Ah, the White Mountains...

It was about an hour and a half (hoff) south of here that I first strapped downhill skis to my feet and learned to ski. That and the fact that Cheryl Sargent was pregnant, led me to meet my best friend in October of 1972 (details on the Cheryl Sargent thing available upon request).

I packed up a little earlier today, to get a few miles down the road before breakfast. It was a simple matter of heading north on U.S. 1 to the border crossing town of Houlton, Me. It was there that I met Melvin Charette and his wife Lisa served me breakfast. Let me explain...

while looking for a nice cafe for breakfast I spotted this work of art and had to stop and take a picture

That was when I met Melvin, the owner of Bordertown Cycles in Houlton. He repairs all makes of bikes from Harleys to "metric" bikes as they call the Japanese imports now. His shop is celebrating its one year anniversary and he has a real nice set up. It's clean and appears to be spacious and well organized. 

After chatting for a few minutes I rode about a stones throw down the street and ate at the Elm Tree Diner. The waitress asked about my bike and told me she rides. She owns a Harley Dyna-Glide Low Boy and loves it. That's when she told me she was Lisa Charette, Melvin's wife! Small world, or small town anyway!

At Melvin's suggestion I intended to ride highway 2A southwest out of town, join highway 2, then take it all the way to Bangor. Melvin said it wasn't a very interesting ride because all you can see is trees. But after riding across Arizona and New Mexico, trees was exactly what I longed for. As I cruised down highway U.S. 1, I was impressed with the little towns and villages I came to. 

This was exactly what I was looking for. Each one was every bit New England yet uniquely different. It seemed that they all had the tall steepled white church from the early 1800's or earlier, colonial homes, small (or not so small) cemeteries with well aged headstones, each one different than the next. Even the businesses were unique, from Melvin's art work to creative names. No branch offices, just local business people that you knew could work out a fair deal with a hand-shake instead of a meeting of lawyers. All of the towns were bedecked with flags in preparation for the Holiday Weekend and many of the towns had a large, proud statue and/or monument honoring their veterans. Many of the monuments listed Veterans names who had died in the wars, usually going back to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

the rest of WWII heroes were on the next slate, they accounted for 10% of the population!

Yet, as I said, they were all unique. From the beautiful creek flowing through Milo

the 100 year old monument honoring Mattawamkeag's war heroes back to the Revolutionary war

 to Dover-Foxcroft that used to be two towns, but when they decided to join forces they held a wedding ceremony and had people stand in for each of the towns and exchange vows! Restaurants with personality and attitude, not franchise fees. 

So much history, so much personality.

The Girls were up and at it first thing this morning and were doing a great job, that is until they put me on a highway heading north toward Canada, then went silent. I finally stopped at a grocery store (IGA) in a resort by a mountain lake (Rangeley) only to discover that the battery had died on my phone and silenced them. So I plugged it into my remote charging system on the bike and circled around Rangeley and circled 75 miles back to highway 2. It worked out fine because I had wanted to stay further north in Maine without going into Canada and this route met that criteria better than if I had stayed on 2 all the way. I had by-passed Bangor and got to see some beautiful country.

I would have to say that Maine is two very distinct regions. The coastal communities remind me of Connecticut and coastal Massachussetts - lots of fishing villages, resort hotels in many places and people, too many people for some of us, in certain places. If you go inland, Maine becomes much like upstate New Hampshire (or New Hampsha, if you prefer). Green, lush foliage everywhere, increasingly rocky with lakes and ungulating roads, magnificent vistas and these great little towns. Most of the highways run north and south however so as to connect the coastal communities to Canada, it seems. So if you are upstate you need to get into the right "drainage", then head north.

Because of my side trip to Rangeley, I ended up going 388 miles today but, unlike what Melvin had foretold if I went straight to Bangor, it was incredible riding.