Columbus Day Weekend (Mon Oct 14) is the last weekend you can be sure things will be open. Past that, seasonal things in tourist areas may start to shut down.
Resolved:
- Skipping Freeport.
- Including Quebec City, staying two nights.
mmm
This is how things are looking at this point:
Day 1: Drive to Ottawa
Day 2: In Ottawa
Day 3: drive to Quebec City
Day 4: In Quebec City
Day 5: Drive to Bar Harbor
Day 6: In Bar Harbor
Day 7: Drive to Belfast, Augusta, Manchester, Mt. Washington
Day 8: In Mt. Washington
Day 9: Drive to Crawford Notch, stay overnight
Day 10: In Crawford Notch, then to St. Johnsbury, Danville, Montpelier, Waterbury, Montreal
Day 11: Spend in Montreal
Day 12: Home again, home again, jiggity-jig
For staying in the Mount Washington Valley the main towns are North Conway and Jackson. N Conway is bigger, with more restaurants and touristy things, Jackson is quaint and more New Englandy. You could also grab a room at the AMC’s Joe Dodge Lodge at the base of Mount Washington. You can reserve a private room, otherwise you get a bunk room, and meals are family style. Keep in mind that it is on the opposite side of the mountain from the Cog, but very close to the base of the Auto Road.
Sounds like a great itinerary - warning, though, that northern part of Maine you’re driving through is very sparsely populated. Make sure your tank is full enough to make it to Bangor.
Oh, one thing you might want to consider doing, since you’re heading to Quebec City (something that you had not planned when I first posted) - Montmorency Falls is absolutely beautiful.
Yes, concur.
There are gas stations along Rt 201; it’s not like the Golden Road. But many will be closed after 8:00 PM so keeping the tank full before the long stretches isn’t a bad idea. Watch for moose along the way, keep out of the way of logging trucks, and you’ll be fine.
That’s good to know if I ever go in that direction. It’s odd to see places closed for the night in general, but I have seen some in Vermont. Except that Vermont has enough gas stations per mile that some of them will probably be open. It’s just weird to see places where closing for the night is common these days.
The one place that was really a nail biter was on Highway 287, the direct road from Amarillo to Fort Worth. On paper there are lots of small and medium sized towns, and most of them have gas stations. What I didn’t count on the first time I drove that highway at night was that a lot of them close for the night so I’d need to hope a couple of times that I had enough gas to make it 10 miles to the next town. Luckily, my streak of never running out of gas while driving a car has remained unbroken since I finally made it to a large enough town to have a 24 hour gas station.
It’s not at all that odd in rural areas. I spend my summers in Sullivan County, NY, and while there are plenty of gas stations to be found on any road, a good most of them are closed after 11 PM.
My biggest nail-biter was over 20 years ago in Wisconsin. We were headed to Minneapolis and had maybe a quarter tank, but never imagined we wouldn’t find an open gas station in any number of towns along the road headed there (not the interstate, though). The needle was in that twilight zone below “E” for a scary number of miles when we finally found an open one.
It’s hard to hire staff for the night shift, and if there’s not enough traffic to justify it, it’s easy to just close, instead.
But also don’t be disappointed if you don’t see a moose. There are supposed to be 10,000 moose in New Hampshire and I’ve live here almost 35 years. The only real moose I’ve ever seen are the taxidermied ones at The Kittery Trading Post and the Boston Museum of Science.
I’ve done less than 100 miles of hiking in New England, but did not see a moose in the wild there. The only time I’ve seen one is in Rocky Mountain National Park, and it was evidently rare enough there that the rangers and other hikers saw fit to warn and/or tell me about it beforehand. Even though it was standing directly in my trail, thankfully it was also right in the middle of a meadow, so I was able to skirt around the edge of the meadow within sight of the trail, and even that produced a snort from it at one point.
I mentioned moose in my OP because they’re so dang cool (mine was the one and only moose vote in the What Is Your Favorite Wild Animal poll.
I have seen a few in the wild but they were in Alaska. One would have walked right up to me if I hadn’t stepped aside, and I also saw a mother with her calf.
mmm
There are moose wallows along side some roads where it’s not uncommon to see the same few repeatedly. If you drive enough at dawn and dusk you will see them from your car. Rt 16 north of Gorham is known as Moose Alley, and there are commercial moose tours that have a pretty good chance of finding you one.
I occasionally see moose while hiking, it all depends on where you hike. They will go up high and sometimes will be spotted above treeline, but you’re more likely to see them in swampy areas. Baxter State Park (Katahdin) has lots of moose, and I’ve had many close encounters there.
In the fall the moose can get a bit touchy, due to the rut, so definitely don’t approach them.
Having a hard time finding this on a map.
Gorham NH or Gorham ME?
mmm
It’s worth spending some time in Montreal beyond just Old Montreal. If the weather’s nice it’s a pretty vibrant city with a lot going on, expecialy if there’s one of the many street festivals going on as you visit. Beware that the traffic is usually insane, the construction will tie you up forever (as one comedian at Juste Pour Rire put it years ago “I like the way this city is laid out. I don’t know how long it’s been dead, but I like how it’s laid out.”) and remember that you can’t turn right on a red light in Quebec.
Ottawa is worth a pass. I grew up there and it’s a dull town. If you’re passing through during Bluesfest, maybe it’s worth a trip (despite its name, Bluesfest has little to do with the blues, unless you feel that Sting or the Foo Fighters fall into that genre. It’s just an all-purpose multi-day marathon of bands that I really wish had been around when I lived there). If you’re a hiking person, the Gatineau area is good for that.
I’ve caught sight of a handful of moose, and they’re cool and all, but I could have done without the close encounter with two of them at 60mph on Rte. 9 in Hopkinton.
I liked the Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa.
NH.
This article calls Rt 3 north of Pittsburg, NH Moose Alley, and I’m sure it is called that. But it’s not the only Moose Alley in the state.
There are Moose Tours out of Lincoln NH (near the Flume) but they stop in September.
A møøse once bit my sister…
But seriously. If you’re stopping in Ottawa, @K364 is right, the Avaiation Museum is cool. The Science Museum isn’t bad, especially if you have kids. The Natural History Museum (which my family always called The Castle Museum when I was a kid) is architecturally really impressive.