June 18, 1989
Barre to the White Mountains, New Hampshire
We're spending the night in a national forest campground about nine miles west of Lincoln,, next to the Wild Ammonoosuc River (which is lovely, but not really too wild looking - it's really not a whole lot larger than Pamelia Creek in spring runoff). We're sitting under a picnic shelter, out of the light rain which has accompanied us off and on throughout the afternoon. Today's weather was the most biker-friendly so far - partly sunny with a good tail wind for the first half of the day.
We left Barre this morning at about 8:30, after having coffee and donuts at the motel and visiting with the motel manager, a man who migrated here from Grand Isle, our previous night's campsite. It was pleasing to hear him describe where he grew up and to recognize the country as he described it.
Almost immediately after leaving the city we started climbing. The highway leaves the Winooski here and climbs over a pair of significant ridges before dropping to the Connecticut River and the New Hampshire border, thirty miles to the east. These are the first hills of real consequence on the trip, and feel like a good warmup for tomorrow's ascent of Kancamagus Pass in the White Mountains. The first ridge was quite annoying for Rachael though, as her gears were out of adjustment so she was unable to use her lowest chain ring. Once I understood what her ailment was, we stopped and spent about twenty minutes while I experimented and tried to correct the problem. I was only partly successful though - she has her climbing gears back now, but we've lost the racing chain ring. We'll try again tomorrow.
The last fifteen miles to breakfast (lunch, actually since we didn't arrive until 1 PM) were delightful - mostly downhill, in the sunshine, with a tailwind, through several colorful small communities. I really enjoyed the countryside on this stretch - the landscape was serene and pastoral, the signs of civilization mostly muted - old stone fences, cemeteries that blended into the hillside, steepled wooden and stone churches.
We had two exceptional wildlife sightings on this stretch - first, Rachael avoided running over a mole (or a fat shrew) which was hurriedly crossing the highway. It managed to thread the needle between her tires and escaped unscathed. Next, we saw a moose! It was wading about 100 yards from the road, on the far side of a small pond, opposite about a half dozen cars (and our two bikes) that stopped to enjoy the show.
We had our meal at the Barge Inn, a decent restaurant in Waterville. Rachael had a chicken salad sandwich and onion rings, I a gyro and Greek salad. From Waterville we headed east and merged onto route 112, the Kancamagus Highway. Our progress was delayed significantly because Rachael suffered a slow leak in her rear tire. We stopped at a store/gas station/laundromat, where I repaired it sitting on its porch out of the rain which was just beginning; and where I also repaired a second flat I created by pinching the tube during reassembly; and where we did our laundry and read books for awhile after noting that it had begun to rain harder. After finishing our laundry (and after beating Rachael at cribbage, for the fourth straight game and the seventh out of ten for the trip) we biked another ten miles eastward along the Ammonoosuc to the campground under grey but dry skies.
Today's ride: 47 miles (76 km)
Total: 234 miles (377 km)
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