Today was advertised as the warm and sunny day by the weatherman last night, but I'm afraid he and I have differences on what warm and sunny means. It was in the upper 50"s when we got up, but by the time we had another of Chef Paulette's delicious breakfasts and hit the road by 9:30, it had warmed to the lower 60's. Today we were heading north to Franconia Notch, but we planned on taking the old Route 3 instead of the more efficient I-93. Route 3, also called the Daniel Webster Highway is just a wonderful road, winding through the mountains, it used to be the main thoroughfare for trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Most of the attractions remaining date back to the 20's and 30's and are places I visited ... read more

We woke this morning in beautiful downtown Burlington, Vermont. I can't say enough about how nice this town is. Since it is a downtown hotel, there is no free hotel breakfast, so we went in search of somewhere to have breakfast. In looking at Yelp, there were several within walking distance, but most were upscale bistro's and bakeries and we were just looking for bacon and eggs. Finally, we found one called Handy Lunch which was just what we were looking for. A third generation run, since 1945, diner frequented mostly by locals and it was great! After breakfast, we loaded up the bike and headed for our first stop of the day, the Ben & Jerry's Factory Tour. Located due east of Burlington, we followed US-2E out of town for about 27 miles. On the ... read more

After yesterday's drownings, we were looking forward to better weather today. The clouds at the hotel were not great when we headed down to breakfast, but by the time we finished and loaded up the bike, the sun was really trying to come out. Our original route to Plattsburgh was to head north from Watertown into the shores of the Thousand Islands. We had never been there and didn't really know what to expect. But I looked online for a boat tour and found exactly what we were looking for about 30 minutes up the road in Clayton, NY cleverly named Clayton Island Tours. It was a 3.5 hour boat tour with a stop midway at someplace called Boldt Castle that sounded interesting. By the time we arrived in Clayton, the sun had come out and ... read more

Today was an ambitious day, but we knew that going into it, so it was even better than our expectations. We wanted to make sure we were well rested, so we slept in a little and headed back to the Third Street Retreat for breakfast around 8:30. After breakfast, we headed over to the Niagara Falls Visitors Center a couple of blocks away in search of the free trolley. There is a free trolley that runs about every half hour from the Visitors Center near our hotel to the furthermost tip on the peninsula at Old Fort Niagara.The plan was to take the trolley to Fort Niagara, tour around, and ride the trolley back to the hotel, stopping at a couple of the sights along the way. We had a tour similar to yesterday's except from ... read more

Since we had already decided that it was too cold to be whitewater rafting yet, we had decided to skip the stop in Ohiopyle, PA (even though the rafting looked awesome!). But we didn't want to miss the stop in Pittsburgh to see the Andy Warhol Museum that was on the way to Ohiopyle. This meant that today would probably be a long day on the bike. The Garmin lady said it was a 3 hour ride to Pittsburgh on the back roads, or a 1.75 hour ride on the Interstate. Also iit would be a 6 hour ride from Pittsburgh to Niagara Falls on the back roads and a 4 hour ride on the interstate. We normally always take the back roads, but since we knew it was going to be a 300+ mile day, ... read more