0538 Moose River to Granville Vermont

14^th June 2016

Beautiful countryside and cheap fuel !

Woke up with a couple of Canada Geese and their chicks running around outside – I understand the camp owner feeds them so they hand around for the summer.  It was still trying to rain, but not very hard, so I packed up quickly while stuff was mostly dry, and then headed out of Moose River.  A very pleasant little camp site.

Today, once I had gone a little way south to find a good East – West road, I basically travelled west all day, across Maine to a place called Berlin on the New Hampshire border, then across a narrow neck of NH into Vermont, and in fact tonight I am almost across Vermont and into New York State.

I went to Skewhegan to do a shop and get fuel.  I had purposefully run my larder low in case the US border took groceries off me, which they didn’t, but I still needed a shop.  I also waited till I got to this sizeable town to buy fuel, thinking it would be cheaper in the bigger centre – In fact it was 3-5 cents a gallon more expensive than isolated little country stations !  But at about US$2.40 a gallon that works out to about $0.87 Aussie a litre, so it is quite cheap. 

For a while this morning I was driving along beside the big Kennebec river that not only has a lot of white water rafting companies dotted along the shore, but in the past has played an important role not only in the lives of the original Native Americans, facilitating transport, but also historically, playing a role in the movement of American troops in attempting to capture the British stronghold of Quebec in 1775.  It is certainly a big river, and dominated the scenery for an hour or more.

The part of Maine that I travelled though today seem to be preparing for some big holiday or celebration – Flags are absolutely everywhere, on houses, on shops, on everything, and every house I passed to day either had its lawns recently mown, or they were mowing them today.  Additionally, the many graveyards I passed today also have a lot of US flags amongst the tombstones, and many of the bigger flags seem to be at half mast.  (I found out later that there had been another gun masacre in the US last week).

I was mostly on small country roads all day, because there isn’t a freeway or anything heading across to the Adirondack Mountains, where I am trying to get to. So a lot of the time I was slowing down to 35 mph to pass through towns, then speeding up again to 55 – All a bit frustrating after a while, although you certainly get more of a feel for an area by passing through all the little places.  And Maine certainly is very “American”, with the neat houses, and everyone on their ride-on mowers, and flags and flower boxes outside every house, and lots of “handicraft” and “quilt” signs hanging outside shops and houses. Nothing derogatory intended – Just very American to me. Rather “quaint” as they might say about English scenery !!

More and more forested rolling hills as I crossed New Hampshire – This is a part of America I haven’t really visited before, so it is good to see it.  The colours of the trees are so bright in all their new spring foliage, and the darker spruce trees of further north have now disappeared.  It was all just very “pleasant” driving through this countryside today, and having an increasing amount of blue sky and sunshine as the day wore on didn’t hurt things either.  In fact I had to stop and take off my thermals half way through the day – This morning as Moose River it was only 5 deg C so I had needed them, but this afternoon I saw 23 deg on the thermometer, and with fine weather forecast for the next few days, it is only going to get warmer.

Vermont is very “outdoors-y”, with the lakes I drove past having camps and resorts on their shores, while many of the cars driving past had canoes or boats either on the roof or in the back of their pick up.  Many of the signs are for ski trails as well – I guess they are lucky that they have year round outdoor sport here, winter and summer – Lucky.

At about 6 pm I started looking for a campsite, and although I had passed many at about 3 pm, they all seem to have disappeared now I want one !  I went to a site that was marked on my map as a campsite and found it was some kind of Design / architectural College, that has a camp site for students, but not for the public.  When I asked one young lad about the camping, he suggested I go about 10 kms down the road into a local forest park, where there were plenty of “wild camping” areas where he reckoned I could camp for 2 weeks if I wanted and no one would ever come by ! 

So I followed his instructions and sure enough, up a narrow dirt trail into the forest, I found several good places to camp. So here I am in the middle of Green Mountain National Forest, next to a stream running through the forest, with not a soul in sight. 

Do they have bears in Vermont ?

Pics are here :-  https://picasaweb.google.com/110185357936043625130/6299012824302054129?authkey=Gv1sRgCN6z55j79u-onAE