Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Day Fourteen

Greetings from the northern terminus of US Highway 1.  Ft Kent Maine is just about as far north as you can go in the contiguous USA, and that's where we are tonight. 

Like the past few mornings, we woke to steady rain and COLDER temps. It was 42 degrees in Bangor when we left. We wanted to see two particular sights in Bangor: Paul Bunyan and the home of novelist Stephen King. So, we did. It wasn't easy with the weather conditions, but we got to both, and Janice managed to take pics. I don't know how she did it, but she's good!

Then, we turned north on I 95 and tried to make some miles. Did I say it was cold? It was below cold. The wind chill temp was 27 degrees, made colder with wet feet and hands. An utterly miserable day for a ride.

But what a ride it was, once we got off I 95 and on Maine 11. We both love roads like the 11. It's one of those roads that follow the lay of the land. Up, down, left, right, with high peaks and low valleys. In some places, the road was straight, and when on a peak, one could see for a couple of miles, with usually several smaller Hills and valleys as far as eye eye could see. Very sparsely populated, a house every several miles made it a place where vehicle breakdowns could be real trouble. But the BMW just purred along.

We stopped twice along the way to warm up. After a while we were able to climb back on the bike and move on.

According to locals and the news, the weather is much colder than usual. It should be around 70 daytime temps and around 40 at night. We planned for those temps, with a little extra (just in case), but we didn't have clothes for what we encountered. Janice wore a tank top, cuddleduds,long sleeved tee shirt, fleece jacket, bumblebee, and a Columbia jacket on her upper body. And froze. I wore a tee shirt, long sleeved tee shirt, fleece jacket, and my bumblebee and finally got cold. We stayed dry, except for feet and hands.

About 10 miles from our destination, there was road construction that resulted in several miles of gravel and mud. Fortunately, we didn't slip or have any problem, but it was a bit unnerving. The bike and trailer are trashed; looks like we were on the Alaskan Highway!  Instead of black, both are now brown and yellow, along with the bottoms of our bumblebees. Ugh...

We got into Ft Kent around 5 pm, checked into the motel, and tried to warm up. Had dinner in the restaurant nearby and called it a night. 

Tomorrow, we plan to get on US 1 and ride south towards Bar Harbor.



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