Waking up to the roar of motorcycles outside our window had me jazzed to start this leg of our vacation! Riding to the top of Mt. Washington is an item on my motorcycling bucket list, and it is about to get checked off. But first, the most important meal of the day breakfast!
We were in a McDonald’s mood so we stopped at the one just up the street from 
the hotel. Turns out this is a “Skiing Themed” McDonald’s with six old gondola’s now serving as tables and lots of antique ski equipment scattered around “ski lodge” type paneling, very unique and very cool! OH… and who had ever heard of Lobster Rolls at a McDonald’s? After topping off our bellies and the motorcycle’s tank we hit the road. About 45 minutes later we were at the base of Mt. Washington about to ride up the auto road.
Mt. Washington at 6,288 feet is the highest peak in the Northeastern United 
States. You can click on the link to see all the details but here are some highlights; fast wind speed ever recorded (not associated with a hurricane) and on average it snows every month of the year. During the summer the temperatures can often be 40 or more degrees cooler at the top then the base of the mountain. On our accent we started at a temp of 70F by the time we reached the summit the temperature was a crisp 42F. There will be a second post on our ride up and down Mt. Washington as Debbie filmed both the accent and decent of the mountain. I will publish it at a later date after I have time to work on the raw footage.
Another interesting fact is that the operators of the auto road has contingencies for people that make it to the top and then do not want to drive their cars back to the bottom. If you happen to be one of those folks you can take the train back to the base or ride down in a passenger van. The operators will then drive your car to the bottom, for a fee of course!
After getting back down we stripped off the layers (the temperature was now 76F) 
and headed east. Our goal was ambitious, we wanted to reach Bar Harbor, Maine. You can tell by the title of the post we only made it to Bangor before we called it a day. The plan now is to get up early and get on the road to Bar Harbor and Arcadia National Park.
We needed to reach Port Kent, New York no later than 930AM in order to make sure we are on the first ferry of the day 
The 
From the top of Whiteface we headed into town to the Olympic Museum. The museum is in the Olympic ice rank facility and while small packs in a lot of history. This is a worthy stop if you are in the area.
We began the day’s motorcycle ride heading north on the Niagara Scenic Parkway. The parkway runs up the American side of the Niagara River and is an excellent “Chill-out” ride. When the parkway ended the Great Lakes Seaway Trail continued. The Seaway Trail runs along the coast of the lake but only in a few places is it actually on the coast, just as it was during the 
admired the views of the lake. After a while we rolled up onto the Lake Ontario State Parkway, this parkway did actually run on the coast for a good part of the time. BUT, there was a 6-10 mile stretch of the road that was like riding on a washboard. By the time this part of the road was over we felt as if we had completed 100 rodeo bull rides, 1,000 jumping jacks and run a jack hammer for 10,000 hours! This was one of those rides where it was just horrible during but becomes funny and a great story afterwards.
The folks that work there were super friendly and knowledgeable! Turns out they are the sponsors of 
After leaving Harv’s we got back on the Seaway Trail, after a little why we started talking about the time of day how much further we had to go. This was the point I realized that I had miscalculated the time required to get to Lake Placid. We decided to hop up on the Interstate and get going! We pulled into Lake Placid about 6PM, I really don’t like riding that long when we are trying to have a leisurely vacation.
We did not do a lot a riding today. We took the motorcycle to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls to check out the sites an some of the tourist trap things. We ended the day riding the Maid of the Mist boat up to the falls… and that is where we got wet today!
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lighthouses. The one thing that really surprised me was the amount of vineyards along the road. There was miles upon miles of grape vines, thousands of acres. This day’s ride, along route 5, has been our best, so far, for this year’s motorcycle vacation. 
to have fixed the problem of the GPS not quite finding the dealerships but, there are still some problems like the road showing up in Lake Erie. If you 
weather radar. About half way to the falls we could see rain in the distance and it was very clearly a heavy rain. Turning around at the first opportunity, we made a run back to the hotel…. LOL we did not make it. Quite well soaked we stopped under an overpass to wait out the storm. I am very happy that the hotel has a laundry.
Today we started the second leg of our 2017 motorcycle vacation. If you missed the first day’s wrap up you can check out 
About three damp, dreary hours later we arrived at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH. After spending about 2 hours walking thorough the very cool exhibits and videos we began getting weather alerts on our phones. Based on the projections we decided we had time to grab lunch at the hall before hitting the road. The hall has a small café (the entire facility is smaller then what I expected) that has three separate food preparation stations each with a menu from a famous chief, although I did not know any of 
One thing of surprising interest to me was that there were 2 motorcycles on display plus pictures of rock stars on bikes were scattered throughout the hall. One of the motorcycles is a custom trike from the Elvis Presley collection and one owned by John Mellencamp. 
Shortly after crossing into WV you head into the Appalachian Mountains. These mountain roads are some twisty fun for a motorcycle! Swooping around turns, quick climbs and steep descents (up to a 9% grade) with spectacular views from the mountain tops and rolling farmland in the valleys make this a route, in my opinion, as much fun as any of the roads around the Tail of the Dragon. By the way I dragged the floorboards of the bike a few times without even trying!
I had forgotten that Route 50 passed into Maryland for a few miles so today we traveled in 4 states. When we left Maryland and rode the motorcycle back into WV Route 50 also became the 
We did make a side trip to Cairo … I am still taking my wife to all the 
I JUST WANT 2 RIDE!! 