After getting up at 0530, eating breakfast at the hotel and checking out of my room, I started my day by paying my respects to native sons of Shelburne, NH. They have a nice World War 2 Memorial with a nice parking lot on US-2 just to the east of Gorham. It was already raining but I didn't want go home yet. So I used US-2 to get back to the intersection of NH-16. In Berlin, I got gas at Irving (0920) and then continued north into Coos County. The road followed the Androscoggin River closely between Gorham and Errol. It continued to rain but lightened a bit as I went north - like it has been for the last few days, the temps were in the 40s. With cell signal spotty, I relied on a paper map I had - after a few years with the Google Display it felt weird to take a step back from the technology... I made a short detour to see Umbagog Lake (on NH-26 right near the Maine border) - I’d seen this body of water from the top of Baldplate and had wondered what our was. Backtracked to the west, towards Colebrook, and eventually passed through Dixville Notch State Park. I encountered serious fog there and decided to go down into “town” to learn more about this famous “First in the Nation” (for Presidential voting) location. There wasn’t much... Decided to keep going, hoping to find a place dry enough to take a walk. When I reached US-3, I thought about going north to the Connecticut Lakes - the weather dissuaded me. Instead, I continued south until I got to Stratford - because of traffic,I crossed the (narrow) Connecticut River and used VT-105 to go west. At a minimum, I’d hoped to see a moose this weekend - there were signs (and observation platforms) for them in several places but they must have been sheltering from the rain. When I reached Bartlett, the huge crowd of Connecticut license plates made me think there was a better way to I-91. This really didn’t turn out to be true - VT-105 continued to the northwest until I was only about five miles from the Canadian Border (Newport, VT). Because it really never stopped raining, the extra time and distance didn’t really phase me - it was nice to explore! When I got on the Interstate, though, the traffic headed south made me wish I’d already made it home... I drove back to my condo via I-91 and arrived by 1230. Just after I started unpacking, Mollie called to ask me to come get her because she'd walked down to Hanover to shop at the Co-Op and found it was closed (and the rain had made her not want to walk back to my condo). After my great weekend away, I was happy to get back into the "pick up & drop off" mode again. Overall, my trip to the North Country of New England was quite rewarding overall - I'm glad I found some places with no other tourists!
