A cool thing I learned about Smuggler's Den Friday is that each year they have a military weekend wherein they give current, or former military members two free days here at the park in either a cabin, full hookup site, or tent site.....very cool!
Friday began clear with low humidity, but it ended up cloudy with high humidity. I don't think it ever topped 65º F before the temp began to drop again. We only had 20 arrivals on this post Memorial Day weekend, which kind of reminds me of TVC this time of year. Things will remain slow the next 3-4 weeks, but then the 4th of July will arrive and the busy season will begin. I know that I will look back fondly to these idyllic, uncrowded, unbusy weeks come July.
Our routine most days to is do 'site checks' first recording how many sites are occupied, and identifying which sites will be vacated that day. Then we check the wood 'box' to see how many bundles of wood we need to bring up from the 'back 40' and then fetch them. Once those two tasks are done it is time to get busy with the day's projects. On this day we had two more Charbroil BBQ's to assemble so Tony and I drove up to the 'garage' to begin that task. It takes about an hour to assemble each one and that took us right up to 11 am, and our lunch break.
After lunch, of course, it was time to clean the bathrooms once again. On a busy day it takes close to two hours to clean both restrooms, but there were few people in the park meaning they had been lightly used. It took us less than 90 minutes to clean both.
We had 5 sites to clean on this day, and we did that in less than 30 minutes, so we had one more hour to 'kill' before the end of our day. We still had a few sites to finish mowing and trimming so we retrieved a small power lawnmower and a trimmer from the 'garage' and set about finishing those sites. We finished about 2:50 pm and called it a day.
Friday marked the end of our third week here in Southwest Harbor, ME. We are both settling into our jobs, and getting familiar with Mount Desert Island, or MDI as the locals sometimes call it, or even more affectionately.....Mount Dessert Island. At first I thought I was mishearing locals say 'Dessert', but then I asked and was told that was a local thing. We are learning that eating out is generally quite expensive. The food is quite good everywhere we have eaten so far, but sometimes I get a little sticker shock when I get the bill. For example, the other day when we had lunch at 'Finback Ale House' (I wrote about it here) it cost us over $70 (ouch!). Our simple dinner the other night at Thurston's (I wrote about that here) cost well over $50 (crab cakes, lobster stew and a lobster BLT sandwich). That did not include the one beer and small glass of wine I bought directly at the bar for $13. The least expensive meal we have eaten out so far was at 'Thirsty Whale' (I wrote about that here) where it cost us just $32 for lunch, including two beers.
We love how close by everything on MDI is......it takes us just 15 minutes to get to Bar Harbor, and maybe 25 minutes to Ellsworth. This is quite unlike Yellowstone which is ginormous! Some of the trailheads we began hikes from last summer would take us over an hour of driving to reach.
Grocery wise, the prices here at Southwest Foodmart, and up in Ellsworth are quite reasonable, including alcohol. In spite of the fact that our Verizon phones do not work well here (best we get in Southwest Harbor is 3 bars of 1x, so no broadband) we have been able to work around the lack of available broadband on our phones by utilizing the very good WiFi here at SDC, as well as WiFi in the various business establishments we visit. Additionally, when we arrived Rain gave us the 'Ranger' AT&T iPhone, which comes with unlimited data, to use until the regular night manager arrives sometime in late June. We have found when we are in Ellsworth, or Bar Harbor that we get good 4G on our phones. So, we are working around the broadband issue. In fact, I am typing this blog post using the SDC WiFi system, which even works well when the park is relatively full, such as Memorial Day weekend. We are able to receive and make phone calls, get e-mail, and text messages on our Verizon phones, so it's all good....it's different, but we are adjusting quite well.
The weather can vary this time of year from low 50's to high 70's. The humidity is not noticeable most of the time. In fact there has only been one day so far where it was oppressive for about 6 hours one day, but then a front moved through and blew it all away. Life is good, and we are happy to be here for the summer!
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