We didn't see that coming......

7:20 am - Wednesday - September 12th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 62º F, 98% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the north.....cloudy with a forecast high for today of 67º F.  Looks like we'll get some sun today.

It began raining just before midnight Monday night, and continued almost all day Tuesday.  For about 3-4 hours it rained like there was no tomorrow.  It was so loud I had to turn the TV up to maximum volume to barely hear every other word.  For those of you who missed my 20 second video yesterday morning of the rain, and what it sounded like here it is again.....

.....this was not as loud, or as hard as it got......just multiply this by 10 and you'll be pretty close to what we experienced.  And that was pretty much our day.  I did not venture outside one single time.....I already know what it feels like to be soaking wet from rain in just a few seconds.  All I can say about that is we did not see that coming!

So, what did we do?  Well, we watched the 10th and final episode of 'Pacific', and, of course, it was a tearjerker, but so well done!   Neither of us realized the characters portrayed in the series were real people, which makes it even better yet.  From there we then transitioned to binge watch 'Jack Ryan' (based on the Tom Clancy character), another Amazon Prime series.  We got all the way through episode 7 before my U.S. Cellular data ran out.  We'll finish it Wednesday when the data reloads for another month!

And that brings up another thing I have not written about too much.  We are so glad we purchased the U.S. Cellular plan as it seems we can work off Tony's WiFi only a little over half the time.  For some reason we have not as yet ascertained, it begins to drop out each day around 5 pm.  We then switch over to the U.S. Cellar hot spot for the balance of the evening.  Overall it has worked well for us considering our circumstances, but we are so looking forward to being back in Verizon land in just a few days where we don't even have to think about broadband.....it's just there all the time!

We had talked about possibly driving into Ellsworth Tuesday since it was going to rain, but no one knew how hard it was going to rain, and for how long.  You just never know here in northeast Maine.  Once we saw what we were in for we opted not to drive into Ellsworth as it would have no doubt meant we would spend most of our time there trying to dry our clothes.

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Saying goodbye.......

7:38 am - Tuesday - September 4th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 71º F, 85% humidity, wind 8 mph out of the north by northwest......sunny with a forecast high of 75º F.

Monday, Labor Day, began with heavy overcast, but by 11 am the sky had cleared and it was very sunny.  It was also quite humid....not the worst we have had in northeastern Maine by a long shot, but noticeably, palpably humid, nonetheless.  Remarkably, I am beginning to care less and less about humidity.  Maybe the solution to my humidity phobia all along was to just live where it was humid for 4.5 months and get used to it.

We had plans to meet Charles and Bobbie at their RV park in Trenton for a pizza dinner around 6 pm, so we had the entire day to ourselves.  So what did we do.....pretty much nothing....lol.  I did have the Dell Technology PGA tour event on from about 10 am all the way until after 5 pm when we left to drive up to Trenton.  I did finish reading another book, and TLE pretty much read all day long.......she is a major reader, and by comparison puts me to shame with her voracious reading of one book after another.

At one point TLE broke away from her current book to clean our thermal coffee carafe, which she does on an as needed basis.  She had dismantled the screw on lid to clean the interior workings when I heard her announce that there was a broken part.  Part of the reason she decided to clean it Monday was that it was pouring quite slowly, and she thought maybe something was clogged inside the lid.  In order to get it to pour you have to depress a small lever just above the handle with your thumb to allow the coffee to flow.  That lever had broken inside the lid.  So, this is where I get involved.  I love to fix things, but after examining what was broken, and where it was broken I was pretty sure nothing I have, including my two part epoxy, would fix it.  Nevertheless, I cleaned the part and then epoxied it.  After about 4 hours, more than adequate time for it to cure, I attempted to reinstall it, and sure enough it broke again.  As a result we are now in the market for an new thermal carafe.  The old one was was left over from our Starbucks Aroma Barista coffee maker we used for years before we replaced it with our current CorningWare electric percolator about 5 years ago.  This carafe would keep coffee hot for 12 hours!  In order to keep using the old one while we shop for a new one I glued the lid back together so it can still be used for a few more days.  Oh well, that is life.....stuff breaks, and on you move......

Getting ready to say 'goodbye' to another 

member of our coffee family

A little after 5 pm we began our drive up to Trenton to have dinner with Charles and Bobbie.  We arrived just after 5:30 (stopped to fill up the gas tank), and then we called Pat's Pizza in Ellsworth to order two 'Create Your Own' pizzas.  They said they would be ready in 20 minutes so we left within 5 minutes to make the 10 minute drive up to Pat's Pizza to retrieve our orders.  Unfortunately, right after we called they got slammed and it ended up taking another 20 minutes after we arrived to get our pizzas, but it's all good, right?  We're retired, what do we have to do?

We were back around 6:30 pm and headed outside immediately to eat our pizzas and watch the sun set.  As always we talked non-stop, and when the mosquitoes came out around 7:15 we headed back inside for more conversation, as well as dessert......vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce on top......yummy!  Bye the bye.......the pizza was muy delicioso!

Finally, around 9:30 pm we bid our adieus and headed for the barn once again.  We arrived home around 10 pm, and sat down to watch a recorded episode of  'Better Call Saul' before retiring for the evening......love that show!

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Tour guides.......

7:27 am - Monday - September 3rd - Southwest Harbor, ME - 65º F, 94% humidity, wind 9 mph out of the south by southwest.....overcast and a forecast high of 68º F today.

Sunday dawned clear and cool, and by the way, dawn is now 5:58 am here in northeast Maine.  Quite a change from back in May when it was dawning at 4 am!  Sunset is now at 7:06 pm.....the days are getting shorter and the summer season is just about gone.  

In spite of it being Labor Day weekend downtown Southwest Harbor was not quite as busy as it has been.  Most children are back in school now.  There is a saying here in Southwest Harbor that after Labor Day the tourists consist of the 'near dead' and the 'newly wed'.....very few families can be seen walking the streets of Southwest Harbor.  Some local businesses have already begun to 'shutter their windows' and will be closed until next summer.  Things seem to wind down pretty quickly here in northeast Maine.

Now, for the rest of MDI (Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor), things are still going full tilt and you have to get out pretty early to find a parking spot at the major attractions, which is pretty much everything in ANP (Acadia National Park).  We had agreed to meet Charles and Bobbie at the intersection of Highways 102, 3 and 198 (198 takes you to 3 and then into Bar Harbor) where we would park our car and join them in their large Ford crew cab to hit some of the highlights in Acadia National Park.  We met them about 10:30 am and headed for our first destination of the day....Cadillac Mountain.  What better place in ANP to get a great overview of the entire area......

 Bobbie and TLE

 Charles and moi

.......we reached the summit parking lot to find a long line of cars all looking for the same thing.....a parking spot.  Charles let the three of us off near the summit sidewalk and then set off to find such a spot.  While Bobbie, TLE and I walked around he circumnavigated the parking lot 5 times before finding a spot, but he was successful and eventually joined us.

After spending about 30 minutes taking in the almost always beautiful view (very few clouds this day) we headed down the hill and into Bar Harbor.  We knew we would have no chance on earth of finding a parking spot there within 1/2 a mile of the town center, so we just made a circle through the town to orient Charles and Bobbie to what was there, and some of our favorite eateries, and then headed out of town and down highway 3 towards Otter Creek, through Northeast Harbor, and ultimately back to Somesville where we had parked the VW.  Once we had retrieved the VW we headed through Southwest Harbor to Bernard and one of our favorite lobster pounds....Thurston's.  We arrived to find their parking almost completely full except for two spots at the furthest point from the restaurant so we dropped off the girls and went to snag those last two spots.  The great thing about Thurston's is no matter how full their parking lot is you will never have a hard time finding a table, or two.  They have quite a large dinning area with great views of Bass Harbor......

Bass Harbor view from Thurston's on Sunday

......Bobbie, Charles and I ordered their Lobster BLT, and TLE their Lobster Stew, which she adores.  In addition TLE and Bobbie ordered a bottle of some white wine, and Charles and I a bottle of an Argentinian Malbec.  If it is possible I loved the the Lobster BLT was even better than the last time I had it, and I loved it then!  The conversation flowed as we covered everything from 'A to Z' in the 90+ minutes we were there.  What a perfect way to end the afternoon!  By 3 pm we had made plans to meet up again Monday afternoon, and were both on our way back to our respective abodes.

As soon as we got home I turned on the golf tournament, then sat down and took a hour nap!  The great thing about watching golf on TV is that you don't miss too much in an hour....😀  We finished the evening watching the 7th episode of 'Pacific', and then retired to bed about midnight.....yeah, midnight.....haven't done that in a long time!

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Two for the price of one, and THE DILEMMA......

7:05 am - Sunday - September 2nd - Southwest Harbor, ME - 58º F, 100% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the south by southwest......cloudy with a forecast high of 68º F.

Since I used yesterday's blog post to give the interior pictorial tour of our coach  I haven't written about Friday yet, so the first part of this blog will cover Friday's happenings, then we'll get to Saturday.

Friday we were expecting to hear from our dear friends Charles and Bobbie sometime in the afternoon as they would be arriving for about a week of touring Acadia National Park.  I have known Charles since junior high school, so we go way back.  They live in Arizona through the winter and early spring, and travel in their Landmark 5th wheel during the summer into early fall each year to escape the Arizona heat.  The past three summers we have met up with them wherever we happened to be working.  In 2016 it was South Lake Tahoe, in 2017 it was Yellowstone, and this year, of course, here in Acadia National Park.  At any rate, since we were not sure when we would hear from them we hung around home most of the day.

I spent time puttering in the trailer, and fixing my most favorite coffee cup ever.  I have had this coffee cup since 2005, or 2006.  It was given to me by one of my sons-in-law after he and my daughter had returned from a trip to Alaska to visit his parents.  This is the best thermal coffee cup I have ever had.  It keeps my precious coffee HOT for about an hour.  It's only flaw over the years has been the propensity of the handle to become detached from the coffee cup.  I have reglued this handle to 'old green' about 5 times over the years using two part epoxy.  The most recent time was over 3 years ago, and that repair has lasted the longest of all the repairs I have done.  This coffee cup is like a guy's favorite t-shirt that he wears until it virtually turns to dust.  I really love this cup, and have so many good memories attached to it!

My 'Alaska' coffee cup

When the handle came off a few years ago I actually went online to see if I could find one just like it, and actually found one on eBay, but I decided to stick with 'old green' and fixed the handle.  Well, it came off the other morning while I was holding it by the handle.  The cup fell into my lap, and spilled a little coffee on me, but thankfully I always drink my coffee with the snug fitting lid attached.  In a weak moment I went online to Amazon to just look for another double wall, insulated thermal coffee cup and ordered it......

The new cup keeping my coffee hot!

.......it is just a 'plain Jane' stainless steel, double wall thermal cup, but it has a matching stainless steel handle that appears to be pretty firmly attached.  It was a moment of extreme weakness, but I felt it was time for something new.  After I had ordered it I felt bad, and went out to the trailer to clean off the old epoxy and reglue the handle on to 'old green' one more time.  It actually turned out quite well......

The offending handle reglued

.....and now I am in a quandary....do I continue to use 'old green', and wait for the inevitable failure of the epoxy sometime in the distant future, or do I embrace the new cup and get on with my life?  On the one hand I love the open ended handle on 'old green' which allows me to grip it firmly.....

.....since it has a rubber coated grip I never feel like it will slip out of my hand, unless it just falls off once again.  I'm able to grip the new cup in similar fashion, but the handle is not as manly as the old one.....

.....I can still get three of my fingers inside the handle, and this new cup does keep my coffee hot just as long as the old one.  On the other hand this new cup has no personality....no character, no history, and no memories.....what do I do?  Such are the dilemmas of the retired man.......😏  

We heard from Charles and Bobbie about 4 pm, and agreed to meet them at their RV park in Trenton about 5:30 pm.  Trenton is about 1/2 way to Ellsworth and the drive takes about 20 minutes so we left home at 5 pm to make the drive over to the 'Narrows Too' RV Park.  We sat talking, and catching up for about 2 hours before we bid them adieu after making plans to meet up again on Saturday for lunch.

We were back home by 8 pm, and settled in for the evening.  We knew the overnight low was going to be in the low 50's, and it, indeed, got down to 52º outside.  The temp in the bedroom got down to 55º F with ALL the windows open.....how delightful!  I actually turned on my electric blanket about 5 am for the first time since early June!

Saturday we awoke to English Premier Soccer.....three games in a row!  Saturday also kicked off the NCAA college football season with games all day long and into the late evening.  Additionally it was the second round of the current PGA tour event being held near Boston, MA....what more could a guy ask for with a cornucopia of sporting events from which to choose.

Charles and Bobbie had come into Trenton a day earlier than they had planned, and the site they had originally reserved (right on the ocean) was not available until Saturday, so they had to set up temporarily in another site.  As a result they had to move to their reserved site on Saturday, but couldn't until the customer occupying that site departed.  We know how that can work, right?  Well, they didn't depart until early afternoon, meaning Charles could not move their 5th wheel until then.  We finally heard from them about 3 pm via text message.  He had tried to call me, but my phone did not 'ring'.  When I got the text message I called him, but he didn't hear his phone ring either, so we were trading voice mails, and text messages.  Finally, via text message, we agreed to meet at Finn's Irish Pub in Ellsworth for lunch.  Bobbie was not feeling well, so Charles met us there and we had a lovely lunch.  We have been to Finn's before, as you might recall, and were looking forward to a return engagement.  Charles arrived a few minutes before we and secured a table.  The last time we had two of their appetizers, so we decided to order an actual meal this time.  I ordered their  'Finn's Burger' and was not disappointed in the 1/2 lb. burger.   TLE ordered their Ruben and was equally impressed.  I had a couple of pints of 'Allagash Black'.  We sat eating and talking for close to two hours before we bid Charles adieu and headed for the barn.  We'll get together with he and Bobbie on Sunday for a driving tour of Bar Harbor, then up to Cadillac Mountain and finish the afternoon at Thurston's over in Bernard.

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching portions of several NCAA football games, as well as the tail end of the 2nd round of the 'Dell Technology' golf tournament.  In the evening we continued watching 'Pacific' beginning with episode 4 (10 episodes in all).  We finished the night getting through episode 6.  This series is very intense and attempts to accurately portray the utter brutality of the war in the Pacific, which involved taking back one island at a time, bunker by bunker from the Japanese, who would rather die than surrender.  It was brutal to watch....I cannot even imagine what it would be like to fight that kind of war under those extreme conditions.

We were both in bed a little after 11 pm looking forward to Sunday's events!  Thanks for stopping by!

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1982 Newell Classic Interior tour.....

7:41 am - Saturday - September 1st - Southwest Harbor, ME - 52º F, 98% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the northeast....clear blue skies this morning and all day with a forecast high of 67º F.

I alluded to several recently published comments (see yesterday's post) which gave me a few ideas for future posts, and one of those was from one of my regular readers, Patsy Irene, whom we met along with her husband when we were boondocking near Borrego Springs two winters ago.  She asked if I would provide an interior pictorial tour of our 1982 Newell Classic Class A coach.  I thought that was a great idea, so here we go!

What better place to begin than the actual entrance to our coach.  Newells are known for their mid coach entryways.  Although some were made with front entries, the majority have mid entries.....

 Entry stairs

....... originally our entry was carpeted.......

.....the entry door is quite tall.........

 Very tall door

......just to the left of the entry door, and although technically outside, is our Norcold 12 volt chest style cooler/freezer....it can be used as either.  We choose to keep our beer stock here to free up room in the fridge for things we use on a daily basis.......

 Norcold chest cooler/freezer (↑) & the beer (↓)

......right now it is full of a summer's worth of craft beer purchases.....we'll have to work on drinking some of it now!

We'll start the interior tour of our coach with the bedroom.  This picture is taken from the hallway which connects to the bathroom, shower and kitchen areas.  The bed is a walk around queen size bed......

Bedroom

.....the platform for the bed is attached to the top of the platform with a piano hinge on one end, and gas shocks on the other so it can be raised to access our large storage area under the bed, which also includes a 'wine rack'......

 From bedroom looking down hallway to front

Kitchen - from Salon looking through kitchen down hallway to bedroom

........next we look back towards the bedroom from the kitchen, and then from the kitchen forward to the salon area.......

 Salon - Back to front (↑) & front to back (↓)

........looking from the center console back through the salon to towards the bedroom.

Now for some individual features in the coach.  Just over the center console are the analog electrical gauges which give us information about the electricity usage in our coach via our 50 amp connection.  As you may know, a 50 amp plug has two 'legs' each providing 50 amps of electrical power (if you are indeed connected to a 50 amp outlet) for a total of 100 amps.  The two outside gauges tell how many volts are flowing into the coach.  The two gauges to either side of the center gauge.......12 volt amp indicator [+/-]....show how many A/C amps we are consuming at any given time.   The center analog 12 volt amp gauge shows whether our batteries are charging, or discharging at any given time.

I love analog gauges!

 Bathroom - sink

Bathroom - Dometic ceramic toilet

 Shower/tub on the other side of the hallway from the bathroom

 NUTONE food processing center

 Coffee bean grinder

DVR, altimeter and analog battery condition

Above the driver's seat is our DVR, as well as our DVD player.  Just below them we have an aircraft style altimeter, and to its right is our analog battery condition indicator.

Next up is our Dometic Classic absorption refrigerator/freezer.  This unit is about 9 years old.  The original Dometic refrigerator was beginning to give up the ghost back in 2012, so we began to think about replacing it with a new unit.  No point in awaiting its demise before we take action, right?  A good friend of ours who also has a Newell, had removed this Dometic from their coach to replace it with a household type refrigerator.  He graciously gifted this one to us when it was about 2 years old.  We removed the old one, and installed the new one ourselves with our friends help.  It has worked flawlessly ever since!

 Dometic absorption refrigerator

Another very important appliance is our Splenide 2000 washer/dryer combo.  The original one, which was 35 years old, stopped working about 9 months ago when we were at the Grand Canyon.  We found this much newer one on eBay for $700 shipped.  I installed it while we were staying in SoCal back in April.  Not having to spend hours in a laundromat simplifies our lives, and enables us to to do other things around the coach while our laundry is being cleaned.   We would not be without it!

 Splendide washer/dryer combo

The pantry

Our pantry is located just above the Splendid, and adequately holds most of our staples which we need to access on a regular basis.  

So, there you have it.  If any of your have questions, or want to see something I have not covered here let me know via the comments section, and I will do my best to answer your questions, or take pictures of anything I may have left out. At another time, soon, I will give a tour of the exterior of the Newell including the big Detroit Diesel 6v92, and all of the storage areas.

Thanks for stopping by!

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I'm sorry........

7:04 am - Friday - August 31st - Southwest Harbor, ME - 57º F, 83% humidity, wind 7 mph out of the north.......sunny skies with a wonderful forecast high for today of 68º F.  It got down to 64º F in the bedroom last night.   Was wonderful to be under the covers once again.  The prior two nights it was in the 80's in the bedroom all night.....what a difference!

Over the past few weeks I had been puzzled at the lack of comments on my blog posts, especially after my posts about leaving SDC.  Posts like that usually elicit a few responses from my readers.  Then, yesterday, I got a message from 'Blogger' (Google platform I use to publish my blog each day) asking if I wished to continue moderating the comments which come into my blog.  Usually if someone leaves a comment I get an automated e-mail from Blogger very quickly advising me I have a comment to moderate, and it gives me the comment.  Through the e-mail I can decide to 'publish' that comment, 'delete' that comment, or report that comment as 'spam'.  When I got that e-mail from 'Blogger' I got suspicious, and went to the comment portion of the utilities menu finding I had over 30 unmoderated comments!  I went through them and reported about 5 as spam, and then published the rest immediately.  Please accept my apologies for not responding to your comments on a more timely basis, especially those who left time sensitive comments.  I just assumed 'Blogger' would tell me if I had any comments to moderate as it has done for years.  Didn't know I had to 're-up' to continue receiving the notifications.  I won't make that mistake again!  I am now trying to go through all the comments which have been published and reply to them as soon as possible.  If you left a comment, and were looking for an answer please go back and see my responses.

So, I write about that to say this.....there were several comments which gave me ideas for future posts.  One comment asked about the late night phone call I got back on July 22nd, and what the problem was.  So here goes......as I briefly mentioned in my July 23rd post, the ranger phone rang about 11:30 pm.....it was a call from a woman staying in cabin # 304.  She advised she thought they were getting bit by 'bed bugs'.....wait, what?  It took a while for the fog to recede from my brain, so I heard myself saying "Bitten by what?", and she repeated that she and her family were getting bed bug bites.  I advised her I would be over in a few minutes, hung up, and got dressed.  

All the while I'm thinking how can this be?  We had a customer in that cabin for the past 2 weeks, and they reported nothing of the sort.  This was the second night the current customers had been in cabin, and they had not complained the first night about anything of the sort.  As I drove the golf cart over to their cabin I'm wondering what on earth I can do at, now, almost midnight.  

I arrive to find the wife outside waiting for me.  She takes me inside to look at the sheets on one of the beds, and sure enough there appear to be some sort of almost microscopic bugs crawling around.....at least that is what it looks like....I'm not sure if I am just seeing what she tells me is there, or if I am really seeing bugs.  Their two young children are quite distraught, and the son is asking in a quite plaintive tone "Why is some random stranger in our cabin?"......over the next few minutes he gets more distraught, bordering on hysterical.  I, of course, am feeling quite useless, and decide to walk back outside and call the owners, who live about 5 miles distant.  The wife answers the phone and I relate to her what is happening.  She listens, and then says she will call back in a few minutes.  She is going to call local hotels to see if she can find them a room for the night, so we can deal with this in the light of day.

She calls back in about 10 minutes saying she could only find a room in Ellsworth....everything locally was booked.  I suggested I would have the wife call her back and get the information, which I do.  I then went back to the golf cart to sit and wait for the verdict.  After a few minutes the lady from cabin # 304 comes over to me to advise they will be driving into Ellsworth for the night.  They ask for some large trash bags so put their linens from the beds in to isolate them from the rest of their possessions.  I run over to the bathroom shed to retrieve a few and am back in minutes.  I hand her the bags, bid her adieu, and then head home.  By the time I get home it is going on 1 am.  I finally drop off to sleep around 1:30 am.

So, was it bed bugs, or where they imagining it?  The very next morning the owners had a local pest control guy come to investigate the cabin.  Within minutes he had determined they were not bed bugs, but 'bird mites'.......he found a bird's nest under the eves of the cabin, and came to the seemingly correct conclusion that the bird mites had migrated indoors over the past few days and were the cause of the bug bites.   The bird's nest was removed, and then the cabin was thoroughly cleaned and fumigated within a couple of hours.  The customers returned that afternoon and finished their stay without incident.  

So, there you have it.  On the bright side, it was not bed bugs, which would have made for a theoretically embarrassing TripAdvisor review by the customer.  It was bird mites, and was totally the fault of the owners for not removing the bird's nest sooner.  I did not write about it sooner as I could not figure out how to relate what had happened without causing the owners extreme embarrassment, so I chose not to write about it again.  Now that we are no longer there, and due to the circumstances of our departure I really don't care if they are embarrassed, or not anymore.  Stuff happens, and there is no need to make a mountain out of a molehill, which is their proclivity. 

Thursday was the final day of the local heatwave, or so we thought.  As it turned out it began to rain about 9:30 am quite hard for almost an hour.  That unexpected rain completely broke the heatwave, and the rest of the day was delightfully cool.  We decided to drive into Ellsworth to visit a few local shoe stores, and outfitters.  TLE needs a new pair of work shoes for our upcoming stint at Amazon.  We visited two mom and pop shoe stores, then the local L.L. Bean store, as well as Remy's (I wrote about this outlet store previously), but TLE did not find anything which satisfied her requirements.  On our way back out of town we stopped at the local liquor store to see if they had anymore of the Leinenkugel Grapefruit Shandy we had purchased there a couple of weeks prior.  As it turned out they had two six packs left, so we quickly grabbed them, paid for them and headed back to the car.  I have been a fan of Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy for years, but rarely ever find their Grapefruit Shandy.  TLE likes it as well, so whenever I see it I buy it.  If you like a light, refreshing summer beer, this is the one for you!

Leinenkugel's Grapefruit Shandy.....oh my!

We were home just before 4 pm.....we opened all the windows of the Newell and enjoyed the cool breezes wafting in the windows the rest of the afternoon.  For dinner TLE had been cooking a chicken dish in her crock pot all day (she wrote about this a few days ago).  About 4 pm she took it out of the crock pot to finish it in the oven.  I think it is called Slow Cooker Garlic Chicken.....OMG!  Bacon was involved so you can imagine how good it was!  She got the recipe off a website called "Dinner, then dessert".

We watched a recorded two hour episode of 'Masterchef', and were in bed a little after 10 pm......we have friends coming into town Friday, and they will be here until September 5th, so I am quite sure I will have plenty to write about over the next few days!

Thanks for stopping by!

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Forty-Seven.....

6:53 am - Thursday - August 30th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 68º F, 92% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the north.....partly cloudy with a forecast high of 75º F today.

If you read Wednesday's blog post you noted that in the opening paragraph I referred to August 29th as our 47th wedding anniversary.  Over the first 37 years we rarely focused a lot of attention on anniversaries, birthdays, or even Valentine's Day.  Instead we attempted to make every day of our lives together important.  We did go out for dinner once every two, or three years, but there was nothing regular.  Our goal each day was to wake up thinking of what we might do to make the other's life better.  However, about 10 years ago we began to celebrate our wedding anniversary each and every year, usually by going to a really expensive, high end restaurant, we take time out during that special day to spend time thinking and talking about our life together, and sharing memories that stand out to each of us.  It has been a good life together, and neither of us can imagine our lives without the other.

We started out our anniversary day with a drive over to the picnic area at Seawall.  There is no sand beach there, but there is shade, and numerous picnic tables.  If you get there early enough you can snag a picnic table, but we brought our beach chairs just in case.  At Seawall you have a lovely view of the entrance to Southwest Harbor, and can see the lobster boats moving in and out of the harbor.....

.....we arrived just after 10 am, snagged a picnic table (although we chose to sit in our individual beach chairs) and spent the next few hours reading and enjoying the cool ocean breezes coming off the harbor.  It was the perfect place to escape the continuing 'heatwave'.  

We were back home by 1 pm enjoying the A/C.  It only got into the high 70's on Wednesday, but the humidity was still high.  We had a 6 pm reservation at Red Sky in downtown Southwest Harbor for our anniversary dinner.  When we first arrived in Southwest Harbor we asked our co-workers for a recommendation for our anniversary dinner, and they, to a person, recommended Red Sky for the special occasion, so we filed that in the back of our collective mind.

We decided to arrive at the restaurant about 30 minutes prior to our reservation so we could have a drink at their bar before moving to our table.   TLE ordered a glass Prosecco for her drink, and I ordered a couple of shots of Laphroaig 10 year old single malt Scotch on the rocks.......

......we both had looked at the menu online earlier in the day, and pretty much knew what we were going to order.  To start I ordered their Beech Hill Mixed Greens salad, and TLE their Gazpacho.....

....we always order an expensive (for us) bottle of wine for our anniversary dinner, and since we are now into Malbecs we ordered their 2014 Catena Malbec (Argentina)....it was well worth the cost!

For our entrees I ordered their Bavette Steak (grilled with a mustard crust and served with a blue cheese butter over red wine caramelized onions) and TLE their Pan Roasted Breast of Duck (with a port demi glace  and pear and blackberry sauce).  The food was worth every penny, the service was second to none, and the ambiance was just perfect!  

We were on our way home by 7:30 after 2 wonderful hours spent in this wonderful, local restaurant.  I cannot imagine a better experience!  And that was our 47th wedding anniversary day.

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