Day four meant it was time to start working our way home and the plan was to work our way along the coast.
Lucky for us the White mountains were between us and the coast so we had to ride through them.
I have to admit it was hard to head for the ocean and leave these awesome mountains. I am not much of a “beach” guy, but I sure do love the mountains. There is no doubt I will return to this area to explore it more!
As much as I loved the area, there were more states to see and time was running short so we headed south.
We caught US1 in Maine and took it into Portsmouth, NH. This was a bustling area with big crowds and lots of activity. Lots of action, but not really my cup of tea.
A guy at Prescott Park told me that in WW2 a German sub went underneath this bridge and into the bay.
There were many places to eat here, but I really was not hungry yet and decided to wait for our next ocean destination.
Our next destination was not the ocean – it was a pond. Walden Pond specifically. One of my favorite books of all time is Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I encourage everyone to read this book. It is a book that will make you think about your life and it could very well be a life changing event.
Anyway, I was pretty excited about seeing the location where this book was written and upon arrival was quite surprised at how busy the place was! i never knew there was so much interest in Thoreau!
Like far too many parks in the United States today there is an admission fee. We were lucky and they allowed our motorcycles in for free and gave us premium parking!
First stop was a recreation of the house he built and lived in.
The bummer about the house is the fact that it is not in the original location. The original location was “on a hillside elsewhere in the park”.
On we went to see the actual pond. Over the years I had formed a image in my minds eye of what the pond loooked like. In the picture below you can see exactly bwhat I had pictured:
Unfortunately, that carefully framed image is not an accurate representation of what we saw. This is what we saw:
Good God. The place is nearly a theme park.
I have been thinking ever since about how Thoreau would feel about this. I don’t think he would like it. On the other hand he might like the fact that people were enjoying the simple pleasure of his swimming hole. All I know is that I was disappointed. This is not at all what I was expecting.
Back on the bikes we start heading for a lighthouse at Beavertail State Park on Conanicut Island, New Hampshire. There was no disappointment here. This is an absolutely stunning location that made me forget all about the mountains.
I also got this great video of a couple guys trying to land a fish!
I was so overcome with the place I began sending pictures to bunches of people. It is honestly one of the nicest places I have ever set foot – nearly the equal of the Deals Gap overlook.
The weather was absolutely perfect, and then almost instantly the sun was gone abnd we were buried under a heavy blanket of fog. It was a bummer to have the weather change, but the reality was that we needed to move on anyway. Our final destination of the day was to be Nyack, NY and it was still a long way off.
It was pretty late when we arived at our motel and we realized we were very close to NewYork City. Neither of us had ever been to NYC so the temptation was strong to detour through the next day on the way home.
Watch for the next update to see what decision we made!