20080922 White Mountains

20080922 White Mountains

Cloudy, not cold.

In the night we had a little bit of rainfall, but not cold at all and the ground near our tent was not even wet.
The campground host come by and wishes us a goodmorning. He has a question about a saying he heard, that might be Dutch, if we know anything about it. We do not understand it, but we run into a very pleasant conversation with him. We talk about NL and the fight against the see, as we are partly below sealevel. New Orleans, government, US view on Russia, Wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, Oil price, house prices, nature/tree colors, animals etc etc. Again, very nice conversation, and we could continue if we didn't want to see more of the country, so we shook hands and said goodbye.
We had yogurt with cereals and left the Kancamagus highway to Lincoln. In North Lincoln is a shoppingmall, we wanted to check,out. Depending the "investigation" of the mall and the weather, we would go shopping today and tomorrow climb Mount Washington. But the weather was extremely clear and sunny, the shoppingmall was small, so we shopped for 1 hour and went up the mountain. Fee is $20 for a car, driver and cd. Add $7 for an additional person. An exciting drive of 25 minutes in first gear. We were, again, very lucky, because the clear blue skies is something that only happens about 30 days of the year. Many more cases there is fog, clouds or even worse weather. The views are spectacular. We even saw 2 old steam-mountain-trains come up and down.
The decent is more difficult, as you need to be in 1st gear and thus brake with the engine, but because we are heavy loaded with all holiday luggage, we easily go 30-40 mph in first gear, where 15-20 is the limit. So brakes and pauses to co0l down the brakes is key.
We set of arround 17:00 to Acadia Park, which we would reach at 23:00 according to TomTom without pauses.
We follow for 2 hours and decide to not follow TomTom's advise anymore, as it guides us onlynon small roads and in the meantime its completely dark. So we set course to Augusta(capitol of Main), so we can find food, hotel and hit i95 the next morning.
We arrive at 20:00 at Super 8 Motel and get a large room for $59. We eat at Applesbe.