Day 8 – June 29th, 2019 – Canton, New York to Lincoln, New Hampshire: ~250 miles
I become a nature photographer.
Missed Day 7? – Day 7 – June 28th, 2019 – Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada to Canton, New York, United States: ~350 miles
Our first stop of the day was in Potsdam, New York for what is known as the “Potty Gardens.”
This isn’t off in the middle of nowhere…it’s right at an intersection in town!
I figured I should get a joke photo at a urinal.
We rode alongside a gentleman on a Honda Elite for a few moments.
On these types of trips, Vy loves to find opportunities to go hiking. The charms of Ausable Chasm could not be ignored.
Named for the river that flows through it, the tourist attraction was opened in 1870 and has been visited by over 10 million people.
The gorge is approximately 2 miles long, and it’s created several rock formations that have been given cute names – here’s the “Elephant’s Head.”
Vy in her element.
They offer floating raft tours for people who want to get up close and personal, but they don’t offer reservations. Vy and I couldn’t risk a potential wait in line as we had to catch a ferry later in the day.
This guy tried to become our friend while we stopped for a snack.
Beautiful hike taken care of, we got back on the RT.
To cross Lake Champlain from New York to Vermont, there are three ferry options. One of them (Port Kent to Burlington) is just 6 miles away from the chasm, however the current time was 1:45pm and the next ferry wasn’t until 4:10pm, so we rode north 25 minutes to Cumberland Head for the much shorter crossing to Gordon Landing. We snagged a ticket and the ferry operator had us stage at the front of the line.
Land Ho! A couple of fellow ferry passengers with nothing better to do came up to talk to me about the bike and our trip. One was an Indian gentleman who clearly wanted to talk about the motherland, but I’m a bad Indian who doesn’t have many stories to tell. I’m more of an Oreo – brown on the outside, white on the inside.
I thought Vy looked rather majestic with the flag in the background as we waited to dock.
This turtle has some intimidating claws.
Burlington, Vermont is home to the “world’s tallest filing cabinet”, which is comprised of 38 drawers. As you can see, some of the drawers are open and it appears that birds have made homes out of them. There’s also a VyVy for scale.
I had to slap a Bike-urious sticker on it. First person to send me a photo of them with this sticker gets a t-shirt!
Also in Burlington is the “Earth Clock”, a large sundial on Lake Champlain.
It requires a human (or a Baby Jack) to stand in the middle of it – looks like it was roughly 3:30 pm during our visit.
Across the street was a neighborhood park, and Baby Jack wanted to take this red motorcycle for a spin. I’m pretending the “M” logo means Matchless.
Looks like this guy copied Baby Jack’s idea of riding a red bike.
Some days, you want to have dessert before dinner. So we stopped by Ben and Jerry’s headquarters in Waterbury. It’s their first factory, which was built in 1985.
It produces approximately 350,000 pints per day. They also create something called the “Vermonster“, which is a 20-scoop “mountain of magic” that this crazy individual was attempting to take down by himself. I think this was near the end, and his friends had gotten out their phones to capture the moment. I feel obligated to point out that the Vermonster isn’t “just” 20 scoops, it also includes four bananas (sliced), three cookies and a brownie (chopped), four servings of hot fudge or hot caramel, ten spoonfuls of chopped walnuts, whipped cream, and eight spoonfuls of your toppings of choice. I feel sick just typing it out.
Here are the flavors you can choose for your 20 scoops…or maybe you can just get 1, as Vy and I did.
We took the tour, and were shocked to see this as a flavor option. Thankfully it wasn’t actually available, though it was something they did as a joke for tours on April Fools in 2016. They’ve since continued the tradition with oddball flavors for April 1 tours like White Cheddar and Pickleback.
Ben and Jerry’s is known for not taking themselves seriously, and one example of that is their “Flavor Graveyard”, where they commemorate flavors that were killed off due to a lack of commercial success.
There’s approximately twenty gravestones, each of features a rhyme.
We got back on the road, and I was highly confused by the gray license plate of this Nissan Pathfinder – to the point that I asked Vy to take a picture of it from the back seat.
Rain and clouds spoiled our view of the sunset as we headed east on Interstate 89.
We didn’t get a photo of the Vermont sign on the way into the state, so we made sure to get one as we were leaving.
That also meant we were at the New Hampshire border, so it was time to get that state sign as well!
Why, thank you! Unfortunately, this would be the last time I’d be happy for about 90 minutes, as Vy and I got caught in an immense thunderstorm.
I was glad to have the security of traction control as a backup, and also appreciative that the Velomacchi tail bag was truly waterproof. We didn’t take any photos until the rain stopped, but we were rewarded with the spooky sensation of fog seemingly coming off the pavement.
The weather slowed our progress down quite a bit, and by the time we got into Lincoln, New Hampshire there weren’t many dining options still open. We decided to go with The Common Man, which was absolutely fantastic because it was warm, dry, and had delicious food. I had to get a crab cake and a beer.
Our waitress took pity on us (I looked absolutely ridiculous shedding my waterlogged Aerostich at the table) and she sent another beer my way. She also made sure to mark up our leftover boxes in an adorable manner.
Seeing as I was annoyed with the amount of rain we pushed through, I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for Vy as a passenger. I’m lucky she’s such a trooper. Hopefully the weather would be better tomorrow, because we planned on riding up to the top of Mt. Washington!
On to Day 9!