The Reason

Sally has vacation following the Labor Day holiday so we're leaving early Saturday morning to drive up through the center of Maine to Moosehead Lake where we plan to spend the night around Greenville.  Early Sunday morning we'll continue north to spend a few days in Québec City.  It's been a few years since we've been there and normally in September/October we spend three weeks traveling Europe, but Sally started a new job this year and only has two weeks vacation, so Québec City is the closest thing to Europe in North America.

The Route 

I've used GPS to travel for the last 10 years and couldn't get along without it; first on a laptop and more recently on a HP 4700 handheld computer.  On the laptop I always used Delorme maps and GPS antennas www.delorme.com , but that's not particularly optimized for the handheld so I'm using Route 66, despite the name a Dutch company, that I've had good luck with so far.

I hate driving interstates and toll highways, so I pick a few intermediate waypoints between here and there and let the software pick back roads that I might never tend to travel on without the GPS.  I love driving in general and this gets me into small towns that are somewhat off the beaten path and along roads that are not particularly heavily traveled.

From Québec City we'll travel up the St. Lawrence River and then cut across through the woods to Fort Kent, Maine, where will pick up US Route 1 and follow it up over the top of Maine and then down along the coast back to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  The whole trip is about 1100 miles and I'll be back in the office sometime on Friday, September 8.

The Ride

While I'll certainly enjoy Québec City and the other towns we stop at along the way, I'm especially looking forward to the ride itself.  I'm driving a 2005 Mini Cooper S these days and it is made for country back roads without much traffic.  It handles extremely well, has plenty of power, and hopefully the brakes will keep us from sliding under too many moose or careening lumber trucks.

I keep a journal while traveling, so I'll fill you in on more details when we get back... whether you want to hear them or not.