Okay, let me stop for a moment and talk about the hills of Pennsylvania and New York, I love the topography...the hills and forests are a pleasure to go through. I love the rural landscape, no doubt. I think growing up in unincorporated Wheaton near the open farms and swamps in an age where we were allowed and expected to roam far and wide with older brothers was priceless; later to see the farmland and swamps get swallowed up in new homes made me bitter towards what happened to a historic and once magical land. The building boom in the 60s/70s made suburbia from Chicago to the Fox River. That building boom kept going till it reached the Rock River. Wheaton is 25 miles straight west of downtown Chicago. The Rock River is about 1 1/2 hours west of Wheaton, so when I got my FJR I took little strips of green winding west to northwest Illinois to escape the Chicago mega-opolis. I would ride free and fast in the open cornfields that everybody else despises on towards northwest Illinois and Galena with its promise of hills, views and a small taste of Virginia. So yes, I enjoyed the glimpses I got of western PA and NY. I was also remembering a solo trip I took on the FJR in 2005 to New England. This previous trip guided me in 2024 when traveling with Louanne and how I wanted to get to Vermont. We travelled east through Ithaca, stayed south on 2 lane highways south of Utica, then headed east on 8 towards Speculator, then north through Adirondack SP and slightly west to Tupper Lake, our destination for the night. Adirondacks remind me of the forests in far north Wisconsin, except that the Adirondacks have beautiful ponds, lakes, and mountains/hills as well. We stayed in a nice humble motel where you park in front of your room. Those are my favorite kind of motels if its in a decent neighborhood, the room is clean, and the shower and AC works. Everything was fine about this motel in Tupper Lake. We don't need fancy. On this trip, even humble motels cost a pretty penny it seems, so fancy motels would just break the wallet. Not an option. So we picked and chose where to throw out the extra ca$h.
Our next day, we headed towards Stowe, VT. We stopped on 9N at Ausable Chasm...its right by the side of the road and beautiful, so why not stop at the parking lot by the bridge? We did...Louanne loved it and took a lot of photos and shared on FB, I just took it in. We did cross the road and I saw people holding cables and walking on a cliff path, not for me I said. Louanne would have done it though.
We came at Stowe from the north through country and eventually Smugglers Notch...
We stopped and had our picnic lunch not 30ft from the Notch. We had a nice sturdy rock to sit on.
We got settled into Stowe at our nice B&B/motel in the center of town and had a nice relaxing swim before walking around town.
boatanchor, 3rd class.
