Oh Canada!

[jimf]

Later in the day I stumbled upon the oldest marble quarry in the U.S.:
 



 

[jimf]

Up in the Adirondacks I stopped to put on a layer and happened to have stopped at the trailhead for Ampersand Mountain:
 

 
I thought that was a very funny name.  A hiker told me that one of the stories told in local lore is that there is a river that dumps sand nearby and the sand has an amber color -- Amber Sand mutated over time to become Ampersand.  I have no idea if that's true or not but it's a good story so I'm going with it.

[jimf]

Saturday was too rainy to do the long ride I had intended but I rode a few miles down the road to an eatery for some sausage poutine:
 

 

[jimf]

The last picture I have is of the door prize I won.  My wife is less than pleased, but it makes me happy:
 

 
 

[jimf]

Those links are all dropbox; the first time I tried that the links seem to have died eventually. If that happens again I'll fix them up with links to my own server. Honestly, though, I'm paying for those links so I hope they're stable.

[brad27]

Wow, happy to have news from you. You did not crossed the St-Lawrence at Trois-Rivières? It's so much nicer and it would have not lenghten your trip. I must say i was thinkng of you this past weekend with all that rain on sunday.... I assume you must be a quebecois who immigrated to the states because when i read you were going to St-alphonse-rodriguez i went on Google map to see where it was. Even though it's not too far from T-R i never heard of that place before. That's when i figured out you were probably from that area and a quebecois.
 
It's always a pleasure for me to read road trip stories that occur in areas that i know. I've been to North Conway,NH many times via route 302. A nice one btw.
 
I'm planning a second trip in the Blue Ridge area. I would leave home on october 2nd for 8-9 days. This time i'll put the bike in a U-Haul bike trailer and do some milleage in the car(!) probably down to VA Beach and start the FJ and begin my ride at the Outer Banks and then do some riding at the end of the Ridge, Dollywood, Cherokee, Great Smoky Moutain Park, Gatlingburg, Pidgeon Forge TN, Deal's Gap etc
 
I started a thread asking ideas about where to park near Va Beach and start riding from there... We'll see.
 
Btw 3 years ago in mid-september i made the Ridge starting from Front Royal(Skyline Drive), Blowing Rock(no wind that day!), Shenandoah, Dollywood, Great Smoky Mtn Park, Tail of the Dragon, Gatlinburg, Pidgeon Forge all in 5 days on my Versys from Trois-Rivieres, Canada. 2812 miles(4500km). Was riding at least 12 hours a day at a fast pace. 50-60 mph in the Ridge(no cops-traffic) and 100 mph through Shenandoah. I ate mixed nuts and meal bars during those 5 days. I left on a monday and was back home by the next friday night after a 15 1/2 hour day of riding! Iron butt territory i guess. My butt hurt for the next 2 weeks. No kidding! That's why this time i want to tow the bike down a bit.
Brad
 

[jimf]

Wow, happy to have news from you. You did not crossed the St-Lawrence at Trois-Rivières? It's so much nicer and it would have not lenghten your trip.

 
That was my original plan but I hooked up with a friend for the ride that day and he had a nice all backroads route to Sorrell and the ferry. It was nice to have the company, and I hadn't taken a bike on a ferry in 15 years so that was nice too.
 

I assume you must be a quebecois who immigrated to the states because when i read you were going to St-alphonse-rodriguez i went on Google map to see where it was. Even though it's not too far from T-R i never heard of that place before.

Nope! I grew up in New Hampshire. One of my friends, who is Québécios, used to be a councilor at Camp de le Salle. We got the camp through that relationship. It's funny you mention not having heard of it; when I was trying to cool off and have dinner in St-Come there was a group of diners the next table over and we got to talking and they had never heard of Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez either ... even though we were only 10 miles away at the time. It's not a big place. :-)
 

It's always a pleasure for me to read road trip stories that occur in areas that i know. I've been to North Conway,NH many times via route 302. A nice one btw.

That's my old stomping grounds growing up, I did a lot of hiking in that area with my dad and Boy Scout troop. 302 is loaded with nice fast sweepers and wonderful scenery, but I confess that I usually go across the Kancamagus instead. That allows me to jump over to 302 via Bear Notch Road -- a nice mountain pass that in recent years has had pretty good pavement -- and puts me right near Will's Inn.  A bunch of the same friends that I was with up in Québec get together there every spring.
 
Also you should try Hurricane Mountain Road, off of the stretch where 16 and 302 coincide in Conway, just south of Intervale. Hurricane Mountain Road is tight and technical on one side, with a bunch of whoops on the other. I try to run it at least once in each direction whenever I'm in the area.
 
Hurricane is a very nice connector for jumping around the horror show of Conway traffic.  Follow it over to Green Hill road and take a right.  In a few miles you'll hit 113 and you can follow that south and end up just south of the Conway mall hell.  It's only another mile from there to 153, which is a nice little road that skirts the NH and Maine border.  Alternatively I like to take 113 northbound.  I think that goes through Evans Notch.  That was repaved within the last year and is in wonderful shape.  Beware the cyclists, though, especially on weekends.
 
Bear Notch, Evans Notch, and Hurricane are all seasonal roads so if you're riding early or late in the season they may well be closed.  This spring they were repairing a bridge on Bear Notch and it was closed well into the riding season.  It might still be, I haven't looked.  That caught me by surprise and forced me to a more circuitous route last spring.
 
The other way to jump around most of the traffic is West Side Road, which is much more direct, but that tends to have police on it and lots of friends have been ticketed over the years.  Take it easy on that one.
 

I'm planning a second trip in the Blue Ridge area. I would leave home on october 2nd for 8-9 days. This time i'll put the bike in a U-Haul bike trailer and do some milleage in the car(!) probably down to VA Beach and start the FJ and begin my ride at the Outer Banks and then do some riding at the end of the Ridge, Dollywood, Cherokee, Great Smoky Moutain Park, Gatlingburg, Pidgeon Forge TN, Deal's Gap etc

I'm jealous! Several friends did a trip down there a couple of months ago, similarly trailering the bikes down to that area. I don't have a trailer (or even a car that can tow one right now) so I'd likely ride down and that's a whole lot of riding just to get there and back.  That would have to be my big vacation for the year.  Still, it's on the bucket list sometime in the not too distant future.
 

Btw 3 years ago in mid-september i made the Ridge (...) all in 5 days on my Versys from Trois-Rivieres, Canada. 2812 miles(4500km).

Wow that is a lot of riding! That's almost three times as far as I've ever gone on a single trip, although I do plan to do some very long trips on the FJ in the upcoming years.
 

I left on a monday and was back home by the next friday night after a 15 1/2 hour day of riding! Iron butt territory i guess. 

Iron butt indeed.  I think my longest rides have been about 13 hour days, circa 400 miles, and I haven't strung more than two or three of those together at a time.  I generally like to keep them to about 10 hours so I don't have problems maintaining focus. 
Have fun on your trip and definitely post some pictures.

[jimf]

I've edited the previous links to point to photos on a known-good server.  Dropbox failed me.
 
I found a few more while I was doing that.
 
While I was in Tupper Lake I ate at the Lumberjack Inn.  It was decorated with a whole bunch of antique and vintage chainsaws.  I only have this one picture, unfortunately; they had some truly awesome old machines.
 
 

 
Breakfast was very good:
 
 

 

 
Later in the day I had lunch in Ontario and outside the restaurant there was a very rare zero-cylinder Triumph:
 
 

 
I think I was in Chertsey when I ran into this machine:
 
 

 
The owner gave me a big thumbs up right after I took this picture.  Sorry dude, I only got this one.
 

[Trambo]

Jim, I'm loving the pics and stories you're sharing on this epic ride!! Keep 'em coming buddy!
 
edit - Oh, and that may be the only Triumph I've seen without an oil leak underneath...