Rain Rain Came to Maine, Willie wants it to go Away

Last night we had pizza delivered for dinner. Initially MeAsWe ordered a 16 inch, but I made her change it to the 20 inch. She was right, when we woke up this morning the extra 4 inches was still in the box. I was up early, and logged onto the NER site. OSJ had started a new tag game that circulates the tags between the 6 New England states and he started it off with a tag that was not too far from here. With that I went to work in MapSource to see if it would work it into our schedule.

Since we got the Four Corners Memorial , we made a left out of the motel parking lot and head north on US 1 toward Fort Kent.  Not too far from Madawaska, right around Frenchville,  we pulled over and put our rain gear on. It wasn’t raining that hard when we pulled over, but as we were donning the gear, the rain seemed to sense this and accelerated it’s spit.

 

 

 

 

My Frogg Togg jacket’s (the one I left home) zipper is for shit. Giff gave me one virtually brand new and identical to the one I had. As I zipped up the jacket, that zipper went to  shit as well, so I had to do with the snaps, which worked fine. Neither of us put the pants on.

Past Frenchville and into Fort Kent turning before we hit the northern terminus for US RT 1. We have been here a couple times, and it was a fleeting thought. Our first stop is Ashland, ME for the USA Tour. Stopped here for breakfast.

 

 

Our decision at this point is to head south on ME 11 or head east toward Houlton and pick up OSJ new tag.

I just couldn't resist and the site was kinda of neat to boot. This site commemorates the first successful transatlantic crossing in a balloon. It took more than a century of previous tries, but in 1978 the Double Eagle II launched from Presque Isle, ME and landed in Miserey France 137 hours and 6 minutes later. More info HERE.

The rain has picked up a bit and we head for Smyrna, Staceyville and Sherman about ½ down to Augusta and just west of Houlton. We have been using I-95 as our major route, because of the rain. From Houlton all the way to Augusta, the posted speed limit is 75. I haven't seen posted speeds like this since we left the west a year ago. It had me looking around for the Welcome to Montana signs.
I assumed the +7 to 10 over rule applied and found myself hitting those speeds, only to remind myself it was wet out.


 

In Howland we got off for gas. We ended up at the 95 Diner and decided to dry out a bit and have some soup as a break. This was a good time to put the rest of the rain gear on as well. .

All Natural Bike Wash

 

A nice hot bowl of corn chowdah

Picked up 2 more USA towns Stillwater and Albion.

 

We had one last scheduled stop, South China, which proved to be a bust. The rain has been up and down all day, with the occasional brightening of the sky, giving on a sense the rain is almost over. As we got closer to Augusta, the rain got heavier and definitely not over. Finally pulled into the Best Western Plus and called it a day.

 

 

Connected to the hotel was Roosters, comfort food, specializing in pizza.

 

 

Had a couple of these

 

 

Causing MeAsWe to do silly stuff like this

 

 

 

And listened to SomeGuyOnABike, Steve Chadbourne. He was really quite entertaining, cover a whole gambit of music. His Johnny Cash songs were really really good. We were sorry we watched that movie before dinner now and missed most of his performance.