Shortly after our first bike tour together, Rett came up with the broad concept of a “Chowder Tour” that would take us down the New England coast. When it came time to attempt to implement such a thing for this year, I wondered if there was a way to combine it with our yearly visit to her dad’s in upstate New York. It would be a nice bit of symmetry to continue on from his house, which was the final destination of our first bike tour. We could take ourselves and our bikes on the Amtrak train from Chicago to Syracuse (20 miles from her dad’s in Skaneateles), then ride to the coast at Acadia National Park in Maine, and finally head south along the Atlantic Ocean to Boston, where we would put our bikes on another Amtrak to ride home on their own while we hop on an airplane. 

The obvious route to Acadia would take us northeast from the Finger Lakes region, into the Adirondack Mountains of New York, then over the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It would be lots of climbing up and down, but presumably would be great for forested views and camping, something Rett wanted to do a lot more of on this trip for my sake. 

Well, there were surprisingly fewer park and forest camping opportunities along that route than I expected, and one day I noticed that Google Maps (using bicycle directions) showed an alternate route to Maine that shot way up north into Canada, adding some distance but essentially going around many of the mountains. At first that just seemed silly, but it slowly started to make more sense. There are a lot of nice waterfront parks along the St. Lawrence River, we could visit the bike-friendly city of Montreal, get a taste of a “foreign” country in French-speaking Eastern Townships of Quebec, and still get enough forested mountains over the Appalachian range into Maine. Then we’ll still get about a week of the original “Chowder Tour” concept down the coast. 

So that set it. The plan is around 900 total miles, 17 days of riding, a day off in Montreal, two or three days off in Acadia, with around a 55-mile average riding day. Especially when considering the hills, it’s a slight distance/effort upgrade from our previous tour, but hopefully will still be easier for Rett given her greatly-improved fitness and experience compared to her first go-around.

We’re both really excited to start! 

This entry was posted on Monday, September 5th, 2016 at 1:51 pm and is filed under 2016 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.