Riding the Kanc, Raiding the Smallest Capital

Departure time rushed out of the gate with Percy bolting as I went to leave, jumping into the bushes and trying to hide. As usual, the suitcase tipped him off to my departure. Fortunately he paused to roll on his back in the damp grass, and he was quickly returned to the house.

Soon enough, I stared down on Appalachia's verdant hills. Nashville to Baltimore breezed by. The plane turned sharply at D.C. and for the first time, I saw the Capital, the Washington Monument and the Pentagon were identifiable from air. I thought about that more on Sunday night.

Not leaving the plane, the second leg went even faster. From Philadelphia and New York City, I trace our northern progress. The mountains rose and the Connecticut River cut between Vermont and New Hampshire, and saw the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plan, which helped earn nearby Springfield the right to host the Simpsons Movie premier in 2007.

Coasting through Manchester-Boston Regional, New Hampshire awaited. The rental place ran out of compact cars, so I landed a Chevy Malibu with only driven three miles.

With 24 hours before I picked up Alicia in Burlington, I left the Manchester airport without a clue to my next stop. Since I hadn’t seen the ocean in years, I set out for Portsmouth, a stone’s throw from Manchester. The old seaport vaguely reminded me of Westport, Conn., where my mother grew up and I spent part of my first 14 summers.

With UNH up the road in Durham, Portsmouth had a more egalitarian feel than upper-crust Westport (supposedly an inspiration for the Great Gatsby). The small businesses clustered in the old town catered to tourists.

Originally I intended to find Smuttynose Brewery, Portsmouth’s best known import, but landed by the Portsmouth Brewery for a quick lunch. After a stunning haddock chowder and a solid burger, I circled around to 95, crossed the Piscatagua Bridge into Maine and put feet on the ground in Kittery. Because I saw so little of Maine, it won’t leave my list of unvisited states, and will require q more thorough trip, perhaps as soon as next year (hello, Acadia, National Park).

A turnoff for Lake Winnipesaukee tempted me, but it tumbled after I remembered What About Bob wasn’t actually filmed there. No, Friday was the time for the Kanc, and I wouldn’t be dissuaded. Since we planned to meander around the two states after Sunday's half-marathon, I had no guarantees of seeing the scenic highway later.

Coming over a ridge, Mount Washington’s white peak consumed the horizon. Later, a local would tell me with the fog often surrounding the peak, visitors aren’t guaranteed that glimpse, even from 50 miles away.

Reaching the Kanc and passing thousands of moose crossing signs (alas, no moose crossed), the road followed the Swift River, which churned and flowed thanks to mountain snowmelt. At the Swift’s lower falls, I saw a kayaking trio looking to cross the fast-moving falls and its spectacular rock formations.

For about 20 minutes, they prepared, charting a safe path through the boulders forming the falls. One kayaker sat at the bottom and another stayed on dry land to signal the third, who would run the falls. Slightly tense, this was an experienced trio, waiting amid the rapids and finally dropping over the safest rush of water.

Several glacially carved cliffs hosted ephemeral waterfalls produced by snowmelt. By Monday, the rocks would be stained and the falls poured out.

Rising gradually toward the pass, two or three cars passed. The chill in the air and the upcoming rain chased off almost everyone. Aside from a tech addict unable to comprehend why his phone had no signal at the high point in a national forest, I had the Kancamagus Pass and the short switchbacks to myself. The next 100 miles crawled by. After descending from the Kanc and passing multiple ski resorts, the horizon boasted at least three ridgelines. The rain poured and the road clung to a rock face above the churlish Ammonoosuc River.

At Woodsville, a small metal bridge crosses the Connecticut into Vermont without fanfare. Until Barre, I would not pass any places large enough for a postcard, but rural Vermont was thick with scenery. Lush hills and rivers peppered with rapids and waterfalls lined the road.

Scale is everything in Vermont. With just 600,000 people, most living around Burlington, rural is the norm. Even government is scaled down. Vermont’s State Lottery Commission operates out of a storefront fit for a convenience store.

After traffic circles on the lonely Hi-Line (U.S. 2, the northernmost crosscountry route in the U.S.), the gold dome crowning Montpelier broke from wooded hills.



Plotted along the Winooski River, the country’s smallest state capital had a Friday night culture fully in swing by the time I checked into the hotel and returned downtown. In 30 seconds, I found the beacon that brought me to Montpelier – the Threepenny Taproom.

Morning arrived quickly and with it, time for a quick call back to Nashville to wish the Gross Brothers good luck on their 26.2-mile grind. After several failed attempts to find an open entrance to Hubbard Park, the green space that boasted a tower looking over Montpelier, I gave up and headed onto Burlington, the 40,000-person metropolis on Lake Champlain.

Drove through Essex Junction, around downtown and time arrived to pick up Alicia. Twenty-four hours separated me from a date with poor preparation for a half-marathon. But I found my friend, then we grabbed lunch at a nice Italian bistro in Burlington (nothing like a Super Tuscan and a plate of tortellini to improve spirits).

Our moods improved even more at our next stop, the Ben and Jerry’s production facility. The tour was a bit weak --- a 10-minute propaganda video that danced around their corporate sellout a decade ago, a look at the empty production floor, and the obligatory sample of Stephen Colbert’s Americone Crunch.

Still, the cemetery for discontinued flavors was a nice touch, although I understand America even less knowing that Cherry Garcia has been their most popular flavor since its mid-1990s inception. At that rate of ice cream consumption, B&J-loving Deadheads are looking a lot like Jerry these days. Well, I suppose it's cheaper than tripping.