USA4CT - Ride Day 4 - Tour Day 1 - June 1, 2013 - Sat

Start Time: 0600 EDT
Stop Time: 1830 EDT
Start Location:  Madawaska, ME
Stop Location: Newburgh, NY
Lodging: Hampton Inn
Dinner: LongHorn Steakhouse
Miles Traveled Today: 661
Weather:60-96 cloudy-fog-sunny


Well the first day of the actual tour!! It had just stopped raining when we got up at 5am. We had planned to head out at 5:30am but wanted to make sure it had stopped raining. We checked radar and the last cell appeared to be clearing Madawaska and heading on east and we, of course were heading SOUTH!! BTW, the sunrise was at 4:40am in Madawaska today (but we couldn't see the sun, only daylight because of all the clouds.

Here is Bill ready to depart:

The roads were very wet with ponding water:

We first headed over to Fort Kent and reached the start of US 1. We hope to be at the end of US 1 this week at Key West. We also have been or will be at the start/end of I-95, US 1 and US 2 on this tour. He then headed down Maine SR 11. All the locals had told us to watch out for MOOSE!! Well, we hadn't gone but a few miles when I came over a small ridge in the road and a cow moose was standing right in my lane broadside to me. She was pointing to the right so I braked hard, hit the CB button to alert Bill, swerved to the left and fortunately the moose took off to the right when she heard me coming closer!! That pumped up the adrenaline for the rest of the day!! Went on to see another cow moose on the right shoulder and a BIG bull moose with a nice set of velvet antlers on the left shoulder. Fortunately, again, they both headed into the woods as I approached them. SR 11 was a very nice scenic motorcycle road, even with it very wet. We never did have anymore rain and could actually see blue sky to our south. The bikes were getting very dirty from the wet roads. I would recommend SR 11 over US 1 for any travels there in northern Maine!! Very enjoyable ride.

 This is where we got gas and back on I-95 between Houton and Bangor. A local potatoe farmer had just pulled in on his tractor to gas/diesel up.

 That's it for the pictures for the day. It got very hot in southern Maine (mid/upper 90's). We made it back to Newburgh, NY for the night at the same hotel we stayed at going up and knew we could easily get back to Richmond the next day from there. We had called three other hotels from the service plaza on the Massachusetts Turnpike but they were all booked up due to weekend weddings, but we got lucky back at our same hotel. We were very tired and ready to hit the sack early.