Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont Not a bad days Haul of States !

Diane & Rick Ray

My run down US11 yesterday was a pretty ride of rolling hills and picture postcard small towns. It was, the signs told me, the Aroonstook Scenic Highway, and I certainly had no cause to disagree with that description. It ran along the very edge of the Apallachians through Maine, my first US State. Although at one point I got a little concerned as my GPS took me down 10 miles of, admittedly smooth, dirt track, I needn’t have worried though, as it was the correct road, I guess they had just forgotten to put the blacktop on it. My first waypoint was Bangor! It’s quite funny, everywhere I go over here I’m reminded of home at almost every turn. If it’s not the Scottish and Irish connections on Prince Edward Island, it’s the English names running, it seems, right across the US!  I’ve been through Essex, Colchester, London,  oh, and today, just to add some spice, I got lost in Mexico…To cap that lot, last night I camped by a lake in Canton! As I’ve said before, sometimes wild camps prove to be just a little illusive just when you need them and last night was one of those nights. I’d tried a few spots but without success, when I spotted a perfect looking large field to my left. There was a woman and a young girl tending a vegetable plot right in the middle of it. I pulled over and walked across, asking if it was her land. She replied that it belonged to the community, so I asked if she thought

Only in the USA ... in May

anyone would mind if I camped right over in the far corner. Her reply left me dumbfounded, once more by the kindness of people you meet on the road which seems to be boudless. Diane said that she and her husband Rick owned a plot of land right on the edge of the lake which I would be very welcome to use and If I cared to wait for 10 minutes whilst she finished watering the communities vegetables, she would shown me the way to it. Apparently it was about a couple of miles down the road. She also mentioned that they had a spare room to which I would be very welcome, but I thought that was pushing her hospitality a little to far, so declined.

So I spent yet another night for free, in a near perfect location, right on the waters edge and listened to the slightly eerie sound of the  Loons calling across the lake when I woke in the early hours.  Diane suggested as I left this morning that I headed for Burlington along the US2 and take the ferry across to New York State from there, however, there was one tiny flaw in her cunning plan… The ferry doesn’t start running until June 15th! However, it really was, as Henry Cole would no doubt put it, one of the World’s truly great rides, and one I would recommend to anyone heading across this part of the USA. A quick check of the notices at the ferry terminal indicated that there was another, though much shorter, ferry running all year round from Grand Isle, one of the series of islands on Lake Champlain. Which is how I now come to be camped in a funny little lean-to type shed, at the edge of yet another lake...! This time in the Grand Isle National Park campsite. It comes complete with a picnic table and benches plus a fire pit, and I sneakily chose the pitch on which someone had kindly left me nice stock of fire wood. The lean-to as it happened was a sound choice as shortly after finishing my Wild West dinner of Chilli beans, rice and onion, the heavens opened.