North East USA

After enjoying a few days in the Acadia NP I moved on and again followed the coast. The weather on Mt. Desert Island was rather cold and foggy, thus I sped up things a bit in drove down to Camden. A pretty down with a nice history center and of course good coffee shops, and a brewery. However, Camden was still in the fog so I moved on to Portland. Unfortunately Portland didn’t make me happy either. Here, it was very warm (28C) which was nice, but the humidity of over 90% was killing me. Nevertheless I spent some time in Portland which seems to be an interesting city with a great craft brew scene.
But the humidity kept me moving, up into the mountains. The White Mountains to be exact.
The landscape got more interesting again, hill after hill, completely covered by a never ending forest, here and there you could see actual rocks. The White Mountains region has a lot to offer for outdoor adventure, and obviously many winter sport activities. I was able to do a few shorter hikes, unfortunately the hike up to Mount Washington couldn’t be done because of thunderstorms and paying 30$ to use the road or 70$ to take the cog wheel train up, just to look at fog again wasn’t something I wanted to do.
Thus after two days in the White Mountains I went further west into Vermont.

Some famous things from Vermont: Bernie Sanders, Milk, Cheese and Ben & Jerry’s

Sad to say, I didn’t meet Bernie, but I ate plenty of cheese (sorry, not as good as Swiss cheese!) and I had to visit the Ben & Jerry’s factory and do the tour. It’s a shame we only get a handful of flavours in Switzerland.
Oh, and then there are the Green Mountains. Another large hilly region formed by the retreating glaciers. Did I already mention that I really like this type of landscape?
Lot’s of hiking again, a short dip in a river at the Bingham Falls (kinda like a small version of the Aare gorge) and finally enjoyable weather conditions, apart from the crazy rain storms which passed by from time to time.
Being in Vermont I also had to do a quick stop at Rovers North, probably the Land Rover parts dealer in North America. Thanks for the tour, hat and sticker 🙂 I hope I will never need your help but it’s good to know to have so dedicated people working there!
I left Vermont via the ferry from Burlington to Port Kent on the oldest ferry in the U.S., aptly named Adirondack, which is the area I was heading. I did only spend two hours in Burlington but I liked it a lot, probably it’s the vibe that most cities with big universities get?

The Empire State greeted me with a quite impressive waterfall/gorge. Now I am near Lake Placid in the Adirondack Park, another endless paradise for outdoor adventures and winter sports.
However, camping outside official campgrounds seems rather difficult in the U.S. All the nice spots have either “No Camping/Overnight Parking” signs or are private property. Maybe I am just not good enough at finding nice spots or it really is that bad in the east. Even iOverlander has almost no entries for these regions.
But I won’t complain, life on the road is still great. I have yet to have a bad day. Even on days I started to question myself something amazing happened to make up for it 🙂

3 Replies to “North East USA”

  1. Camping in Montana is a breeze..connect with my daughter, Anne-Marie and her husband Don – they explore and camp everywhere in the state. It was a shocker to me coming from Washington state to find so many places to stop and camp – everywhere – except in the two national parks, Glacier and Yellowstone….also on tribal lands there are restrictions, but most of the tribal lands are not in the mountains. It is great to follow you along on your journey.

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