Best of Tour Bed and Breakfast Award

Hands down, the Marble Mansion in Fair Haven, Vermont takes the Rolling Home BoT B&B Award. The sheer beauty of the inn and and comfort of the rooms is one thing, the fresh berries and cream for breakfast another, the fascinating history still another, but the real clincher is the warm hospitality of the hosts.  After an unusually grueling day, we were offered help with our bags, a personal touch we had not experienced during the entire journey.  Once comfortably settled into the cozy Jane Austen room, we were presented with a crystal pitcher of ice cold Vermont water.  We couldn't remember anything tasting better.

Best of Tour Most Idyllic Campground (East) Award

Erie Canal by Night

The choice of winner of the MIC (East) Award was made easier by the rapidly diminishing frequency of low- or no- cost, easily accessible campgrounds as we pedaled eastward.  In more than one case, we were unable to find a patch of grass on which we could safely and legally pitch our tent for the night, and more than once found ourselves at the mercy of sympathetic passers-by who kindly offered their lawns, and in one case by a motel owner in Clintonville, Wisconsin who offered us gratis the spot behind the motel where his son used to set up his tent on warm summer evenings. More often, we found ourselves twisting and turning through the night on the hard pebble tent sites offered at state and provincial campgrounds, often at what we considered extravagant prices.

Quebecois Friends

Hiker/Biker/Boater Campground at Middleport

 Once we made the crossing from Ontario into New York State, The Erie Canalway Trail between Lockport and Palymyra offered welcome relief in the form of Hiker/Biker/Boater campgrounds, grassy areas abutting the canal offered at no cost and blissfully free of mechanized traffic.  Our favorite of these was the HPB campground at the Village Canal Park in Middleport, where we were not only welcomed by the bridge tender but provided with a code to a building with clean bathrooms and hot, steamy showers. Heaven.  We enjoyed an evening with a group of French Canadian cyclists who had whizzed by us earlier on the shady, crushed stone canalway trail, slept on the soft grass and woke up refreshed and ready for more. 

Best of Tour Most Idyllic Campground (West) Award -- Mikoti, North Dakota

One of the most welcome surprises faced by the bicycle tourist covering the long distances between towns through most of Montana and North Dakota is the 'City Park' tradition of welcoming campers and (usually) providing restroom facilities, even hot showers. Best of all, cyclists can pitch their tents on soft grass and spread out stuff on sheltered picnic tables, sometimes even plug in phones to live outlets and find wood or charcoal for an evening meal. The City Park that stands out most in our memories, and therefore the winner of the Best of Tour MIC (West) Award is located at the edge of  the friendly town of Makoti, North Dakota (population 145), some 100 miles east of Williston and just south of Rte. 1804.  We camped on this quiet piece of the prairie next to the ever-present grain elevator with only the songbirds for company, found fresh towels in the shower room, but could find no one to pay the $5.00 fee. Mikoti, we owe you!