Here we are at The White Hart (see www.whitehartinn.com), a New England Inn, built in 1806 as a tavern and inn (then a few rooms and now with 26 guestrooms) and run as an inn continuously since 1867, once owned by Edsel Ford, found in the very non-commercial village of Salisbury, Connecticut.
We had planned to be elsewhere but, on a whim, decided we had never been to Connecticut so took the bridge over the great Hudson River at Poughkeepsie (pronounced "poo-kip-see") New York and through to this blink and you miss it town (just west of Canaan, Conn) decided to stay the night (after the front desk agreed to lower the rate from $155 to $89). We enjoyed a delicious meal on the veranda while watching the locals play lawn bowling and sharing a glass of wine or beer in the warm evening. Idyllic. We have been so privileged to experience these serendipitous moments. Often the unplanned has worked out better than the planned (we had thought we would be somewhere in New York tonight).
We left at our usual 7 a.m. after continental breakfast and took the secondary highways (for the most part) out of Frederick to Gettysburg, Harrisburg and into New York State at a town called Port Jervis (no water bodies to be found but they had just finished their annual soapbox derby that morning and the town was abuzz as we stopped for lunch at the packed diner). Today we hit no major towns except skirting Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. But just being so close to New York (80 miles) and Boston makes us nervous. We skimmed by the edge of the Catskill Mountains.
Today we travelled 623 kms (410 miles) and touched 4 States (missing another, New Jersey, by a couple of miles): Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut. The countryside seems quite different from the South, as do the people (more reserved and business-like, and less friendly and open/engaging). We found ourselves marveling at how the South is so large an area compared with the North but still lost the Civil War. Maybe they were too friendly.
Another great day of riding.