We have been on this trip from Seaside, Oregon to Bar Harbor, Maine for 78 days; counting the day of travel to Seaside and the 4 days spent in Bar Harbor. We have traveled 4330 miles, fixed 8 flats, replaced 3 tires, worn out 1 wheel rim, 2 chains, and some brake pads. We had some close calls, but only had 2 crashes with blood (both mine, both low speed). Our next challenge is the logistics of getting home; us, bikes, Bob trailers, and equipment
. Arrangements must be made during business hours and on bicycle, until the bike too is shipped away, or on foot. Luckily, the Island of Desert (pronounced as something sweet to eat) has a wonderful bike friendly public transportation system. The buses have been available for 12 years connecting Acadia National Park, the small villages on the Island, and the Bar Harbor airport across the bridge in Trenton. We need a work day to manage logistics for getting home, so since we arrived on a Friday evening, it will be Tuesday before we can return home. Saturday we devote to getting oriented to Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park, and particulaly the bus system. Sunday we plan on riding bicycles to the top of Cadillac Mountain or along the Acadia Park carriage roads which are closed to motor vehicles. When we wake Sunday to rain though, we opt instead to explore the Desert Island’s other villages and to take the ferry to Cranberry Island. Being on the bus, in businesses, or in the ferry is good because It rains hard all day and well into the night. By Monday morning it has cleared and we have great weather for disassembling the trailers, taking them to the UPS office, and shipping them home. After arranging for the Bob trailers, we take the bus back to the campground, get the bikes, take them on the bus to the Green, ride to the bicycle shop, and arrange to have the bikes shipped. With all the bus travel and arrangements it actually takes us until 3:00 to get everything done. We stay at the Green in the center of Bar Harbor and have dinner. The Green is about a square block of park in the center of town. The bustransfer station is on one corner across from the Fire and Police stations. The Green is surrounded by restaurants and shops and is a natural gathering place and central location for people. On Tuesday morning we break camp, finish packing, and walk to the office of the Woodland KOA where we have been staying the last 4 nights. We talk to one of the KOA employees who is an avid bicycle rider and has toured herself. She is working to develop some ride-in camp sites specifically for bicycle riders, and asks our opinion on amenities. She talks about an electrical port, and a lock box for valuables and the bicycles. The 9:30 bus arrives, we ride to the airport for our flight home. Check-in, take off shoes, security check. The flight home seems in some way to be the opposite of how we have been traveling the last few weeks; from 30,000 feet the only mountains and hills I can see are the clouds floating above a perfectly flat landscape. We’ll be home by bed time.

— Sent from my Palm Pre

Belfast to Bar Harbor ME.

We should make it to Bar Harbor today. John Archer witnessed our departure in Seaside 73 days ago, so it’s ironic that our last day is on his birthday, happy birthday John. We have avoided calamity but have had some close calls pedaling. Yesterday while descending a hill at over 30 MPH, both of us hit a major pot hole in the road that was big enough to cradle the front wheel. It had the potential of stopping the descent and catapulting us and our trailers up over the front wheel. With no time to brake, we each instinctively did a ‘jerk the front wheel up, to make a jump’ manoeuver, and let the back wheel and trailer crash through the pothole. Both front wheels made it across, then, there was a little wobble trying to recover, but neither of us crashed. This morning though, looking at Randy’s back wheel, the tire has a split next to the rim, and the rim is cracked. We replace the tire and Randy continues the trip on a damaged rim. About noon my rear tire goes flat. After repairing the tire we continue. Our campground is 10 miles short of Bar Harbor, so we set up camp and then finish riding to the pier in Bar Harbor, arriving at about 6:00. We ask some people who happen to be nearby to take our picture, eat a celebratory dinner on the waterfront, then we, and our bikes, catch the island bus back to our campsite. It’s dark as we get to camp.

— Sent from my Palm Pre

Sandy has been a vivacious and very gracious hostess and Randy and I have both enjoyed our visit here in Bath very much. When we got up Sandy provided us with a great breakfast of yogurt, cereals, zucchini bread, juice, and coffee. The trip today takes us at times along the coast and we get our first view of the Atlantic. In the afternoon I get a flat tire on the Bob trailer to repair; Randy had a flat back tire 2 days ago, so we have now had 7 flat tires crossing the country. Not bad, really. The ride today was cool, it was overcast most of the day with times when it felt almost misty, not quite raining. We made it to Belfast.

Bath to Belfast ME.

Today is a short day, we’re staying in Bath tonight with Connie’s cousin Sandy. The route to Bath includes a nice trail from Brunswick to Bath and we arrive shortly after noon. When we arrive at Sandy’s house we meet both Sandy and her grandson Reid. We all have lunch at the waterfront along the Kennebec River before Reid returns home. We explore Bath downtown on our own and then later get a fabulous tour of Bath from Sandy. Bath has a lot of 19th century architecture and we see the Bath Iron Works, a major ship builder for the US Navy. Sandy also takes us to get a personal tour of the library, in particular the children’s library. The walls of the children’s section are painted in murals by Dahlov Ipcar. Dahlov Ipcar is a local children’s author and illustrator who is known nationally for several books including The Calico Jungle, Hardscrabble Harvest, and The Cat At Night. After our tour we have a very good dinner with a great view of the Highway 1 bridge crossing the Kennebec. Our dinner was very enjoyable with a lot of conversation. As it got dark we could see the bridge silhouetted by lights on the bridge as well as the lights from the cars driving across.

Lewiston to Bath ME.

Navigating is tougher than it seems like it should be. We have a map from Adventure Cycle, a road map of Maine, a GPS, and we sometimes just follow road signs. Still we get lost. Finally we fall back on our last resort for navigating, we ask directions. The advantage to asking directions is it gives us an opportunity to really meet people, and to really see how kind and helpful most people are. Last night we met Olga, an exchange student from Saint Petersburg, Russia who is a very charming waitress with an unidentifiable accent who rides her bike every day. This morning we met Rob and Devin from San Francisco on their last day of a San Francisco to Portland trip. Then in the afternoon we got lost. We ended up off route as a thunderstorm rolled over us. It started raining and hailing, and we found shelter under a canvas gazebo in some strangers back yard, she saw us and hollered out through a window that we were welcome there. During a lull in the downpour we continued riding into Albany looking for a motel. We were having trouble finding one so asked a series of people for directions since the GPS kept unreliably trying to send us onto the Intestate. We had to pedal maybe 4 miles so we would ask someone for directions then further along the way have to ask someone else for further directions. Finally, we asked a man who turned out to a Samaritan. He gave us directions, then said, ‘you guys need to get out of this neighborhood, it’s not safe’. We followed his directions and a little later when we came to a critical turn, where we easily could have been confused again, we heard a car honking. We stopped and it was that same nameless Samaritan. He had gotten into his car and found us to make sure we didn’t get lost again.

— Sent from my Palm Pre

Conway NH to Lewiston ME.

We finally figured out how we are getting home. We are flying from Bar Harbor to Walla Walla; stopping at Boston, Newark, and Seattle, on Tuesday August 8. I really wanted to take Amtrak but scheduling was impossible to manage unless we had known our departure date long ago. Also, unfortunately, Amtrak is not quite as bike friendly as they could be. Sorry Kim, we can’t stop in Indianapolis, and also, sorry Georgene, until now I thought we still might be able to stop and see you.
We left Holderness with the thought of what the Big Fella had told us about the roads, and sure enough, a big orange New Hampshire DOT truck came by and flashed his lights at us. We waved back. Since we know when we are leaving, our plan is now to arrive in Bar Harbor on Friday instead of Thursday. When we stopped in Conway we stopped at the library and asked a woman out in the flowers weeding if there was any good place to eat. ‘Really the only place close’, she said, ‘is Bea’s’, and she pointed down the street. We stopped at Bea’s and ordered lunch. I had my first lobster roll of this trip, and with cole slaw and pickled beets. It was good and so was Randy’s lunch of chicken sandwich and an egg salad sandwich. It was good, so good in fact we decided to stop for the night just so we can eat at Bea’s again. the waitress pointed out a place down the road where we could stay. This trip is about meeting people, the bike, the physical challenge, and the Food.