Homeward Bound

July 21st

We were up fairly early at the hostel, we all showered, none of us shaved, and two of us took care of normal bodily functions. Off we went to the USA. First stop was to be in the White Mountains of New Hampshire – Mount Washington. It was a four hour trip that seemed entirely made up of two lane black top. Eventually we reached the foot of Mount Washington and were faced with mounting it to the summit by rail (a three hour round trip) or car. I’ll leave it to my fellow travelers to recall which if either method we used. I’d hate to think we didn’t scale the hill.

Given that we still 2 ½ hours from the Maine coastline I’m pretty sure we did not take the train ride. Upon rolling in to Old Orchard Beach in the middle of the week we were stunned at the number of tourists. Further, it turned out they were all “frogs” as the locals called them. The tourists, parked all over the place, were all Canadian and mostly all French-Canadians. Frogs was not a term of endearment. In any case it looked like a marvelous party but with no room at the inn we were off on our third trip (all told covering 500 miles) of the day.

It was off to Wethersfield, CT to visit my Aunt and my cousin this time and they put us up nicely and fed us the next morning before the push home. The last stop of the trip was the U.S. Military Academy at West Point which we gave cursory look to stopping for perhaps an hour and maybe having lunch.

July 22nd

We arrived home at about four in the afternoon having been on the road for 148 hours, covering 1,400 miles. The next day, being a Friday, I would assume we threw a welcome home party. The following Monday it was back to work on the hills.