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!

Best of Tour Most Incredibly Beautiful Road (East) Award -- East Nabobish Road, Michigan

The Michigan section of the Tour was full of pleasant surprises, but the most delightful, in our view, was a section the route east of Bay City, just south of Saginaw Bay.  Perhaps it was the afterglow of an usually hot and humid day, perhaps sheer relief after the navigation difficulties we had of getting through the congested urban area that led us to feel that the flat, straight section of road through the quiet farmland was a slice of heaven.  Like the BIA Route 1 in Montana (winner of the Best of Tour MIBRA West Award), East Nebobish Road takes the weary rider a few decades back in time.  If you are lucky enough to be blessed with a northwest wind, you will also experience a cooling breeze from Lake Huron, but even if not this virtually deserted farm road abuts what seems to be a very old canal cut through tangled vegetation and separating fields of cultivated land.  There are no stores, no gas stations, not even a post office for at least 25 miles from the point this photo was taken, only the canal, the breeze and the road. It was eerily quiet and incredibly beautiful.

East Nebobish Road, between Bay City and Fair Grove, Michigan

Best of Tour Most Incredibly Beautiful Road (West) Award --BIA 1, Montana

Looking back over our trip photos and remembering all the incredibly beautiful roads we have been able to travel, it became more and more impossible to select just one for the prize. After hours of deliberation, we decided to split the Most Incredibly Beautiful Road Award (MIBRA) into two categories: east and west of the Mississippi River.

With the note that this award is ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE and has a lot to do with the weather and how we were feeling on particular days, the 2010 Rolling Home Tour MIBRA West goes to:

MIBRA West: BIA Rte 1 (Indian Road) Fort Peck Indian Reservation (between Nashua and Oswego, Montana) This road is more than another gorgeously scenic route along the Northern Tier; it takes you back on a spiritual journey at least half a century to experience the way the prairie must have felt before the age of fences, megafarms,
semis, Bud Lite and electronic casino games.
of the oncoming traffic here.

Heading East toward Malta on BIA 1

Fearless Turtle on BIA Route 1

 ..

The ride is over, but long haul is not...

'The Route' page has just been updated with a general description of the Eastern sections of the Tour.  We calculate the total mileage from Spokane, WA at 3,212 (5,138 km).  If we tack on the first leg from Port Townsend, WA to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho in 2009, our coast-to-coast distance was 3,611 (5,777 km).  

During the coming months, we plan to complete a number of works of original art from our observations across the continent for the 'Rolling Home Art Show' opening in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on January 7, 2011.  In addition, we will be adding more poems and stories to the Blog from our notes, and collect additional road poems and songs in English, French and Kreyol.  These will be organized and posted on the Blog along with an album of the art on a separate page, so please keep checking in.

In addition, watch for a BEST OF TOUR posting coming soon. Categories will include, after great deliberation, our choice of:

• most incredibly beautiful road
• toughest climb
• most amazing story
• best bike shop
• 'the host with the most'
• best camp spot
• best B&B

Through these media and whatever additional ways we find, we hope to keep raising awareness and funds to help continue and expand the work of the Art Creation Foundation for Children in Jacmel, Haiti.

Finally, with the exhilaration of this amazing experience still fresh in our veins, we will be dreaming of and planning the Rolling Home Tour 2011 edition.  The idea will still be to combine cycling, art, poetry and at the same time promote a worthy cause. Please let us know your suggestions, keep biking and think about joining us next summer!

There's no place like home...

August 18, Bedford, NH west of Manchester...off to an early start from the Hill-Brook Motel, knowing that with less than 50 miles to go we would probably make it to the Atlantic before dusk. Filled with delightful anticipation, but also some trepidation about coming to the end of the tour.  These three months on the road have overflowed with rich experiences, the retuning of bodies, minds and imaginations set free.  A part of both of us wants to keep pedaling forever. Random lines from the Beatles' 'Two of Us'  pops into my head in high fidelity---'You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead...'  A vivid flashback to Ontario where the melody and words floated through the air as we rode down the main street of Port Dover looking for a place to stay. The rhythm finds its way into my legs and I am able to ratchet up the pace. We're going home.

In the middle of the steamy Manchester morning, we stop at an espresso shop that looks oddly out of place in this old New Hampshire mill town. Three tired-looking customers sit at a table on the sidewalk reading newspapers and smoking, taking little notice of us and our heavily loaded bikes. A beautiful, haunting melody drifts out of the dark interior. Are we in Egypt? Macedonia? Really so far from home? The owner, we learn, is from Bosnia, and the coffee is strong, sweet and cheap. And so on through the gray, depressing city streets until we reach the eastern side of town and the pastoral, hilly farmland until, finally, we cross the Lamprey River south of Newmarket and are almost home. We rush to unload the bikes and find the energy for the final push to the seacoast at Rye Harbor and are elated to see Eliot and Heather there with big smiles and two bottles of the best champagne this side of the Atlantic.  We are home at last.

Eliot and Heather with the bubbly

Ritual dipping of the wheel