Day 16 - Mansfield to Home

Today was our last day on the road. Home was only about 240 miles away so today would be a short ride.

We had breakfast at the hotel and were rolling out of the parking lot right around 9am. Today’s route would basically follow Route 15 south the entire way. We would make a few detours to route around Williamsport and Harrisburg. 

The temperatures were very comfortable in the mid-60’s and the sun was out. Much better morning weather than yesterday when we left Lake Placid. We rode until around 10:30am and stopped at Selinsgrove, PA to top off the fuel tanks one last time.

We continued south along Rt. 15 until just south of Harrisburg. It was about noon and we were getting hungry and we saw a sign for Cracker Barrel. We rode through the parking lot and it was totally full and people were lined up outside the building! None of us wanted to wait so we went across the street to the Subway. Jerry treated us to lunch since we had paid for his lunch the previous day. We all got a yummy cookie to supplement our lunch.

We now only had about 100 miles to go now. As we made our way closer to the MD line, the drivers became more and more aggressive and less and less courteous. It is interesting how every four lane highway we rode in Canada didn’t have one driver camped out in the left lane. The only time we saw someone in the left lane was if they were passing someone in the right lane. Now that we were back in the USA, the left lane campers were every where. I much prefer the driving etiquette of the Canadians. 

We wove our way through the US15/US340 mess at Fredrick and crossed over into VA and arrived home at around 2pm.

We traveled around 4,200 miles this trip. We visited nine US states and five Canadian provinces. We rode through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, Catskills Forest Preserve, the Green Mountain and White Mountain National Forests, the Reserve Faunique des Laurentides, La Maurice National Park, Parc d’Oka, and the Adirondaks. We also visited the Maine coast and the eastern most point in the United States.

We even experienced our first break down and through the kindness of complete strangers, somehow managed to not skip a beat! The kindness and willingness to help that we experienced in Nova Scotia was not new to us. We have seen this trait in nearly all Canadians through our travels across all 9 of the Provinces we visited between this year and last. In addition to the beautiful landscapes that Canada offers, it is the friendly Canadian citizens that make traveling in Canada so wonderful.

Acadia National Park was the highlight of the trip and we really enjoyed being able to hike in the park for three days. The rugged coastline and amazing vistas from atop Cadillac mountain, the Beehive, and the north and south Bubbles were amazing. It was also really great to be able to share our trip and these experiences with Jerry. We hope he enjoyed the trip as much as we did.

With this adventure complete and the memories still fresh in our mind, we are already planning our next trip!