September 12 - day 79 Monday

September 12 - day 79 Monday
Start - Maine border on Route 2 east of Bethel
End - Near Farmington, Maine just south of Route 2
Miles - 56 (Larry 31.0, Marcee 25.0)
Start time - 940am
End time - 530pm
Miles driven not ridden about 5

We stayed in Gorham, NH and started off the day with breakfast at Welsh's which was established in 1898.  The owner back in the 1980's had a sports card shop and there was a lot of old baseball memorabila photographs and autographs.  I found it interesting since I followed sports growing up in New York. There was an old ad for "Larraping" Lou Gehrig promoting Camel cigarettes.  There was a picture of about 10 living members of the 500 home run club autographed by each one (Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Frank Robinson, Killebrew, Reggie Jackson) are the ones I can remember.  Breakfast was good too!

After breakfast we drove to the Maine border and I got on the bike after our morning routine of getting the bike down, loading panniers and noodle, putting on triangle on the rider and on the car, prayer and reading scripture, putting on our odometers and heading out.  Our first stop for the day was at Bethel Bicycle where we visited with Peter and Gary and got our tires topped off. Thank you!

Route 2 so far has been good to ride with wide shoulders except through Rumford and Mexico where the shoulders were minimal and the traffic was more concentrated.  We plan to continue on Route 2 into Bangor and then head southeast to Bar Harbor.  Thursday is our ETA.

The terrain was up and down as we traveled in the Maine Lakes and Mountains Region.  Tomorrow we anticipate getting to somewhere between Newport and Bangor.