We are finally back in the USA! The crossing was fine – took about 30 seconds…..and after I had chopped up all my onions and hidden my 3 heads of garlic in a purse in the closet! I’m still smarting over the loss of all my herbs coming from Newfoundland.

The mail pick up in Houlton, ME was uneventful, but the opening of it was not. We had intended to have mail forwarded to us in Canada, but we kept hearing horror stories of people waiting 3 weeks for their mail, customs going through it, etc., and since we pay all our bills online, decided just to wait. Well, we pay all the bills online, except for the medical bills that had accumulated after checkups and Dick's two lithotripsies. Boy, were they mad and poor Dick, who has never paid a bill late in his life, was horrified. I was far less upset, and after calls to each office and collection firm, all is well and our credit rating is intact. I need to figure out how to handle that in Europe next year.

We saw some pretty color, maybe 50%, coming down I-95 to Bangor. The real color was straight west, but I didn’t see any great roads, and know that I am going to drag Dick and Winnie through enough scenic areas before it is over. We stayed in a great Passport America park – Pumpkin Patch RV Resort in Hermon, just outside of Bangor. Now we are on our way, via US2 to Bethel, ME, where I was told by a campground host there, the leaves are just starting to turn. The drive we are on now will be gorgeous in a couple of weeks. We plan to stay in the Bethel area for a few days, and take some day trips north where there is supposed to be real color – I certainly hope that we don’t spend the next month just missing all the spectacular stuff. I am making myself nuts calling foliage watch lines for every state, etc. After each weekly color report email, I faithfully pull out the atlas and my yellow highlighter and mark the recommended routes.

The Passport Park in Bethel, Maine, (Bethel Outdoor Adventure and Campground) was good and again on a river. What a great area. The color hadn't quite come to Bethel, but north of there was beautiful.
We rode our bikes into town and found what has started a rather dangerous habit – the best fresh lemon scone in the world. Even Dick, “chocolate guy”, had to admit that it was outstanding. Later in the day we rode again out to the little airport where guys were hang gliding with those little motorized carts we have seen in the desert. But, what we hadn’t seen was the guy whose motor he carried on his back and who had to run to get the kite off the ground! It took a couple of tries with lots of prep between, but once he got off the ground he went just as high and long as the other guys. Interesting.

We really liked the owners of this campground and might consider volunteering there one summer since free use of kayaks and canoes is part of the deal. Across the street is a great little English inn, restaurant, and pub called The Jolly Drayman.
We took the Jeep north looking for the illusive color, and found some beautiful scenery (and color). Grafton Notch State Park has some wonderful hiking opportunities, and views on Highway 17 up to Rangeley State Park are well worth seeing. We also crossed over into New Hampshire and the Balsams Grand Resort Hotel, a beautiful historic hotel in a stunning setting. A very nice casual lunch can be found in the golf clubhouse.

This area deserves much more time, but we are meeting up with Oz and Linda again in Vermont and need to move on. I was disappointed to miss Portland, but am trying really hard to slow down and not try to see everything.

We moved west to the Elks Lodge in Littleton, NH, where we joined Oz and Linda in driving the Kancamagus Highway, a very scenic route through the White Mountains. Note to self: Do not drive this highway on a Friday or weekend day in the fall. On the map, the eastern end where you turn north on 16A to come back on the northern part of the loop, looks very rural. Au Contraire!! It was a non-stop shopping and restaurant area, with bumper to bumper traffic – we spent nearly an hour getting through it. The White Mountains are beautiful and one could spend a long time there, but we had a real “tourist moment”. As a retiree, you learn to dread weekends and holidays – I realize that is selfish, since those nice people are paying into Social Security and need time off too, but still....

It didn't get any less crowded when we moved to Montpelier, VT, although we were the only RV in the Elks Lodge parking lot. The real action was taking place over in Stowe and Waterbury, the home of Ben and Jerry's. All four of us had done the tour in previous trips, but there was no talking Dick and Linda (the two dessert fanatics) out of standing in line to get a cone “where it all began”.
There is a lovely bike path through Stowe, and we spent a pleasant afternoon biking and stopping for a beer. There was another restaurant on Linda's hit list – The Kitchen Bistro in Richmond. We were lucky enough to get reservations due to a cancellation. What a treat!! After 3 ½ months of all seafood all the time, I had beef carpaccio for an appetizer and a tenderloin filet on gorgonzola polenta for the main. Yummy nummy!!!

Oz and Linda headed back to Detroit while Dick and I stayed on in Montpelier. We headed north on a scenic color drive to Newport where we were told about another bike trail. We rode until we reached a sign telling us that we were at the border of Quebec and that we had to go through customs......we turned around. More beautiful country with more spectacular color. The other thing I love about Vermont is that it is such a foodie place. There is a big push to eat local food and a movement called Localvore – lots of organic food and emphasis on quality. The cheddar cheese lived up to its reputation, and we went to great farmers markets in Montpelier and Stowe. There is also a culinary institute in Essex, near Burlington, and we ate at 2 restaurants run by the students – both very good. Burlington is a pretty town, but the whole area has way to much traffic for me. By this time, we were pretty spoiled by scenic small towns.