Exploring........

7:48 am - Monday - May 14th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 47º F, 92% humidity, wind 10 mph out of the south by southwest.....heavy cloud cover with a forecast high for today of 53º F.  Looks like a 60% chance of rain on Tuesday.

We were up and at them just before 7 am on our first full day in Southwest Harbor.  We wanted to take a walk around the campground to get a feel for it, and get oriented, then walk into town to explore our home town for the next 5.5 months.....

Site Map of Smuggler's Den

.....there are 125 individual sites with 55 of them being full hookup, but only 3 pull through sites.  The rest range from water/electric only for tenters, or popup tent trailers to dry camping sites.  They have around 13 cabins, or park models as some call them.  It is much larger than I originally thought......our walk around the perimeter of the park was close to one mile in length.  They have a large group area with a number of RV sites which have water/electric and many others for dry camping only.....

 Cabins/Park Models

.....everything appears to be well maintained without any apparent deferred maintenance.....every single picnic table we saw had a fresh coat of paint, and had no structural issues....

....there is a family cemetery on site with graves dating back to the 1700's....I'm going to have to find out more about that.  

Once we had completed our tour of Smuggler's Den we headed into town.  According to the owners the local supermarket is about 1/2 mile from the campground (it is), and downtown Southwest Harbor about 1.5 miles from the park (it is).  Initially the highway plunges downhill for about 1/2 mile before it begins to level out....right at that point is where Food Mart IGA is located....

......we spent quite a bit of time checking the store out as this is where we will do most of our grocery shopping for the next 5.5 months.  Their prices are reasonable for a resort town, they have a very nice selection, and the employees are very friendly and helpful.

Next we walked another mile into town where we found most of the small shops, and eateries still closed, but getting ready to open over the next 2 weeks......

.......in all, including our 1 mile walk around the campground, we walked about 4.6 miles on our walking tour.  We did not get all the way to the harbor as we just ran out of gas, and knew we had the 1/2 mile hill to climb on our way back.  We were back home by 1 pm....I spent the rest of the afternoon with the Tournament Players Championship on in the background while I worked to set up our living environment for the next 5.5 months. Tiger started the day at 8 under par, but 11 strokes behind the leader (Webb Simpson) who was at 19 under par.......at one point Tiger got to 14 under par with a share of 2nd place, and only 4 strokes back of the leader before he faltered, finishing 7 strokes back.  A good day for Tiger in his attempt to comeback and win again on the PGA Tour.

In the interim I got my bike stand set up, three of our bikes assembled (the tandem will have to wait), all my tools out, and the Sea-B-Que ready for use....I grilled some carne asada around 6:30 for use in TLE's famous street tacos.

After 6 plus years of travel we find ourselves in a place where our Verizon phones do not work well......we get about 4 bars of 1x (the dreaded 'extended service'), which is not adequate for anything beyond phone calls, texting, and e-mail.  Fortunately, along with my job title of Ranger, I get unlimited use of the Ranger Iphone which is an AT&T phone, and has unlimited data.  When home we just turn on its hotspot so we can access the internet on our phones and laptop, so problem solved.  

For our first two days here the temps have been quite pleasant during the middle of the day, and I can be outside in a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, but after 3 pm it begins to get quite cool and I must add layers of clothing, plus put on shoes.  No complaints here.....we would rather be cold than hot, so it's all good!

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