Wednesday 15th July
Cold and cloudy start in upstate New York. Stopped off for breakfast and to add a layer of clothing on after breakfast a group of patch wearing ruffy tuffy looking bikers pulled in just as we were leaving. We got chatting and before we knew it they were all holding hands and saying a prayer for us. It just goes to show you can't judge a book by its cover. Towards the end of the ride the weather had warmed up and the sun poked it's head out just before it went down. We have had some really good roads to ride today but It seems that the fastest speed limit in NY is 55mph and I found keeping to within 10mph of it very hard and slow going but still a very enjoyable ride.

Thursday 16th July
Sunny day. Weather was so good we decided to have a pool day and Marcia got a chance to top up her tan.

Friday 17th July
Really good start to the day not to hot not to cold. We rode through many quaint little villages and also the Adirondack National Reserve. The scenery was very enjoyable and the roads were reasonably twisty but the road surface on a lot of them left a lot to be desired in fact we have ridden on smoother unpaved roads and the slow speed limits got even slower after we crossed in to Vermont. To cross over in to Vermont we took a small cable ferry.

We stopped off at the Ben & Jerry ice cream factory for the $4 tour. When we got there it was not what we expected it was absolutely heaving and they were running the 30 minute tour every 10 minutes with 40 people a time. It was not very interesting and was more about how good they are, but we did get to sample some ice cream and it was our favourite, salted caramel.
From there we went in search of a room for the night and got a shock at the price of places so we rode on for a bit but we still ended up having to bite the bullet and paying above our budget. Actually it was more like biting a canon shell.

Saturday 18th July
We had heavy rain through the night but it had stopped by the morning and was warming up. We set off towards Augusta Maine passing through New Hampshire on the way, we seemed to be catching up with the rain towards the end of the day and it became quite cold, but thankfully never actually caught up with it. When we got to Augusta we took a tour around an old fort built in1754 Fort Western. The original building was still standing although it had had quite a lot of renovation. Still very interesting to have a look around, it had been used as a Fort then as a Store and was then converted in to accommodation before being restored as an exhibit.

From there we went in search of somewhere to stay it was way to expensive in Augusta so we headed on East hoping to find somewhere, we ended up in Bangor but still not that cheap.