Advertisement
Published: September 28th 2022
Edit Blog Post
Tuesday 27th: We left Gorham and were on a nice winding sealed road for 29 miles through the White Mountain forest park. The last 9 miles of this was quite misty, still around 9 or 10 degrees C. Our route took us West off this road still in White Mt forest but now on gravel. Nice flowing fast gravel roads, once again beside a stream with rapids for around 20 miles. Then we had a choice to continue on the main route which Keith & Bryan took, or turn off onto a10 mile "expert" section which Ian & I did. This section started off on quite slippery surface with plenty of puddles, tree roots and the odd patch of soft sand. After negotiating this well for round 5 miles the route popped us out onto the main route for about a mile where we caught up with Keith & Bryan. We turned off onto the "experts" section while they continued on the main route.
The next section of the “experts” was seriously gnarly with some loose rock up-hills which took all your concentration. By the time we reached the summit we realised we were off
the route but still on a track where we could see tyre tracks of 2 other bikes that had been through before us. Probably the 2 young guys we had met over previous days. The tyre tracks gave us a level of confidence and trying to regain the route we ended up doing some serious bush bashing! There were wolves, deer, Moose, spiders, snakes, wolverines and alligators in this area but fortunately we didn’t see them. More fortunate was the fact that they didn’t see us!
Finally exiting this section we caught up with Bryan & Keith who had had a coffee in a country store. Apparently this store which has been in business for 100 years was closing permanently at the end of September as they are unable to get any staff and the owners are sick of working 7 days a week. We considered hanging up our helmets and applying for a job so they stay open, but the lure of the trail was too strong so we pressed on.
We came to a part of a track which was a steep uphill with loose rocks and unfortunately as I was bouncing from one rock to
another a rut grabbed my front wheel and loosing all sense of direction (& control) I proceeded to veer up a steep bank on the right hand side of the trail. Coming to a halt still on the bike, which was now in more of a vertical plane than a horizontal one, I tried to back it off the bank only to be hampered by a dead tree branch that had wedged itself in my front spokes. I had to wait for the others to arrive to help me disentangle things. Shortly after we got going again, we realised that this was Dunn Rd the BDR website had warned about and we had read just this morning. They said on the website that many riders were having trouble getting up this road and they had plotted an easier "go around". I felt I had succeeded as not only had I got up the road I probably got up it at a higher elevation than most others. As I was still on the bike in an upright position up the bank when forward momentum ceased, I am not regarding this as an off. The stewards, when they hold their enquiry may
decide differently!
Shortly after this adventure we came to part of the route where the road was closed. We gradually worked our way around this blockage by taking a road that wound around a lake. We have passed at least 8 or maybe 10 lakes (one lake’s name was Mooselookmeguntic lake….trying wrapping your laughing gear around that)
As well as lakes there were wetlands so this area must be NE Lake district. We saw some anglers fly fishing in stream mouths – I guess for salmon or trout. This lake we diverted around, had a few holiday houses on the shore with piers and boat houses all framed by fall coloured trees. Idyllic.
After this diverson we had miles of fantastic fast hardpacked gravel roads. We went through the town of Rangely and out the other side. Stopped at an intersection a helpful guy stopped his truck and gave us directions to the town our motel was in which was opposite to our direction of travel. Promptly ignoring his advice, as we figured the BDR route probably took us in a large loop back to the motel town we pressed on. From here our route took us
through the best, fastest gravel roads I have ever ridden. Logging operations were happening in this region so keeping hard right was the order of the day. At one point we encountered a grader who seemed to be fixing the road worse but only for a short stretch. Reaching the end of this section meant we had also reached the end of the NEBDR. Our celebrations were somewhat tempered by realising that our booked accommodation was 74 miles away? Perhaps our friendly local giving us directions earlier was correct??? We worked out and verified later (by reading the instructions on the website) that the route had been altered. We were following the newer GPS route but had booked our motel using an older BDR paper map. Never mind we had the chance to ride this fantastic gravel road again and in the opposite direction.
Gassing up in Rangely, Keith phoned the motelier to report that we were on our way, and we arrived into Eustis/Stratton Maine just after 6pm. On the last stretch from Rangely to Stratton we saw 2 huge antlered Moose (Mooses, Mice?) on the side of the road. By the time we had stopped our bikes
to take a photo they had disappeared into the bush.
296 miles (500kms) today so a long day but once again awesome riding. We shuttled to a local pub for dinner where we had an interesting conversation with a local lady who had spent 2 weeks in both Australia and NZ 20 years ago. Tomorrow we may ride to Jackman where the original route ended.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.307s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 71; dbt: 0.0981s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Vicki
non-member comment
Interesting day
Well done for surviving the rut so well. The new tyre might have helped x