New Hamshire and Maine

We awoke to a much brighter day than yesterday and after blogging, e-mailing and abluting went down to the breakfast room at the Best Western. American hotels often have 'free' breakfasts (especially those out of town) and they normally consist of bagels, Danish, toast, fruit, juice and coffee. This one however also included omelette and 'cakes and country gravy' as you can see in the pictures. For those who haven't been to the States the latter items are basically a scone with an anaemic white sauce, you certainly wouldn't get me eating it, but the locals lap it up. I had four rounds of toast, two with a banana and two with cream cheese, OJ and Coffee, while Drew had two Cinnamon Danish.

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We left the hotel at 7.45 a.m. and headed out on our route. The route for the day, though generally the same as the original, was adapted last night in the light of my Cheese experience at the Gramercy Tavern. As you'll recall I had tasted a cheese called Landaff from Landaff Creamery in the town of Landaff, New Hampshire. Well Landaff was so close to our route, it would have been a shame to miss the opportunity to travel to a place named in memory of a Bishop of Llandaff in Cardiff just a few miles from home. So using Google maps we re-planned the route. On previous trips to the States when we had printed each of the maps before the journey and used them in the car this would have been impossible, but this time Drew had decide to use his iPad2 for routes and journey logs etc. So I was able to use my laptop to print the map as a PDF and e-mail that to Drew to add to the iBooks app on his iPad2.

Wells River, Vermont

Landaff Cremery

Landaff Town Hall

Unlike yesterday, which was mainly travelling from New York to a new destination on a simple journey to get used to the car, today was focussed on seeing some of the countryside of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. After ten miles of the interstate we headed off into rural Vermont in lovely wooded mountains with deep river valleys. I bet it is even more special when the snow has fallen. Indeed everywhere we drove through had signs for snow mobiles, skis and other accessories of winter holidays. Some really lovely towns in this area. When we crossed over into New Hampshire we came into really beautiful countryside, we were glad we made the effort to go to Landaff as it was easy to find and took us off into some of the smaller roads of New Hampshire into the farming districts. The creamery itself was small but beside it were fields and fields of Friesian cows, still the major diary breed of the world, three miles on and we had arrived at the 'Town Hall' - you'd need a generous description of town to make Landaff a town!

Bethlehem Church, NH

We then got on to the NH10 and had one of those idyllic drives along the two-lane highways (single carriageways as we call them) of the USA. Like the time when we travelled route 66, the N 10 and the US 2 that we subsequently arrived on takes you through the middle of ordinary towns in the States, each with a clear distinction between them in types of housing, work activities etc. They are much more distinctive from each other than comparable places in Britain. We visited Lisbon, Bethlehem, Twin Mountains, Jefferson and Gorham.

York's Market, Norridgewock, Maine

Norridgewock, Maine

We then passed into Maine and topped up with petrol at Bethel. The tank was about half full and we paid $3.759 a gallon, and needed 8.18 gallons While the clouds were still glowering, it only sprinkled with rain while we were in New Hampshire, but as we left Bethel we had a torrential downpour which came and went in intensity but was with us for the rest of the day.
We stopped for lunch at 12.57 at a town called Norridgewock. We bought some batteries for the camera in York's Market and walked across the road for Lunch at 'What's for Supper' a local diner which had an eclectic menu. Drew opted for hog dog - a hot dog topped with bacon and cheese served with fries, which I had a Fireman's Burger - a burger with bacon, cheddar with blue cheese sauce over it, this also came with skin-on fries. A nice snack before the rest of the journey. The diner was full of local photos of days gone by in the town, it also had a range of mottos on the wall, my favourite being one that I think sums me up: live well, love much, laugh often.
Soon after leaving Norridgewock we got to the I95 and Drew took over the driving (he likes driving when he can put cruise control on, point the car and leave it). We saw a sign post, which due to my inept camera skills I failed to catch, which pointed us to Newport and Bangor - Wales being represented in all the Scottish, Irish and English names in this area, though I guess Bangor could be the Irish one not the Welsh one!
We arrived at the Shiretown Inn and Suites at 5.02 and have just settled in before posting this blog. Shortly we will be in Holton to find a Launderette and somewhere to eat tonight. Come back tomorrow (morning our time) for the eating instalment.