Day 39 -8/2 - Fulton to Boonville

Greetings all -
I dropped the guys off at Dunkin Donuts conveniently located at the start of their ride today.  Convenient because our daughter, Amanda, wanted me to pick up some Dunkin Donut K-cups that she is unable to purchase in Denver.  Lucky her.
Each text I sent to the guys today included the same road condition notation - narrow roads, curves and hills - but good roads  :)  We shall see what they have to say.
Small townships describe the towns we passed through traveling along hwy 3, hwy 104, hwy 17, (crossing over I-81), hwy 297 and hwy 12.  The highways change numbers and names each time they go through a township or county line, sometimes they have multiple numbers.  It is still amazes me that I have been able to navigate my way from town to town without getting lost more than once a day.
Found a great lunch spot today on the shore of the Salmon River Reservoir near the town of Redfield.

Patty still driving along

Notes from Tom:  Today we passed the 3000 mile point.  We knew we were heading toward the Adirondacks and the mountains of Vermont, so we expected the terrain to change.  As Patty said it was curves and hills.  Most of the hills weren't too bad, but there were a couple that required us to be in our lowest gear and stand up to pedal.  At one point I thought I was going to have to walk my bike. We climbed a total of 5700 feet today--the most we've had to climb in one day since Day 4 in Washington.
Recently we've wondered about is what people who live out in all of these rural area do to earn a living.  In many areas west of here there was a decent sized town and lots of agriculture, but today we rode through long stretches of pretty nice houses in remote areas with no agriculture.  Who knows how they make a living.  We did see some Amish homes, identified by the horse and buggy signs, and one buggy on the road.

One thing we've learned is that getting hotels for Friday and Saturday nights is more challenging than the other days of the week.  Patty has booked us through Saturday night, which leaves us only Sunday night in NH, and Monday night in Bridgton ME.  After that we'll be in Portland.  Yee Haa. 

Notes from Jerry:  We were blessed with excellent weather today and the light winds when they came up in the afternoon were favorable.  The landscape definitely got more hilly and mountainous, so that by the time we arrived in Booneville the feeling was one of a good sized mountain town, older, with lots of character, spread out over lots of land and surrounded by forrests and open spaces.  Pretty cool..... we had no idea what to expect.

Getting there was a bit of a chore as Tom and I were constantly churning the gears and standing up in the pedals - definitely not  boring.  We rode for another hour after getting to Boonville to make it easier for tomorrow's long and mountainous day.  The scenary got more spectacular, but so did the hills.  We were very glad to see Patty drive up to call it a day - about 90 hilly miles,. but very interesting and pretty.