Day 5: Wolf's Neck Oceanview Camping to Shamrock Campground (47.79 mi)
Pretty uneventful day all things considered. I think the most memorable thing about today was how my knees were hurting/aching the whole day, I guess I'm getting too old, but thankfully I'll be getting a bit of rest soon. I made it through Portland, which I suppose is the first major city that I've passed. After Portland I took another detour onto a completely straight and flat 8 mile (!) bike trail, which I am frankly surprised the main maps don't guide you towards. It was a very nice ride, despite my knees, and I made very fast progress compared to the rest of the riding. Tonight, I attempted to stealth camp and I snuck in and setup my tent at a campground, but I was caught for the first time in my life! I feigned missing the office, and still ended up paying $35. The streak of expensive camping continues...
Day 6: Shamrock Campground to The Exeter Inn (53.95 mi)
Boy it takes me a lot of effort to write a blog post when I just want to go to bed...I passed through quite a few coastal tourism towns, again very similar to the smaller towns all along the West Coast as well. I notice in particular novelty shops for tourists, lots of ice cream, and restaurants...though the ones in Maine do feature an awful lot of lobster! The traffic is steady but slow in these towns, which isn't great since there's lots of cars but really isn't too bad since they're so low speed and tend to give bicyclists a decent amount of room. I finally finished off Maine (yay!) and entered into New Hampshire at the city of Portsmouth (though I wasn't able to find the welcome sign--don't worry there's a trick to getting a second shot at it later...). I was fairly eager to get to my destination tonight since I'm staying at an inn because I'm giving a talk tomorrow! (not the first one I've given on a bike tour actually...)
Day 7: Rest day! (0 mi)
So what does one go about on a rest day during a bike tour? I took the opportunity to do some laundry in the morning, a nice leisurely pace compared to this last week. I gave a talk for Caltrans and then checked in with the COSMOS summer school program I am involved with. Otherwise, just finishing up some odds and ends for work and a bit of light reading--pretty uneventful...
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