Welcome back to Jackson

As I signed off the last post we saw this in the distance. Cool. Lets go see that. If we were 30 minutes later we would have fully missed this. It is called Chimney Rock and we ended up camping underneath it that night. What a stroke of luck to wake up to this awesome piece of nature.

look close you just see a spire in the distance.

During the drive Lisa learned a bit about the elusive Jackalope and it was total luck that we came across a life size jackalope for a picture. 

We are back in Jackson for the next few days. This area is so pretty it was a shame not to take Lisa back to it. We finally made it through 'the suck' (midwest corn states) and came into Jackson via Casper on Hwy 26.
Because
This took us up through the Tetons. The Tetons are amazing.

The view definitely doesn't suck.

We arrived back into town in the afternoon and had an invitation from Wendell, the local area trailbuilder to stay at his place. Before we hit his place we did a short laundromat run. Everything into one big load.. and now everything is blotchy because the last load had bleach in it that didn't get rinsed out correctly. Great.

We crashed at Wendell's that evening. It is getting cold! Temps are now dropping to 1 degree and then daily highs back to 28. The next morning we did a 20 mile single track ride up in the forest behind Wendell and Rachel's place. Pretty cool area that you can just ride behind his house and have this terrain available to you.


Lisa and I did a little sightseeing in town that day and she wanted her picture under the dead animal hair.
We feasted that night.

Today we are heading up the Teton Pass to do an 8500 foot ride.

Homeward bound.

preface: I hate the way images lay out in this blog. If you ever make one, make sure the way they show in the editor is the way they show when published. I can't be bothered to fight with it constantly. 

Still in Maine

Well the last time we wrote we were dining on Maine lobster for breakfast. Its funny how one person's suggestion can change your entire trip.
While we were in Nova Scotia, we ran into a guy while riding. He seemed to know what he was talking about and suggested we visit Kingdom trails in Vermont. We were already debating by this time about whether or not to take the time to visit the Eastern seaboard cities, Boston and New York. We knew we wanted to visit the Adirondack mountain range so this actually seemed to line up fairly well. We rationalized our decision to skip the cities that we could visit anytime via plane and hotel vs an area that would take hours to get to only by car.

So after doing the Maine coast for a while, we headed inland through Bangor after seeing Acadia National Park. I said it before and will say it again. National parks are for people who NEVER visit parks or wilderness. Acadia national park is right in the heart of an area known as Bar Harbour, Maine. You probably don't know it because I am not pronouncing it correctly. Imagine Kevin Costner saving some woman because he is guy who saves lives and lives in "Bah Habor". There. Now you remember.

Acadia National park was mediocre to say the least. The crowds were the most amazing thing. We arrived at the beach and turned around. It was just a horrible experience.

And into Vermont

We drove North West up through Bangor and stopped in Skowhegan. It was a pretty casual night and I suggested we catch a movie as I noticed a theatre in town. Great, yeah lets do that. 20 minutes later we were in a complete electrical/rain storm that was violent to say the least. While we were hanging out in the van for the movie time I said to Lisa, "you know I usually tend to get these things wrong so I am just going to double check the time." Turns out I was right, I was looking at the wrong time... and the wrong theatre. The theatre was in a different town. arghhhhh!. I ask the kid behind the counter, "will I make it?".. "Yeah you will make it." So we peal out Skowhegan for the mighty town of Farmington, Maine. Under a full on howling storm. Sporty to say the least. We made it, saw the movie... (tix were 6.00 a person!) and slept in Farmington that night.
Next morning we waited around for a farmers market to open to grab some food and got chatting with a guy setting up..
"What are you doing in Farmington?? "
'Just travelling and riding around.'
"Argh.. if I wasn't working I would take you up to Sugarloaf. The trails up there are great. You should stop there on your way through to Vermont."
So we did. He was right. Riding and travel that day was pretty fun as we ended up on some roads that we weren't planning on taking.
"Make sure you have gas 'cause there ain't much up there."
That afternoon after recreating, we broke out West across Maine and slept a night in a campground in Colebrook, New Hampshire. Sounds like a lot of driving but the states are tiny. They are however remote and very beautiful. The New England states are like you imagine, old treed hills rolling down into lazy meandering rivers. Very peaceful.

The next few days we spent in the enormous village/hamlet (whichever is smaller), warren of East Burke. You probably won't find it on a map. If you ride though you will know you have arrived because every spot in the parking lot is take and has a bike rack on it. This is home to what is known as Kindom Trails. The claim is 100 miles of singletrack. For my riding friends that is a pretty big claim. I would say it more like 40 , (maybe they measure both ways), but either way it was good. Good enough to stay for two days. They are doing an interesting experiment out there. 100% of the trails are on private land. You actually buy a ticket to ride for the day. Just like a lift ticket. I am assuming this is how they are dealing with liability issues. The trails were pretty fantastic though. Fast flowing trails that had a ridge in the middle and rivers on either side. Essentially, climb the ridge, descend, climb the ridge, descend. fun.

	check out my pickle.

Adirondacks and New York

We split out of East Burke, (well turned right actually and we were out), to make our way on through Vermont and into the Adirondack Mountain range of New York. The Adirondack range was pretty. Not overly inspiring but we could easily see why people would vacation here. Tons of pretty small lakes, and easy hiking trails.

We stopped off in Lake Placid, home to the '32 and '80 winter olympics to watch kids training on the all season jump line. Pretty cool time to be a kid and have parents who have the cash to throw you in something like this.
We blasted the Adirondacks over a long day kept driving West.

We actually ended up that day catching the sunset at Niagara Falls!

The flatlands of the west

The last few days have sucked though as we are on the big drive West. After Niagara there really is no reason to stop again as we head West back towards Teton National Park. Its just long days of driving. Luckily the heat wave seems to have faded a bit and we are just getting temps of 34.
That is all for now. As I write this we are just about on the border of Wyoming inside Nebraska on Highway 26 watching a beautiful red sunset.

Halifax

Breakfast is served... 

South Maine coast style. Just your average 3.5 lobster for breakfast.

Its been 5 days since our last post and since that time. At last writing we were travelling around the coast of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Since then we have crammed in a circumnavigation of the Island, A mountain bike ride in the heart of the Highlands National Park, a camp in what we would consider one of the prettiest campsites we have stayed in, a drive along the South East coast of Nova Scotia, Two days in Halifax to enjoy the music, an awesome Halifax mtn bike experience (awesome), a drive to Digby for the ferry to St.John (not St.John's) , a 3 hour ferry ride a night in the rest area in Maine, breakfast as per above and finally a visit to Acadia National Park. Whew.. Its sounds like a ton of driving and it has been but we are getting in a lot of time on the ground as well.

Picking up from last post....

Cape Breton and Cabot trail

Heh.. you know what I hate (I imagine most of you know I hate a lot of things), is people who say you should have been here 'insert date/time'. The night we stayed in Isle Madame on Cape Breton Isle, we asked some lady running along the road if there was any pub or public house around and she says, 'oh well Asley Macissac is playing a free concert tonight but he is probably done by now'. Nice.. thanks for that info.
We woke under cloudy skies and made our way North East to the start of the world famous Cabot Trail just outside of Sydney on Cape Breton Island. Cape Breton is also home to the Highlands National Park.
The Cabot trail is a 300 km drive around the northern tip of Cape Breton and has some serious ascending and descending. The drive was amazing though. Its pretty cool to feel like you are on the tip of the most eastern part of North America. I am probably wrong about that but it sure is cool.
As part of the trail is the Cape Breton Highlands park  I have a theory about national parks. National Parks are designed for people who never visit parks. Either way this park is pretty wild to get into. It is rarely visited and when it is, its probably not more than 200 metres from the car.
We decided to do a mountain bike ride that started in the lowlands and slowly climbed all the way up to what seemed sub alpine. We thought we were heading to a lake at the top but after riding way more than what we thought would be a 8 km ride, we still hadn't seen the lake. Well we saw a lake but figured we would actually get to the lake. It turns out the trail was just that. A view to the lake. The wild blueberry fields however made Lisa and Maya pretty damn happy. Seriously... fields of wild blueberries.
We made camp that night on the ocean. Such a nice campsite. Right on the ocean, with a natural freshwater pool to rinse off in at a secluded beach. Very nice.

fields of blueberries

Halifax

After nearly running out of gas in the middle of nowhere in South East Nova Scotia we finally arrived the next evening into Halifax/Dartmouth and made our way to our next friends parents place. Kenny's mom and pop live in Dartmouth just a few blocks from the bridge into Halifax proper. It is always such a treat to stay in a house. They have this awesome feature called hot water. 

Dennis asked us what we wanted to do that evening and we said we were really hoping to catch some live fiddle music. ' You should have been here last week... the international fiddler's competition was in town'.  Thanks.. that is very helpful. Hey, they were handing out hundred dollar bills up the street but I think they left a few minutes ago. 

Anyway Dennis was really great and went out of his way to call around and see if he could find us some music. He totally delivered! We spend the evening at a pub that had open mic night, which was a group of musicians grouped around a table just hamming out the celtic music. so great. 

The next day we spend exploring Halifax harbour. Nothing to report here. A city. 

That night we took out Dennis and Donna to a fancy tourist restaurant. It was right down in the harbour on the boardwalk. It was a nice evening at the Bicycle Thief restaurant, although if you eat there, check your food and a reminder, flash fry to them means deep fry. Service sucked but that is what you get at tourist restaurant. After that Dennis took us for a tour and we got to listen to another couple help each other drive. 

We left early the next morning to get in a bike ride at the 'Whopper Dropper'. No shit, park behind the Burger King and ride. This was easily the best riding I have done yet since Idaho. It was so cool to ride on granite fields. For my riding friends, very tight singletrack, big lunges, lots of nasty roots, granite climbs, healthy drops. 4.5 travel mandatory.  The riding was so good.

 

Back in the van we had to drive across NS to make the Digby to St John NB ferry. This is a 250 km haul to get to the ferry.  It was about 50 kms from Digby that I remembered that there was only two sailings daily. The last sailing was at 4pm. I had no idea Vannie could drive a fast as she did. We actually called the terminal 5 kms out to ask them to wait. They informed us they were full anyway. We figured we were so close we should try anyway. It was like B.A Barrakus driving the A-Team van into the lot. 'Go right down, we held a ticket for you'! SWEEEEEET. The next sailing was 8 am the next day. 

Arrived in St.John and headed due west for border to Maine. Arrived at the border... you see where this is going... 'Can you give me an itinerary' ... 'um West.' 'Can I look in the back?'  Heh... she opens the door look in and closes it.. 'Yeah it looks like a road trip in there. Have fun.' 

This was the claw of a lobster the guys caught a few days back. It wouldn't fit in the trap but got the claw stuck in it. 

Which brings us to breakfast. 

Nova Scotia

We got our 10 year anniversary lobster feast around 10:30 on August 10 at 'the shack'. It was awesome.

Anne you sexy beast

We arrived into PEI via the confederation bridge. PEI is a lovely island that reminds me of a sleepy little cabin country. People take a lot of pride in their homes out here. Traditional colonial homes. The island is covered in graveyards, each one trying to outdo the other with an older headstone. We found headstone older than 1850 easily. Spooky. We found some pretty awesome beaches and the water was oddly very warm. Lake warm. I stopped off at the PEI distillery to try some potato vodka and their 'signature' whiskey. My mother told me to not say anything if I had nothing good to say. The vodka was good. The 3 year whiskey... (blank).

Sorry for the shite layout. I can't be bothered to hack the html to figure out how the lay up the photos better. You thought MSN butchered code... take a look at blogspot.

We split from PEI on the ferry to cross over into Nova Scotia. We arrived the evening of August 11 into Nova Scotia via New Glasgow. We had to ask a couple people if we were really in downtown as it was only about 2 blocks and completely shuttered.. other than the bar.

Today we spent in the forest riding in the area of Antigonish and generally chilling out. We were actually a bit wiped from the travel. Too much too fast.

Crashing. That is Lisa sleeping on the picnic table.

We have just arrived into Cape Breton. This place is wild. Dark and stormy and just desolate. It is really cool. We are on the Isle de Madame.  South West corner of Cape Breton.