'On the Beech......'

7:31 am - Thursday - August 16th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 64º F, 98% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the north by northwest......sunny today with a few clouds, and a forecast high of 76º F.

Back on July 11th we decided to hike to Beech Mountain, only we took a wrong turn near Beech Cliffs and never really got to the top, and especially to the fire tower.  So, here we are about 5 weeks later and we still have not made it to the summit of Beech Mountain.  The map says it is only a 1.1 mile round trip hike from the Beech Mountain parking lot, so how difficult can it be?  Not too, but more difficult than one might imagine.....certainly more difficult than I was thinking.

Anyways, we finally got motivated late morning to get dressed and go knock out this short trail and finally reach the summit of Beech Mountain.  We arrived at the Beech Mountain parking lot around 11:30 am.  We got out our hiking poles as an afterthought......how much would we need poles for a 1.1 mile round trip hike?  Well, we found out pretty quickly.  There really are very few easy trails here in Acadia National Park.  Every trail seemingly involves lots of granite steps at a minimum, and often there are steel ladders.......

At the beginning

......within 500' of the beginning of the hike we came to a fork in the trail.....left, or right?  We chose left.  Our reasoning was the .4 mile trail to the top was probably steeper than the .7 mile trail, and we find it much easier to go up steep trails, than to come down them.  Fortunately, our reasoning held up on this hike......

500 ' into the hike we already have a choice to make.....we took the trail to the left and came back on the trail to the right....actually 1.2 miles, instead of 1.1 miles 

We made it to the top in about 2o minutes.  It was not very warm, but it was quite humid, so our overall condition when we reached the fire tower was quite damp......my shirt was soaked with perspiration.....TLE never sweats.....she just sort of glistens.

Finally reached the fire tower

 Picture of fire tower taken earlier this summer from SDC in July

The views, even with cloud cover, were spectacular!  We could see Somes Sound, Southwest Harbor, and Bass Harbor all at once.  Of course, we climbed up to the first level of the fire tower to get good pictures over the trees.  We could not go to the top as it was locked.....the fire tower is no longer in use.

For as long as I can remember I have had this somewhat romantic notion about fire towers.  I often thought about how cool it would be to spend a summer in one of these facilities watching for fires, and reading endless numbers of books.  Of course, that is not a job for a married guy with 5 kids, but it appealed to me, nonetheless, and frankly, it still does.  Can you imagine living with this view 24/7........

 'Pano' taken from fire tower platform

.....we also got this zoomed picture of one of the 'mountain view' cabins at SDC.....this the spot from which I took the picture of the fire tower weeks ago........

One of the 'mountain view' cabins at SDC

.....in all we spent about 15 minutes loitering around the summit before we began our descent on the .7 mile trail back to the parking lot.  In all we were gone about 58 minutes doing this 1.2 mile loop trail.......

........our actual moving time was 43 minutes....we averaged about 1.8 mph and burned just 231 calories....felt like more to me.

On our way home we stopped off at the Food Mart to pick up a few things and visited the antique shop (Dragon Fly Cottage) across the parking lot for the first time before heading for home.....

Dragon Fly Cottage Antiques

.....we spent the rest of the afternoon reading, and napping (well for me anyway....TLE rarely, if ever, takes a nap).  TLE had purchased a Red Baron Classic Crust Supreme pizza at the Food Mart, to which she added black olives, red onions, red bell peppers, anchovies, parmesan and mozzarella cheeses.  We ate that wonderful pizza outside on our patio and enjoyed the early evening air for about an hour before heading back inside for the evening

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A repelling idea......

7:56 am - Wednesday - August 15th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 66º F, 100% humidity (going to be a humid one!), wind 7 mph out of the south....overcast with a forecast high for today of 75º F.

Tuesday we had it in our minds to take a hike, or take a walk at some point during the day.  I spent time in the morning cleaning grime from our Cannondale bikes resulting from our bike ride the day prior on wet gravel.  We've done quite a bit of riding on the Carriage Roads this summer, and even if we had not picked up extra grime this past Monday they would have needed cleaning anyway.  Working on bicycles is something I enjoy, and I never feel put upon when it needs doing.

I spent an hour, or so finishing a book I began reading about two months ago just after we arrived in Southwest Harbor.  Now that I am not working anymore, and therefore am not exhausted at the end of every day I've gotten back to reading.  I tried to read when I was still working, but I so tired I would fall asleep, so I would watch TV to pass the time, instead.

Finally, by 1:30 pm we became motivated enough to get dressed and do a local walk.  Just down SR-102 about 1/2 mile from where we are staying is a fire road called the 'Hio Truck Road'.  Only pedestrians, and bicycles are allowed......no trucks, cars, or ATV's.  The old fire road runs all the way to Seawall Campground (Acadia National Park), which is right across the street from Seawall Picnic Area.  We arrived, via  a 1/2 mile walk, at the trailhead around 2 pm and proceeded into the forest.  We had been told it was one mile to the campground from the trailhead, but it ended up being 2 miles.  It was another 1 mile walk through the quite large Seawall Campground to the Seawall Picnic Area, which is right on the ocean.

We sat at a picnic table in the picnic area for about 20 minutes watching the fog roll in and out of Southwest Harbor, and then began our 3.5 mile walk home.......

Nicely paved interior roads in the Seawall Campground

.....we came across this gorgeous early 60's GM bus conversion.....just below the 'GM' logo you can see the old Greyhound Bus logo, so I am assuming this conversion served as a Greyhound bus during its first incarnation......

 Entrance to the Hio Truck Road from the Seawall Campground end of the road

......one negative to this walk was we both forgot to apply mosquito repellent prior to beginning our 7 mile round trip walk.  Of course, we thought it was going to be a 3 mile round trip walk.  There was about a mile in the middle of the Hio Truck Road section where the mosquitoes were quite active, and I have the welts this morning to prove it!

 Couldn't get my Strava to work on the walk over to Seawall, but it worked on the way back, so just double everything

We arrived back at the Newell about 4:10 pm mosquito bitten, tired, and sweaty.....TLE took the first shower, and I the second.  Around 5:15 pm I lit the Sea-B-Que once again to grill some boneless chicken breasts with skin.  It took about 20 minutes to grill the chicken once the Sea-B-Que was up to temperature, and we were eating just before 6 pm.

I like that we took off on a 3 mile walk, and kept going even when it dawned upon us that it was much farther......4 miles further....than we expected.  I don't like that I forgot to apply mosquito repellent.....that will not happen again!

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Inertia........

8:23 am - Tuesday - August 14th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 65º F, 97% humidity, wind 6 mph out of the east.....overcast with a forecast high of 70º F. 

It's been a week since that fateful day when we ended our employment with SDC, and we've been basically vegetating......time to get out and do something physical, right?  How about a bike ride?  There are many miles of Carriage Roads we have yet to traverse, but we have done about all we can do out of the Eagle Lake trailhead, so we decided to get an early start and head over to Jordan Pond to see if we could snag a parking spot and ride some of the roads out of there.

We left home about 9:30 am, and arrived at Jordan Pond just before 10 am, and what do you know?  There were a dozen parking spots still available.....I guess the secret is getting there before 10 am!  We intended to ride south to Seal Harbor, and followed the signs in that direction, however after just 1/2 mile we came to signs advising no bikes where allowed beyond that point as the Carriage Roads were on private property and only pedestrians and horseback riders were allowed.......NO BIKES!  The road up to that point had been all downhill so we had to turn around and ride 1/2 mile back uphill......doh!

So, we reset our goal the to Day Mountain summit.....initially we believed it was 1.5 miles to the summit of Day Mountain, but it was actually that distance to the beginning of the 1.5 climb to the summit of Day Mountain, so that's another 3 miles round trip....TLE was not into adding an additional 3 miles, so we deferred Day Mountain for another day and just completed the 'Around Mountain' loop back to Jordan Pond......

......we came across a flock of turkeys in the middle of the road at one point, but as we approached they headed up a game trail leaving the road to us.......

....we were back to the car by 11:39 am.  During our ride we did get sprinkled upon several times, and I actually put on my rain jacket for a short stretch, but finished without actual rain.  In all we covered 6.75 miles, burned 473 calories, averaging 7.3 mph.....

.......we were home, after a quick stop at Southwest Liquor Locker, by 12:30 pm.

I've had a number of car improvement projects hanging fire all summer.  Around the time we arrived in Southwest Harbor I had ordered a kit from Amazon, made by Rustoleum, to restore our headlight lenses to a pristine clear appearance once again, but had never gotten around to using the kit......Monday seemed like a likely day to dive into this project.  I've used Rustoleum products for years, and knowing they had put their name behind this product gave me a lot of confidence in the outcome.   What do you think?

Another project hanging fire even longer (I bought the Krylon black gloss paint in South Lake Tahoe last May) was to repaint my windshield wiper arms, which where showing more metal than paint after 17 years.........

.....once again, they came out looking very nice.......

........I was feeling pretty good about myself by this time, and decided to wash the car.....it's been at least 6, or 7 weeks since I last did that.  Wow, I feel so productive!  I've got a few more projects I need to complete on the car, so now maybe, just maybe after two days of productivity I can overcome the mañana inertia and get more done in the next few weeks!

TLE had planned street tacos for dinner, so around 5:30 I lit the Sea-B-Que to grill the pollo asado she had purchased sometime ago.  Tony came out with his some Jack to grill some burgers over the firepit, so I helped him get the fire going.  We sat talking and laughing until almost 8 pm....what a great evening!  And, the food was not bad either.....lol!

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Amazing!

7:00 am - Monday - August 13th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 65º F, 90% humidity, wind 6 mph out of the east by northeast.....overcast with a forecast high today of 70º F.

I was up before 7 am Sunday full of anticipation.  There would be 8 hours of the PGA Tournament to watch plus a few hours of English Premier Soccer.  Talk about overdosing on sports!  It's okay, though, because I've needed a week like we just had doing a lot of nothing, and clearing the cobwebs out of my head.  Watching hours and hours of golf this week has really helped refocus me from the disappointment of our failed work experience at SDC.

They began televising the PGA Tournament at 11 am, and it went until almost 7:30 pm.  Tiger teed off at 2:35 pm and I was glued to the TV, or very near it for the rest of the afternoon.  Between 11 am and 2:35 pm I had a couple of projects I wanted to complete.  One was to fix Tony's Specialized Rock Hopper mountain bike.  

Ironically, he had ridden his bike to work at SDC for the first time this past Monday when the five of us decided to quit.  On his way home the cable connecting his GripShift shifter to the front derailleur broke, plus the cable housing completely failed.  He needed a new cable, of which I have literally dozens, and a new length of cable housing, of which I have a dozen feet, or so.....perfect!  I haven't had a bike project since last December at the Grand Canyon where I was able to work on several employees' bikes.  I love working on bikes!  Tony completely disassembled his shifter trying to figure out what was wrong, so it fell to me to put all the pieces back together.  I haven't worked on a GripShift shifter for quite a while, but no problem.....what else do I have to do, right?  I sat out in the trailer fiddling with the shifter for about an hour, finally figuring it out. Once that was done it was just a matter of installing the new cable and cable housing, then hooking it up to the front derailleur and adjusting everything so it would shift properly.

Next up I needed to clean a couple of months of surface rust off my air horns on the front end of my Newell roof.  We, obviously, have been living near the Atlantic Ocean for two and a half months, and the air contains salt, as one might imagine.  Tony gave me a can of 'Never Dull' cotton swabs........

......the can says it is 'Magic Wadding Polish'.....the wadding looks kind of like cotton balls to me.  At any rate this stuff works like 'Magic' just as the can says!  It took me more time to set up my extension ladder to get up to the roof to polish the horns than it did to remove the surface rust.....didn't they turn out well?

After I finished that project I essentially spent the rest of the afternoon watching the PGA Tournament, including every single hole Tiger Woods played.  It was a very, very exciting afternoon.  Tiger began the 4th round 4 strokes back of Brooks Koepka (pronounced 'Kep-ka').  At one point he was just one stroke back of Brooks, but that is as close as he got.  Nevertheless, the tournament went right down to the last few holes.  Tiger finished at 14 under par, in sole possession of second place, two strokes behind Brooks who finished at 16 under par.  It was the best fourth round score in a Major for Tiger in his career.......6 under par.  It was a truly AMAZING afternoon!

By the time the tournament and the attendant post tournament  interviews were over it was closing in on 7:30 pm....what an afternoon!  Even TLE was in on the action.....she was right there cheering and groaning with me every step of the way.  TLE prepared some wonderful burritos for dinner.....yum.......and then we spent the rest of the evening decompressing from a very exciting afternoon.  

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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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