Southbound and down........

7:10 am - Sunday - September 16th - Portland, ME - 62º F, 92% humidity, wind - CALM - clear with a forecast high today of 77º F.

We awoke to fog Saturday morning......not heavy, I can't see 10 feet kind of fog, but the kind of fog you wouldn't want to drive through for any length of time.....

.....see what I mean?  We discussed just staying in Ellsworth another day and then heading south for several reasons.  Reason #1 was the fog which hung around until after 11 am, and reason #2 was that we were kind of hemmed in where we were parked.  If you look at the picture above you can see a black SUV parked just in front of the Class A motorhome, right?  Well, that was how I was going to exit my parking spot.....I was blocked to the front, and just to the right you can see one of those shopping cart return stations.  We didn't know if that SUV belonged to a Walmart employee (it was not there when we went to bed), or what.  If 'he' didn't move we were stuck.  The people in the Class A had taken their car out of their trailer and took off to go sightseeing, so they weren't moving.

While all this was playing out TLE made me one of my favorite breakfasts of all time.  Why 'all time'?  Well this was the first breakfast she made me after we were married.    So, a little background.  We spent our wedding night at the Pasadena Hilton in, of course, Pasadena, California......Sunday, August 29th, 1971.  The next morning, Monday, we had breakfast in a restaurant, and then began our drive to South Lake Tahoe where we had rented a cabin for a week.  We arrived in SLT just before sundown Monday evening, and before we checked into our cabin TLE had me stop at a local supermarket called 'Bijou Market' (still there) so she could buy a few food items.  The next morning, Tuesday, August 31st, she made me this exact breakfast......two English muffins, two slices of cheddar cheese, 6 slices (3 for each English muffin) of Buddig Beef, topped with two sunny side up eggs.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  She hadn't made it for me in a long time, and I had mentioned my interest in having this dish for breakfast in the near future, so she made it happen!  I love you TLE!

About 10:30 am I noticed some movement in the black SUV......someone  was sleeping in it, and had just awakened.  Within 20 minutes they had driven off and our exit lane was  wide open!  I turned over the big Detroit Diesel 6v92, pulled through the gap and repositioned the coach facing the exit of the parking lot with no obstructions in front of us.  Now if the fog would just dissipate!  About 11:15 am the sun had come out and the fog had lifted.  We decided to hit the road south to Portland, and were on our way by 11:30 am

On our way north 4 months ago we had stopped off overnight at the Cabela's in Scarborough, just south of Portland.  They have excellent RV parking, and a dump station, which we will need to use when we leave Portland on Monday.

The drive south was completely uneventful......just like we like it.....and after one 20 minute stop at a Rest Area we arrived in Portland around 2:45 pm.  The Newell ran like a charm as we seemed to be floating down Interstate 95 on a cushion of air.  The temp had gotten close to 80º F in Portland Saturday, and it was noticeably humid as we found a good parking spot and set up for two nights. While we drove we began to notice the leaves are beginning to get a little color as Fall approaches.....

Picture courtesy - TLE

.....not a lot of color....just enough to let you know Fall is just around the corner.

About 5:30 we decided to walk into Cabela's to do a little window shopping.....TLE does want to buy another pair of shorts, and perhaps a new pair of shoes for Amazon, but she didn't find anything that fit her that was on sale......she is so thrifty!  I love all the props and displays they have inside the store......

 Just a sample of a few of the exhibits

We spent the evening reading.........I had a College football game on in the background....and were in bed by 10:30 pm.  It is good to be back on the road, isn't it?

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The end of 'Island Life'.......

7:31 am - Saturday - September 15th - Ellsworth, ME - 54º F, 100% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the east by northeast.....foggy......

Fog in Ellsworth

.....forecast high today for Ellsworth is 73º F, but we will not still be here.....the high in Portland, were we are headed, will be 71º F, and it appears it is foggy there, also.

We were up before 7 am on Friday, our departure day.  As usual I woke up several times during the night thinking about what needed to be done before we rolled our wheels.  Our Jello goal was to be doing just that between 10 and 11 am, and our day's destination was Ellsworth.  Ellsworth?  Yup....the road between Tony's home and Trenton, which is just off the island, is quite narrow, and rough, and I knew by the time we covered the 20 miles to Ellsworth over those roads I would be ready for a break, so we just decided that would be it for the day.  We needed to do a BIG shopping, and there is a Walmart Supercenter in Ellsworth....perfect!

Amazingly, we were rolling our wheels away from Tony and Janet's home by 10:58 am, and on our way through the local maze of incredibly narrow roads.  Driving through Southwest Harbor at 11 am with all the cars parked along each side of the street can be difficult in the Beetle, but now I am doing it with an 8 foot wide, 62 foot long motorhome/trailer.  Needless to say, we took our time, and drove very slowly.  As far as we know no small animals, or children were harmed.

Once we were past the downtown area things widen out for a while, but then comes Somesville, with even narrower streets.  Once we get past Somesville the roads widen somewhat, but the problem is the outer edges of the road are very crumbly and rough, so even though the road is technically wider the usable portion of the road is, once again, quite narrow.  I find myself driving with my left wheels right on the yellow line.....not fun!

At last we come to the bridge which separates Trenton from Mount Desert Island......

 The 'Narrows' bridge......almost off the island.....

....and there is Trenton!

......and then we were entering Trenton, and much wider roads!  It's about 7-8 miles to Ellsworth from Trenton, and our first order of business would be stopping at the local Shell fuel station to take on propane.  We last filled our 60 gallon tank in mid May, and it was down to about 15 gallons left.  We had noted this Shell station a week, or so before when we were in Ellsworth and had both commented that the station provided easy in and out access, so we had decided that was where we would fill up our propane tank......

 I've only seen one of these propane stations once before, and that was in Flagstaff, AZ.....it's just like using a regular fuel pump, except one of the staff must operate it.

......we took on just over 38 gallons at a total cost of $134.80.  No need for diesel as are tank is still almost full....we last topped off our diesel tank in Portland, ME mid May....we'll probably make it into early October before it is necessary to do so again.  The Walmart is about two blocks from the Shell station and we were there and parked by 12:05 pm.  Just over an hour had passed since we left Tony and Janet's, but it seemed much, much longer......

Set up for the night....time to shop!

......we spent an hour slowly walking through Walmart buying what was needed, and were back to the Newell by 2:15 putting away groceries and relaxing for the rest of the afternoon.

So, our 4 months of 'island life' has come to an end.  We are on our way to new adventures, new views, new places.

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Equilibrium........

6:23 am - Sunday - August 12th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 62º F, 95% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the east by northeast......light rain falling with a forecast high for today of 70º F.

Saturday saw humidity levels dip sharply into the high 40's.  It was cool, partly cloudy, and wonderful all at the same time.  We've been under quite a humidity siege here in Southwest Harbor the past two weeks, but it seems, I could be wrong, but it seems things, weather wise, are getting back to what is considered 'normal' for this time of year.  As Mainers would say...."It's not humid, humid anymore.....it's just humid".

We had no great ambitions for Saturday.  I planned to watch most of round 3 of the PGA golf tournament being held in St. Louis this year.  Coverage for round 2 had been rained out Friday afternoon around 4:45 pm eastern time with 77 players still on the course so they had to finish round 2 early Saturday morning having those 77 players begin playing at 8 am eastern time, so it was already on TV when we turned on the TV around 8:30 am. They finished around 11 am, and then within an hour round 3 began.  They managed to finish round three just before sundown.  It was a very exciting day if you are a Tiger Woods fan......he began the day tied for 35th, and finished tied for 6th at 8 under par, and only 4 strokes behind the leader.  So, in all, I watched about 11 hours of the PGA on Saturday.  I haven't been able to do that for quite a long time!

We left home for about 30 minutes to drive over to the Bernard Post Office (Bernard is a Village within the township of Tremont) to drop off some mail, and drove out to Seal Cove which is what the locals call the 'Back End'.  If you live there you are called 'Back Enders'.  'Back End' refers the geographic location of Seal Cove being on the backside of Mount Desert Island.  We hoped to catch some new views of the ocean, but as it turned out, the views of the ocean were very limited, so we turned around near Seal Cove Pond and headed back to the Newell where we spent the rest of the day watching the aforementioned PGA tournament.

I busied myself from time to time with things in the trailer such as unpacking my new tires for my Cannondale Bad Boy, which I will install in the next couple of days.  The tires on the Bad Boy are about 4+ years old and are becoming a little thread bare, so it is time to replace them.  I vacuumed out the trailer, and the VW......both had a lot of sand left over from our 2+ month stay in site #78 at SDC.

We ran the A/C for a couple of hours midday, but by 3 pm we turned it off, turned on our FanTastic Vent Fan and opened a few windows to let the delicious, cool air flow inward as it vented out through the FanTastic Vent Fan.  We have used our new fan frequently in the past two weeks, and cannot imagine how we managed before we installed it.  I guess it's like a lot of things in our modern lives.  

Having been alive way before computers and cellphones I know what that was like, but now I wonder how we existed without these modern conveniences back 'then'.  Now we have instant access to information, to directions, to YouTube videos, which show us how to do things like replace a drivers side rear view mirror on a 2000 Ford Expedition.  If we are driving down the road and see a sign for some attraction we can look it up instantly and find out if it is worth stopping to see.  If our car breaks down in the 'middle of no where' we don't have to flag someone down and ask them to drive to the nearest town and send a tow truck.....we just call for one on our cellphone.  We don't have to use 'Liquid Paper' to correct typing errors on paper anymore....we just backspace over the typo on our phone, or laptop, retype the word, and it's fixed.....no muss, no fuss.  We don't have to xerox a letter, or important papers we are mailing to make copies of it/them for our records, we just 'SAVE' it, or 'scan' it to a computer file, and it is there forever taking up little if any space.  We don't have to use 'snail mail' to transmit important papers knowing it will take, 1-3 days for it to arrive at its destination, we just 'email' them and they are there seconds later.  We don't have to visit the library to do research......we just get on our phone, or laptop and type in a subject and receive thousands of links from Google to that subject matter within a split second.  If we want to know what the extended weather forecast is we don't have to wait for the evening news to hear the forecast.....we just look it up on our phones, and it is updated every few minutes.......it is just amazing what we take for granted today.  Cellphones and computers make the kind of fulltime RV lifestyle we choose to live possible, quite manageable, and comfortable.   We truly live in interesting times.

Well, we have now been unemployed for about 6 days, and are regaining some equilibrium in our lives.  After 6 nights of good sleep combined with several naps each day we feel great again......we are back in control of our lives.  We will never, ever take a job again were we cede so much control of our daily lives to any one person, or organization.  We will work on our terms, or not at all.

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New reality.......

7:31 am - Saturday - August 11th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 61º F, 86% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the north......partly cloudy with a forecast high today of 74º F.  Got down to 64º F in the coach last night!  First time it has been under 78º in over a month.....sweet!

For the first time in days we just hung out at home relaxing and reveling in our new reality.  As you know, we interviewed for jobs at another campground on Tuesday, and are pretty sure we will start our jobs next week.  In the interim TLE and I have been talking a lot about not taking the jobs, and just becoming tourists for our final 4, or 5 weeks in Maine.  Originally we had planned to remain in Maine until late October, but now our thinking is we will do all the hikes and bike rides we had planned and just get them all done over the next month, heading out afterwards to explore Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island for another 5 weeks before we land in Campbellsville, KY to to work peak season for Amazon after which we will head further south to Florida.  These (Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and New Jersey) are the states we have not yet visited in the northeastern portion of our country.....we actually did spend about 35 minutes passing through New Hampshire on our way north on I-95 to Southwest Harbor, but that doesn't really count, does it?  Once we have visited them we will only have Alaska left to visit in our Newell to complete the 49 States in North America.  Obviously, we will not be taking our Newell to Hawaii, but we have personally been to Hawaii many years ago on our 20th wedding anniversary, and I was there in 1970 while I was in college.

When we were in Ellsworth on Thursday we bought two Linksys WiFi range extenders/repeaters to help amplify Tony's home WiFi signal.  Their router is in their bedroom, and quite a ways from our coach.  Tony wanted one for their kitchen to broadcast the signal out into their large yard so he can listen to Pandora when he is mowing the lawn, or working on his cars.  We were able to get the one he put in his kitchen connected and working on Thursday, but I was having difficulty getting ours, out in the Newell, to connect with the one in the kitchen.  Finally, on Friday morning I succeeded in getting ours to connect with the one in the kitchen, and now am typing today's blog entry using their wonderful WiFi.  The signal we got without either extender was quite weak, and kept dropping out, as they say.  Now, with two extenders we can stream Netflix again!  How good is that?

The Linksys "Range Extender" as seen through our passenger window

The rest of the day was spent tidying up the trailer, reinstalling the wheel covers on the Newell and trailer tires, putting out our rope lights, and going to West Marine to buy some new flip flops for moi, and to Napa Auto for some Turtle Wax 'Bug and Tar Remover'......these are the flip flops I leave outside before entering the coach, and they finally gave up the ghost after 6.5 years.  I originally bought them in Port Aransas, TX (near Corpus Christi) in March of 2012.....I think they cost me under $10 at the time.  Considering how many days they have spent outside in the sun, and the rain, and everything in between it is amazing they lasted this long!

Later in the evening we lit a fire in the outdoor fireplace included with the site Tony and his wife Janet have so graciously offered to us.  Janet came out for about an hour to join us and talk for a while......a nice way to end a an already relaxing day.......

There is a lot of decking and railroad ties in our yard, so I laid out the rope lights to highlight the obstacles hidden by the night

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Round two......

7:59 am - Friday - August 10th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 66º F, 86% humidity, wind 7 mph out of the west by northwest......sunny with a few clouds.  Rained yesterday evening, but it looks like a nice day today!

It was wonderful waking up on a Thursday morning knowing there would be no wood box to restock, no sites to clean, no effluent to gather, no smelly transfer station, no humid restroom cleaning, and no string trimming......just time spent with The Lovely Elaine.  It is soooo quiet in our new location.....very, very few cars drive by Tony's property, and the highway noise is nonexistent after 9 pm, and barely audible before that time.

Now to fill you in on the rest of what happened Wednesday.  As I wrote yesterday, the blog was brief as I was typing it on a small Cricket phone.....when your fingers are too large you find yourself hitting the wrong keys on that amazingly miniature keyboard.

The Cricket phone is a 'pay as you go' setup, and only costs us $25/month, so we'll probably keep it until we depart MDI.....BUT, we need a phone with a Hotspot so we can connect our regular Verizon phones to that and get internet, connect our laptop in order to type the daily blog, and to stream the occasional Netflix show. So, we drove back into Ellsworth Thursday afternoon for round two.........our goal: try and buy a Cricket phone which was compatible with the Hotspot feature, but quickly found they had none of those types of phones in stock at Walmart.......:-(....there is no local Cricket store......you have to go all the way to Bangor for that.....not in the cards, for sure.

We then drove over to U.S. Cellular which is the carrier which provides the best service in this area.  They specialize in servicing rural areas such as northeast Maine, and specifically MDI, and even more specifically, Southwest Harbor.  We found we could get a nice Samsung Galaxy S9 phone for free, unlimited data with a 22 gig limit on the Hotspot, and unlimited talk and text for about $60/month.  We have needed a second cell phone option as we travel around the U.S. in case our Verizon did not work in a given area.  So far, in 7 years this has been the first occasion where Verizon did not work.  If we find we cannot use the U.S. Cellular phone in places we travel to from here we can suspend coverage and billing for up to 6 months.....again, perfect!  We thoroughly enjoyed our experience with Kevin, and would highly recommend U.S. Cellular to anyone in a similar circumstance.

We had planned to stop at the local Goodwill to do some browsing, but just as we got back in the VW the skies opened up, and we had a genuine 'toad strangler' downpour.  We just decided to head back to Southwest Harbor instead of getting drenched.  The squall lasted about 15 minutes.....at times we had to slow to under 20 mph as the rain was so, so heavy......as we drove steadily south to the island it stopped with the rest of our drive being uneventful.

We were back home a little after 4 pm having finally solved our 'connection' problem.  I turned on the Samsung Galaxy S9, and then the Hotspot.....we were getting 3 bars of LTE (4G).  I turned on my laptop and the connection was lightning fast!  So, now we are set for our final month, or so here on MDI.  Life it back to normal and everything works as it should.

Around 6 pm I lit the Sea-B-Que so I could grill up some steak kabobs we bought in Ellsworth at Acadia Meats.  TLE supplied a side of fried rice with mixed vegetables.....our dinner was delightful!  We spent the evening watch recorded episodes of 'Masterchef', '24 Hours: To Hell and Back', and 'Chopped' and were off to dreamland by 10 pm......

.....oh, by the way, I bought this cool Acadia National Park t-shirt a while back.  Of all the dozens of t-shirts I looked at this one appealed to me.  What do you think?

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Le Tour, Ellsworth and shopping........

5:50 am - Thursday - July 26th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 65º F, 100% humidity, wind 15 mph out of the south......raining heavily since 2:30 am.....heavy cloud cover......very, very humid.....forecast for today includes a high of 69º F and rain until early afternoon.

Day two of our 'weekend' got off to a slow beginning, and pretty much remained that way all day long.  The air was oppressively humid outside, which inclined us to remain inside.  Thankfully, it was only in the 60's all day long, otherwise it would have been an A/C day all day long.  We kept our windows closed and our dehumidifier running.....

......we got this little RV dehumidifier in Louisiana our first year on the road.  It really does a good job.....you can see here that just overnight the little water collector is 1/3 full.  When it is humid, just as it is now, we leave it on 24/7 and keep the windows closed.  It really dries out the air!  If it also happens to be warm, or hot we run the A/C to help dry the air, and keep it cool.

We, once again, watched another stage of the Tour de France (17th) until noon, and then drove into Ellsworth to do some shopping, get TLE's toenails done, hit the local Goodwill, and then have lunch before heading back to Southwest Harbor......

......while TLE busied herself with a pedicure, I wandered through the local Goodwill looking for something without which life would no longer be possible.....nothing caught my attention, so no life altering decisions had to be made.

I got a text from TLE giving me the 15 minute warning that she was almost done with her pedicure, so I drove back to the shopping center to await her appearance.  From there we walked over to a local outlet store called Reny's.  They are a local Maine franchise and have about 12 stores.  They carry a lot of higher end merchandise by Carhartt, Columbia, Keen, Timberline, Under Armor, HiTech, and many others.  I bought some shoelaces, but that was it.  I'm sure we'll being paying Reny's a visit in the future.

Next up was a 'big' shopping at Hannaford's Supermarket where we filled a shopping cart....by this time it was around 2:30 pm and we had not eaten lunch yet, so we found a local pizzeria called Finelli Pizza and Subs (rated at 4 stars by Yelp on over 90 review.....note to self......Yelp is not always right).  They have a very informal ordering  and payment system.  You order what you want, they bring it to you, and after you are done you go to the cash register and tell the cashier what you got.....it's all on the honor system.

.....we both ordered a Samuel Adams Summer Ale in a mug to chase our pizza order (mushrooms, onions, black olives and anchovies).  We were told the pizza would be done in 25 minutes, and it was, almost to the minute.  The beer was wonderful, but the pizza was just okay.......

 

 The beer was perfect......

 .....the pizza....not so much

......the toppings we ordered seemed to an afterthought, however, the crust was good.

We returned home by 4:30 pm to find the interior of the Newell a little warm, so we /turned on the A/C for about an hour to lower the temperature and help our dehumidifier dry the air.  After that it was fine.  We watched some more 'Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee' until 9 pm when I went to bed.  TLE goes to work at 10 am on Thursdays so she stayed up reading for another hour, or two.  About 2:30 am the rains came and continue as I write today's missive....work will be 'fun'.

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Ellsworth......

6:22 am - Wednesday - May 16th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 41º F, 73% humidity, wind 10 mph out of the north by northeast.......clear, blue sunny skies today with a forecast high of 52º F.

After two days of site seeing we decided to just take it easy Tuesday.  We did need to do a big shopping before we settle into our work routine, and for a big shopping we decided to drive north to Ellsworth to shop at the Walmart Supercenter and the local grocery chain, Hannaford Supermarket.  It is only about 18 miles up to Ellsworth, but the speed limits vary between a low of 15 mph up to 50 mph, so it takes about 30 minutes each way.

The weather guessers had indicated there was a 90% chance of rain by 1 pm, so we left for Ellsworth around 10 am so we could be home before it let loose.....as it turned out the guessers guessed wrong, but I get ahead of myself!

We had just come through Ellsworth on our way to Southwest Harbor on Saturday, so we were just retracing our steps, although it was nicer to be driving those narrow roads in a much smaller vehicle.  In the Newell it seemed much longer than 18 miles to me.

We arrived at the Hannaford Supermarket before 11 am where TLE did 95% of her shopping this day.  This is a large supermarket, and they have a very good selection of the most of the products for which we have a preference.  We also bought a couple of deck chairs for our deck which also match our Newell color scheme......

....they kind of have that 'Adirondack' look, don't they?  We don't like to leave our really nice camp chairs and loungers out in inclement weather, so these plastic ones are perfect to be left outside the entire time we are here.....we'll bring out the good ones when the weather improves.

We stopped off at Walmart on our way out of town to pick up the three things we didn't find at Hannaford.....the yogurt TLE likes, some mixed nuts, and something else that escapes my memory for now.  We were back home a little after 1 pm unloading our spoils and putting them away.

I spent some more time deploying our patio awning, raking up the winter detritus from our lawn, and moving a few things around in the trailer before heading back inside when it looked like it was going to begin raining.

Eventually the rain did come.....at 5:13 pm....it rained steadily for about 3 hours and then stopped.........

Rain on the windshield

.......so we have finished our third full day in Southwest Harbor and begin our summer of work on Wednesday.  There's a lot to do in the next two weeks before Smuggler's Den Campground opens for the summer season.  Fortunately, this park as it sits appears to be in very good condition, even after a pretty long winter, which is a tribute to the owners who don't take the winter off like they do at another park at which we previously worked.....enough said on that subject.

Time to get ready for work......thanks for stopping by!

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