Using my handy-dandy mapping tool, I find a way to take us
out of West Lebanon that will allow us to get past the congestion and freeways
before returning to US Highway 4. We are
curving around a back road when we spot a tell-tale trail marker just off the
road. The trail does not show up on the
program, but this looks quite promising.
We’ll take it.
Not too far along, we see what appears like college students
out for a jog. We hope we haven’t made a bad choice. The conditions begin a
little dodgy, but get better as we go along.
The trail is lovely as it crosses back and forth over the Mascoma River. We don’t know where we are, but we are
paralleling Highway 4, so we keep going.
A few miles in, we are greeted by a handsome 60-something
woman and her gregarious Jack Russell dog.
She tells us we are on the Northern Rail trail, and that it goes 30
miles or so all the way up to Grafton.
She also tells us about some the sights up ahead, including Mascoma
Lake, with the Shaker village of Enfield across the way. She asks about our trip and is very surprised
to find out that we started in Portland, Oregon. She tells of a recent trip she and her
husband took to the Netherlands. There,
they would ride their bikes during the day, then get on a canal barge at night
for their dinner and lodging. She tells us they enjoyed it so much, she has
developed a taste for more bike travel.
We offer “tips of the trade” and we all laugh about the various
strategies we have employed to deal with saddle pain.
The ride is spectacular as it passes Mascoma Lake. Two distinct features tickle our fancy. In celebration of Halloween, various
scarecrows depicting sports deaths are placed on the park land between the
trail and the lake. The bike-wreck
scarecrow seemed to be plowing into a giant rock on a small moto-cross bike,
with the stuffed rider about to fly right over the handlebars. The hockey scarecrow had a black eye and
broken teeth, and a hockey stick out of his head. The six or seven of these creations were
quite funny and creative---and must have been a big community effort to design,
costume, and place these images.This is also the first place we spot what we soon come to call “New Hampshire add-on houses.” A house might begin with a small single gabled cottage. Another generation would add a wing at a right angle, then another might add another gabled cottage addition, which might then have a connected corridor or two with eventually joined the barn. Over the years, simple structures become quite complicated. I tell Wes that is what we are going to do with our cabin. He just rolls his eyes.
We follow the rails to trails all the way to Grafton, even
though the track is becoming more and more marginal. There are places where it is hardly more than
a sandy two-track. Sometimes the trail
is just a few feet from Highway 4. We
look longingly at the smooth surface, but don’t leave the track, choosing no
competition with vehicles over an easy ride.
The trail takes us through a
variety of huge culvert tunnels, which strikes us as a good solution for
contested intersections.
We are getting discouraged at our slow progress. We are working pretty hard and not going very
fast. It is nearly noon and we have only
gone about 12 miles. We enter a rock cut
where the train track was cut through 12 foot tall granite walls, and see a
small brass marker. We have just passed
the Orange Summit, the highest point on the trail, and the highest point the
railroad reached between the coast and its terminus at White River Junction at
the Connecticut River. Although we had
been seeing Mount Cardigan before and
beside us, we didn’t realize we had been climbing all morning.
We stop for a break at Danbury, where we will turn off to
take a road to the little town of Meredith on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. By the time we get there, we are tired,
crabby, and worried. I know we have to
go a total of 60 miles to get to our bed and breakfast. It has taken us until after 1pm to go 20
miles. How on earth will we ever make it
the rest of the way before we lose the light?
We have an uncomfortable break at the small country store. Both of us are picking at each other. My phone doesn’t work and there is no wi-fi,
so we can’t scout the road ahead. A
young man and several senior ladies out for a bike ride try to allay our fears
about the route ahead, but I, for one, am not having it. One lady says, “It’s not bad. There are ups and downs, but it’s just like
life, isn’t it?”
We are still sniping at each other when we head out on
Highway 104. It is pretty easy and quite
beautiful, but we are both convinced these good times will end momentarily,
leaving us to slog up the mountain to the Lake.
The miles start to slip by. We’re
cruising along. Wait! Where’s the climb into the White Mountains? This part of the ride has been no problem
whatsoever.
As we ride along, we see lots of the “Add-on Houses.” However, very few of these look like working
farms. There are no animals, no
tractors, no work-trucks. The fields lie
fallow even as the houses are well-maintained.
We pass the grounds of the private Hampton School, and realize that this
is probably the third private residential school we have seen since entering
New Hampshire. Although the road is
fairly populated, there are very few commercial establishments. I ask Wes, “How are people making their
livings here?” He answers, “Maybe they
aren’t.” This is obviously not a place
where people are trying to make a living and can’t, as we have seen in New York
and Washington. This is a place where
the living is coming from elsewhere.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and the ride to
get much harder, as we zip along to Bristol and the crossing with Interstate
93. There is a little outbreak of plastic land
close to the freeway. We have about 15
miles to go when the climb in the foothills of the White Mountains begins. We spend the rest of the afternoon climbing,
climbing, climbing. We have just cleared
one good sized hill when we see a long-haired hippie-ish looking fellow
standing next to his station wagon. He
has pulled his car into the little verge between our road and a right
turn. He has been watching us hump up
the hill and as we go by, he calls to us, “Do you have a place to stay for the
night?” We answer that we have a bed and
breakfast waiting for us. “Too bad.” He
says, “I was gonna offer you a room at my house. Where you headed?” We tell him, and he sighs, “Man, you got a
big hill ahead of you. Good luck.”
He wasn’t kidding.
The country we are entering reminds me a lot of the glacial highlands of
the Rockies. There are deep, cold lakes
surrounded by granite shelves. In the
distance we can see foothills with the occasional glance at the rocky highlands
beyond. We are about 5 miles from the
town of Meredith and we look up to see what should be called a cliff
climb. We’re beat, but too bad. Up we go until we can’t. Then it is off our bikes and time for
pushing.
At the top of this steep hill, our road joins the Daniel
Webster Highway and the traffic increases.
Now we are tired, it is close to dusk, and we are still not there. It is spectacularly beautiful alongside the
shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, but hard to appreciate it because of the
dangerous road conditions. We feel a
surge of energy, however, when we get to the town of Meredith. It is a lovely tourist town, dominated by
large, white 19th century hotels which overlook the lake. The town is a warren of 18th and
19th century buildings sitting cheek to jowl on the hills just above
the lake. Like all tourist towns, it is
full of restaurants, bars, and cute little shops.
We need to make our way to the Tuckernuck Bed and
Breakfast. When I had made the
reservation, the innkeeper was thrilled to hear that we were cross country
bicyclists. Her husband, she told me, was an Ironman, and had participated in
many super long distance triathlons. I
told her we were far from Ironmen and that a 60 mile day was a pretty long day
for us. It had been a long day, and we
were feeling every bit of those 60 miles, when we found the street on which the
inn was located, and saw that it was another big climb. We were pushing our bikes up the hill, on our
last legs, when a young police officer, in a Meredith Police Department sedan,
pulled alongside us. “Don’t you know you
are supposed to be riding up this hill?”
It took us a moment to realize he was joking before we had the presence
of mind to assure him that this was just our “cool-down.”
Our brains are fogged by exhaustion as we get to the house
on the top of the hill: our inn. We drag
our bikes around to the side and meet a young couple who say, “You must be the
bicyclists! Kim has told us all about
your trip! We can hardly wait to hear
your stories!” They take us to meet the
landlady, an effusive, petite blonde with a somewhat raspy voice, who welcomes us
mightily and tells us how excited she is to have us staying there. We don’t feel special, just tired, sweaty,
and hungry. She gives us a great deal on
a beautiful suite at the top of the house.
It is all we can do not to fall asleep right then and there.
After a shower, we feel slightly less exhausted and want to
get some dinner. Our landlady gives us a
bunch of menus and guidance. She also
tells us that the other guests in the house are the young couple we had earlier
met; they were newlyweds on their honeymoon.
There is also a threesome from England, fellow innkeepers enjoying a
holiday in various beauty spots of eastern and western United States. She assured us that they were all very
interested to meet us and hear our stories tomorrow at breakfast. Apparently, there would be no sitting back
and listening to other’s stories for us in the morning.Oh, how we wished we had been better able to follow our landlady’s advice about eating establishments. We had seen a little brewpub on the way in to town. We thought it would be a good place to eat and listen to the Tigers/Red Sox baseball game that night. It was a fail on both counts. The place was packed with sports fans, all right, football fans cheering loudly, then not so loudly, as the New England Patriots barely beat the New Orleans Saints.
After a disappointing corporate plastic goo-fest for dinner,
we walk around the town, follow the lakeshore and explore the historic
inns. In one, we were sitting by the
blazing fire, when a distraught man came in, trailed by a manager. His wife had lost her phone. Could we please move so they could check the
overstuffed sofas where we were seated.
We do, but no phone is found. Off
they go, the man almost wailing, “What are we going to do? Where can it be?”
We find the town charming, but we’re too tired to do much,
so we go back to our inn. We turn on the
game, but fall asleep with the Tigers comfortably ahead 5-1 in the 7th
inning. The next morning, as we make our
way to breakfast, our landlady asks us, “Did you hear what happened in the game
last night?” Her husband, who had driven
the 2 hours to attend the game in Boston, called her around midnight to tell
her that game was now tied and there was still one more inning to go. He was going to be very late getting back. She
woke up to find out that Red Sox had won, in one of the most stunning comebacks
in baseball history.
At breakfast, all eyes are on us. We start by telling them about how much
economic distress we have seen as we travelled across the country. Not very romantic, to be sure, but it does
get the newlyweds going. They are from
Rochester, New York and in their mid-twenties.
He has a degree in civil engineering; she in marketing. Together, they have sent more than 500
letters of inquiry. They have gotten a
few bites, but they see people with lots more experience getting the jobs. They wonder how they will ever get a start,
but they were still hoping a job would materialize for them. The Brits are shocked at this. They didn’t know the economy was that bad in
the US.
We tell stories of our bicycle trip through England,
Ireland, Wales and Scotland and make the Brits laugh with those “innocents
abroad” adventures. We all end up
telling stories of our favorite places to visit. I don’t think we ended up talking much about
our ride across the country, but it was good fun anyway.
When we make our departure, our landlady, who had generously
volunteered to find our next lodging, tells us how much difficulty she had
making arrangements in the little town of Cornish, Maine. After numerous attempts, she was able to find
a place for us not too far from the town.
We thank her and commiserate with her.
Who would have thought securing lodging would have become such an
on-going hassle? She tells us of one set
of bicyclists who had stayed with her.
They had arranged their entire lodging six months in advance. Only once did they miss their
reservation. It’s clear we are not that
rigid or that well-organized.
As we prepare to leave, I stop
to stare at a topographic map on the wall.
Just to the northwest of Lake Winnipesaukee lies a circular range of
mountains called the Ossipees. Surely,
this must have been an ancient volcano.
I show Wes and he agrees with me.
We ask Kim. No, no volcanos
around here. Wondering what else could
make such a distinctive outline, we vow to look more closely as we ride
by. Our route out of New Hampshire will
take us half way round this strange feature.
By the end of this day, we will be in Maine. Almost there.
Somehow or another.-----------------------------------------
Posted from Centennial, Wyoming
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