New England #5

Monday morning finds us in Bangor Maine at a Holiday Inn. We used a great coupon out of one of those paper travel books you pick up at the State Welcome Centers. (we have saved like 30 or 40 dollars off the normal walk in room rate by using them) Vickie has a great method. She doesn’t show the coupon until after she asks if they have a room. That way they can’t say they don’t have any rooms, and then point to the fine print that says subject to availability. I let Miss Vickie handle all the hotel room negotiations. She is a tough negotiator. I think I mentioned that we stayed at a VERY pricey Comfort Inn in St. Johnsbury VT Saturday night. Well the place just wasn’t up to the standards of the price they charged. I was outside cleaning the car windows and packing up, and the lady at the desk made the mistake of asking Vickie "how was everything?" Vickie, being honest, told her we were quite disappointed and that we had paid half as much for better quality accommodations at severa l other places. Turns out Comfort Inn has a satisfaction guarantee and we ended up getting the room free. This was not our intention but we did feel they really hosed us on the price of the room at the self proclaimed "Taj Mahal!" of Vermont.

We left St. Johnsbury heading East following Rt. 2 and eventually came to the New Hampshire border and Mt. Washington. For those who don’t know, Mt. Washington is like the highest peak in New England and has an auto road to the top built in the late 1800’s. I had been up it years ago on a motorcycle with a friend. I suggested to Vickie we ought to try it. (little did she know I was really talking about driving up a mountain) It was a beautiful sunny clear day, and we got to the entrance pretty early ahead of the crowd. The sign at the entrance said there was a high wind warning at the top, but I decided to go for it anyhow. We headed up the narrow winding road, which is a 12% or better grade for over 8 miles. The road is just barely wide enough for 2 vehicles to pass and there are no guardrails with thousands of foot drop offs. It was really a fun time but Vickie was terrified. We got to the top and lucked up cause 9 out of ten times the top is cloud covered. Because of the high wind, we had several times when the clouds rolled off and we could see the whole vista. It was really amazing watching the clouds go by directly in front of the windshield moving VERY fast. Mt. Washington is the place where the highest wind on the surface of the planet has ever been recorded of 232 miles an hour at –47 ° . Glad it wasn’t yesterday. We got safely down and continued across New Hampshire and Maine to Bangor. The fall foliage just keeps getting better and better. We camped at the above mentioned Holiday Inn and found out the Cole Land Transportation Museum is right next door. So this morning we are off to see that. It is supposed to have the largest collection of snowplowing equipment anywhere and several 50’s tractor-trailers. More later.

Wes