Day 34 - I May Be Old, But I Can Still Fit Through The Lemon Squeeze!

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After a great night's sleep at the fabulous O'Hearn-Hilton, we were ready to play New Hampshire tourist. So after a delicious homemade breakfast cooked by Chef Paulette, we began to think about plans for the day.We did have to run into town for a few errands, and to ship back our latest batch of t-shirts to make sure we had room for the ones we bought today. The weather report was foreboding, but the skies were only cloudy, so we decided to head for the Polar Caves because they were only 45 minutes away.

Having grown up in Lowell, MA my family always visited New Hampshire in the summer on family vacations, so many of the tourist sights in New Hampshire are places I had visited as a child. When Jody & I came up here for a vacation, we stayed in Weir's Beach for a week and visited many of the same sights. During that visit, we were in a rental car, and I was always wishing that we could have visited them on the motorcycle as the roads in this area are just awesome for motorcycle riding. As we left for the Polar Caves, I decided to give the Garmin Lady one last chance to redeem herself after sending us on so many dirt roads yesterday. She must have got the message, because she led us out of Kevin & Paulette's house on only paved roads, and in fact, picked some of the best motorcycle roads in the area. Winona Road was awesome! It even had a detour due to some road construction, and the detour road was even better. It felt great to be zipping along on curvy mountain roads, only slowing down as we passed through the small town along the way.

When we reached Polar Caves, we realized that it hadn't changed much at all. Polar Caves is really more of a maze along the side of the mountain, in and out of the splits between the various boulders. Some of these make small caves that can be squeezed through. Even though I have been to Polar Caves several times in my life, it is still as much fun as when I was a kid with my family on summer vacation. I could still squeeze through all the caves, ducking down, crawling at times, trying unsuccessfully not to bump my head on low hanging rocks. There is one spot near the end of the caves called the Lemon Squeeze. This is a really small and tight opening that is very difficult for the average adult, In fact, most of the adults in front of us opted for the less difficult Orange Crush path. But Jody & I were determined to make it through, and we did! It seemed a little more difficult than I remembered as a child, but we still made it through!

After the cave section, we also wandered around the Rock Garden for a while before heading to the snack bar for a Diet Coke. In the end, we were back at the Gift Shop, looking at t-shirts. Jody found a hoodie she liked, and I found a great shirt-hat combination. Since we had sent stuff home at the post office this morning, there would be plenty of room in the suitcase. The weather report called for afternoon showers, and it was about 12:30. The sky was cloudy, but Lost River was only another 45 minutes away. So we hoped the weather would hold out for us to visit Lost River, and we would put on our rainsuits before we headed back to Kevin & Paulette's. If it rained on the way back, it would be no big deal. We wouldn't melt!

The ride between Polar Caves and Lost River was also awesome. Most people just take the road from Polar Caves back to I-93 and get off at the Lost River exit 30 miles up the road. But we had the Garmin Lady pick a backroad path up RT-118 that was just spectacular. It was a smooth road, in excellent shape with all the usual twists and turns, but it also went up and down in altitude from a few hundred feet to over 2500 feet! It was the best ride of the day!

Lost River is another favorite of my youth. Lost River is basically a gorge, with a series of broken rocks forming small caves, similar to Polar Caves, except that there is a river flowing all the way through the rocks. So Lost River tends to be much wetter. As we started down the path, we noticed a family of Hasidic Jews in full regalia. They even had a baby in a stroller! There are hundreds of steps along the path in Lost River, and the family was just dressed way too nicely, but they stuck to the trails, stayed out of the caves, and two of the men carried the stroller up and down the stairs. At one of the early observation platforms, we said hello and excuse me, and walked past them so they wouldn't slow us down. Jody likes to walk fast, and it's not good for someone to be in her way.

The gorge was really beautiful and we took lots of pictures as we wound our way down the path. It wasn't very crowded, so we squeezed our way down into each of the caves. Some of these caves were much more difficult than Polar Caves as the openings were smaller, and everything was wet. They also had there version of the Lemon Squeeze which is actually easier than the Polar Cave, but by the time we got there, we decided that we had Lemon Squeezed enough for the day and took the bypass path. There was also one other cave that we would need to lie on our stomach and slide our way through. It's not that we couldn't do it, it's just that we chose not to. That's our story and we're sticking to it!

Lost River also had a new section that wound through the forest and ended up at a suspension bridge overlooking the gorge where we took just a few more pictures. Around the corner, we found ourselves back at the Gift Shop where we picked out a couple of more t-shirts. Once outside, the weather wasn't looking too bad, but to be prudent, and to protect us from the cold, we donned our rainsuits once more. This time we decided to take the easy way home on I-93, in case it rained, it would be easier to deal with the Interstate. When we turned on the main road outside Lost River, it was obvious that it had been raining earlier as the roads were still very wet. This made us glad we had chosen the Interstate to get home as even though it is not raining, twisty, turny, mountain roads can be dangerous when wet.

Even when we turned on I-93S, the wet roads again showed that it had rained, but so far we had not been rained upon. It was only when we got within a couple of miles of our exit when we managed to see a couple of sprinkles. The Garmin Lady returned us once again to where we started completely on paved roads. Paulette was supposed to have been golfing, but her game was cancelled due to the rain, and she said that it had rained really hard a couple of times back at the house, but somehow we had managed to avoid it all.

Paulette gave us an ATV tour of the beach and the surrounding properties, and with Kevin, we hiked back into their 5 acre woods. It's a really nice property and they have such a great setup. They should have a great retirement! Tomorrow, the weather is supposed to be good all day, so the plan is to head up to Franconia Notch and visit the Flume and Clark's Trading Post.

112.9 Miles Today

5288.1 Miles Total

5.835 Gallons Today

132.26 Gallons Total

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