Traveling and Family

30 August and 31 August

Yesterday we traveled from Kennebunkport ME to New Brunswick NJ.  The road time was just under 6 hours, and we traversed through 6 states:  ME, NH, MA, CT, NY and NJ.  I-95 is still a pain to travel on, but with EZ Pass the tolls were unknown and we'll see them on our EZ account.  Beats the heck out of chucking quarters, making sure you have change, or annoying everybody behind you while you wait for change.  Last night we had a good dinner with my cousins, Adriana and Eduardo.  Sorry Mom, we got so engrossed visiting with each other that we forgot to take pictures.  I got an update on the Colombian side of the family, which I'll report via sepcor.

I had asked at the Herrara's concierge desk where safe above ground parking was, and we were provided with a loading dock pass that allowed us to park in security camera view.  We slept on the street last night, as Eduardo has a cat Ney and Adriana has a cat too (but I don't remember his name.)  With a double dose of allergy meds, I surprised Roger how little cat suffering I displayed with only the occasional sneezes.

This morning Adriana fixed breakfast, including arepas and we had our photo session for Mom.

We're now at Cherry Hill Campground, Washington DC's only nearby campground.  Tomorrow we're meeting Reid for lunch and then headed to Timothy's afterward.  The absolute best thing about traveling is seeing family.

Murphy is a tease

29 August

We had rain last night and it is a 30% chance of rain all day today.  It looks like it could rain any time, just gray and dreary.  Maybe because we haven't had much recent experience with rain, we decided not to risk bike riding, because the roads were already wet and the man at the campground's office told me the distances were longer than you'd think on the map.  In other words the map wasn't drawn to scale.  Instead we opted to lock our bikes to the picnic table and head to "downtown" Kennebunkport.  It is a quaint tourist New England town, that has an art gallery on every corner.  I did find several stained or fused glass ideas.  Roger and I are still dumbfounded by the price of "art," but I really liked the windvanes.

After strolling through both Kennebunkport and Kennebunk, we drove two scenic routes.  The first is referred as "Walker's" Loop, which has the Bush compound.  I learned from the man in the campground's office that the Bush's have been vacationing in Kennebunkport for generations.  That "41's" father was a US Senator from Connecticut and that the family has been summering for as long as local folks can remember.  There are countless articles in various shops that say "the  Bush family buys ____ here."

The second drive we took was down to Wells, and we spent an hour walking on the beach.  It was not a sunny or warm beach day, but it was nice to get some exercise.  We were gone for 4 hours and it did not rain.  Murphy is probably laughing at us, because if we had gone out bike riding Roger is sure that it would have rained on us at the farthest point out.

We had originally planned on driving Long Island, but I pointed out to Roger that this is "Labor Day Weekend."  Therefore we won't be on Long Island.  We both studied the map between here and Reid and came to the conclusion there isn't much we haven't recently or already seen.  Fortunately I was able to contact one of my Colombian cousins, who now lives in New Brunswick NJ, so that's where we're going tomorrow.  Adriana and Eduardo just moved from Champlain IL to New Brunswick, so it is really great that we have some place to go as far as having a destination.
 

On the road again

Finally the part came in and the RV's turbo is now repaired.  We left Bangor around 11ish and headed south.  First stop, Freeport ME, home of LL Bean.  Once we found the right LL Bean store, I was able to exchange my ear pinching sunglasses and we were headed south again.  We drove through some interesting afternoon fog, where it was warm enough to cause the cold water to fog.  From there we headed to Kennebunkport ME.  Our plans are to spend two nights and do some bike riding tomorrow, if the weather cooperates.  Hopefully it will rain tonight and get it out of it's system so we can get into the town of Kennebunkport and down to the beach.  We have a bike route, with only a short stretch of bothersome road.  I'll let you know tomorrow. 

No joy

27 August

Our part for the turbo is a wayward part.  It was supposed to be delivered early this morning, but things didn't go according to plans.  The delivery service truck broke down.  Don't know why they don't use their own trucks, but the truck broke down.  We were originally told that the dealership didn't have the phone number for the driver.  So when the dealership called the delivery service after 1 pm, we were told that the part would not be delivered today.  Roger and I even volunteered to go where the truck had broken down, but the dealership was not told where the parts truck was being serviced.  Rather mysterious to us.  We were also told that the head honcho in charge of the service department could not allow us to go get the part ourselves.  So instead we spent the day waiting, being told different things (not by the dealership, but by the delivery service), and did a little bike riding. 

Bangor is not a bike friendly town, so we were told the safest place to ride our bikes was the cemetery, which was nearby.  So we rode around the cemetery, which was established in 1836, so there were some rather interesting grave markers.  There's also a section dedicated to the Civil War veterans of the 2nd ME Infantry, which were the crucial Infantry group that held their ground at Gettysburg.  Roger could give you more details on this, just ask.

The folks are complaining here that it is hot!  86 degrees, but we do have our air conditioner running since we have a dark gray RV.  It's a very random partly cloudy day.  If we had known that it was going to be an entire day waiting for a part, we would have gone back to Acadia.  There's another couple who is also having RV issues, but we're lucky because our campground is only about 20 minutes away and they've committed to a campsite well over an hour away at Acadia, because they wanted to have a site for Labor Day Weekend.

Keep your fingers crossed for us to have better luck tomorrow.

Quirk Dodge

26 August

Quirk Dodge determined that the RV needs a part that will be coming from Boston tomorrow, so by 10:30 we were headed to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.  First stop was up to Cadillac Mountain, which is the highest point on the US Atlantic seaboard, and is the first place you can see sunshine in the USA due to its elevation of 1,528 feet.  It would have been great to see the view, but we were up in the clouds and couldn’t see much at all.  Typical for us.  (As an aside, it was sunny in Town Hall when we left, but as we headed towards the road to Cadillac, it clouded up again.)  After going up the mountain to see what we could see, we drove the park loop.  The NP has made the majority of the loop one way, which is really nice because the single two way lanes are now one lane with passing lanes and easy pull outs.  Plus the road has been recently paved.  Since we got a really late start, parking for hiking was a challenge, so we might make the 45 minute tomorrow if the repair doesn’t take too long.

After the park we went down to Bar Harbor and walked the town.  The town is quaint and touristy.  From there we went to Atlantic Brewery, which is a micro-brewery that had a tour and sampling.  We also had an early supper there.

Who knows what will happen with the clock and RV tomorrow.

Relaxed Sunday

25 August

We made it to Bangor.  Now that we're here I can write about why we cut our stay short in Canada.  While on Newfoundland the turbo on the RV's engine started giving us problems.  Initially the problem was a very annoying high pitched whine.  The turbo is needed to climb hills by kicking in only when needed to boost the engine's power.  Without it, we poke up hills and not with any safe speed.  Well the turbo stopped working for a while and we limped to Bauline East.  Roger was able to find out on line that occasionally the turbo will reset when the engine gets cool.  Fortunately that was the case for us.  However not knowing when it would fail completely we decided to take the ferry soonest off Newfoundland.  Once we got back to Nova Scotia we started calling Mercedes/Dodge dealerships trying to find a Sprinter tech.  The earliest we could get an appointment was this coming Friday, the Friday before a long weekend.  So we decided to head towards the USA and see if we could find a dealership that could get us in sooner.  Tomorrow we have an 8:30 am appointment at a Bangor ME dealership.   The good news is that the turbo only stopped working one other time, so we got lucky.  We're camped for the night at a place about 10 miles from the dealership, so we'll be able to make it there with or without the turbo.  Hopefully the dealership will have the part to fix it and we'll be back on the road again.

Needless to say, Roger hasn't slept soundly because his toy has been acting up.  This will all be history soon.

We did get to take a nice bike ride today.  The weather was "lovely" today, 75 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.  Same weather forecast for tomorrow. Sleeping tonight without the a/c again, although we did switch blankets because it's not supposed to get as chilly tonight.

Leaving Canada

24 August

We left Harve Bouchre NS, and headed west on TCH 104.  Because the road was either 3 or 4 lane divided highway we made good time and opted to take the Fundy scenic drive, so at Moncton New Brunswick we headed south on 114.  The Bay of Fundy has a tidal range of 46 feet and is suppose to be the largest tidal range in the world.  There’s a park at Hopewell Rocks that we stopped at and saw the mouth of the Petitcodiac River meet the Bay of Fundy.  The Petitcodiac River is called the “Chocolate River” because the silt in the water has so much iron oxide in it, and the tidal range is so strong and quick that the silt never really settles enabling the river to run clear.  The Bay is milk chocolate brown at Hopewell Rocks.  When we got there the tide was already coming in, so the beach was going to close in less than 15 minutes or rambling down by any of the formations.  Therefore Roger and I opted not to make the 10 minute scramble down the beach only to have 5 minutes on the red beach.  Instead I’ll just include pictures of the Flower Pots which are rock formations with trees on that that become islands at high tide, tidal arches a favorite kayak spot at high tide and the Daniel Flats.

At Alma, which is the entrance to Fundy National Park, the Bay had a brown streak in it as it mixes bay water with Petitcodiac water.  Then by the time the Bay is geographically by Saint John and its river, the Bay is a pretty blue green.  (Note Saint John in New Brunswick is not to be confused with St. John’s in Newfoundland.)

 

We made it to Bayside on the north bound part of Route 127.  We got a little turned around in St. Andrews, because south 127 ends and we didn’t see the sign for north 127 until we turned around at the end of the road in St. Andrews.  Bayside is across one of the arms of the Passamaquoddy Bay from Maine.  The Passamaquoddy empties into the Bay of Fundy.  Tomorrow we’ll drive to St Stephens and cross into the USA at Calais Maine.