunshine, all the time thinking how much of an adventure it would be to ride all the way home on US-2.

The flat central area of Maine gave way to the White Mountains on the border with New Hampshire, and like US-2 was leading us home, this felt like home. It was the closest we'd seen to anything that felt like riding back home -- with the weather, the scent, the feel of the land, and the vegetation, AND we'd moved far away from that blasted coast. We both agreed that riding the coast, for all it's cracked up to be, is not as enjoyable as a nice lightly traveled road heading west. Indeed it got cooler as we climbed higher in the White Mountains after crossing into New Hampshire and as the afternoon turned to evening, we had to stop and put on our jackets! That's a first for this trip.

We have noticed that there are far more churches in this part of the country than there are anywhere outside of Utah, where there are LDS chapels every few feet. However the churches out here, while predominantly white with steeples, that's it as far as commonality. Here they are different, where as in Utah they come out of a stock catalogue it seems. Here they are all different denominations, including several that billed themselves as "Full Gospel", which causes me to wonder "what about the rest? Do they only have 'partial gospel'?" I've yet to see a "half-gospel" or "partial gospel" or a "2/3 gospel" church in my travels.

We hit Montpelier about 730pm, pulling on as the sun started to sink low and gleam off the capitol dome. We didn't see any hotels on our way in, so we pulled into the local Chamber of Commerce information booth and found a brochure for a Quality Inn out by the freeway (which is why we didn't see any hotels on the way in.) We had a bit of difficulty finding the damn hotel too. The local "fun" cartoon map was not accurate or to scale, and we figured the easiest way to get there would be to get on the freeway and go up one exit. However, we got on the freeway going North when we should have got on going South. This gave us a lovely 20 minute, 15 mile tour of north Montpelier as the next place to turn around was 7 miles up the road. To top it off, the local Quality Inn was booked and so we took a room at the statley old "Capitol Plaza" right across the street from the state house.

We've got two more days of riding, and I've yet to map out the exact route. We can either head South through the Green Mountains of Vermont and end up somewhere in Western Connecticut (dangerously close to NYC), or we can head West into upstate New York and head south through the Adirondacks. Today we did a bit over 300 miles, went through three states, and got our faces royally sunburned as we headed on the road home. All too soon it's going to end.

From the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Montpelier, VT
Gary and Tony