Busy Time in Bangor

So we have just gone through an interesting time here at our campground in Hermon, just outside of Bangor.  When Jan checked us in she was warned that they had 4 pairs of Killdeer families with nests all around the park, and one of them was on our site.  They are plovers and have some unique attributes, they lay their eggs in gravel since the eggs blend in very well, and they protect the nest by coming towards a predator then running away, making it look like they have a broken wing.  Very interesting at first but after the 8th day of it when even getting within 25 feet of the nest is a little much.  Back to the story, the nest is right in the middle of our site, I try to pull in to straddle it and pull forward, but it won't work, so I back out, pull around in front and back into our site, and then there was enough room to park the truck behind the nest.

You can see the Killdeer on its nest, the blue bag is just to
bring attention to it

The broken wing act

And after we'd been there for 8 days the hatching began, the amazing thing is the babies stay in the nest only for a matter of a few hours then start walking and feeding immediately, and they look like miniatures of their parents within hours!

Immediately after hatching

Bottom line to our saga, 3 babies hatched, one was run over, not by us, and one egg that didn't hatch, and now they are all gone.  They sure provided a lot of entertainment.

One of the very first things we did was wash the motorhome, roof and all, it had been a long time, then after it was dry the following day Jan went up and put a third coat of Rustoleum Topside paint on, which has worked out very well for us.

We took a ride down to Ellsworth to go to a fish market and went to a pretty good pizza place for lunch, Zeppa's.

Finally our new diodes came so we could tackle rewiring the truck lights.  A burp in the shipping of the first order made it necessary to reorder putting everything off more than a week.  

One of the new diodes

The original homemade diodes wired incorrectly.

One side done.

Then much to our astonishment and disappointment we found something else, the original installer had removed some of the insulation in order to make his connections to his homemade diodes:-(

You can see the removed insulation in this picture

And when removed left me very little wire to work with

But we got it all done, wrapped up tight, and checked the lights and found they work perfectly now.

All done

Only one more thing to do, go out to lunch to one of favorite places nearby, Angler's, great food, one of the very best haddock sandwiches we have ever had, onion rings that are awesome, fantastic haddock chowder, and wonderful baked scallops, not to mention all the other wonderful things on the menu.

But the highlight of the lunch was we were joined by our friend's Doug and Nancy which made it into a wonderful visit and great time!

On The Road Again

We usually like to plan lunches for when we are on the road.  Leftovers are our normal choice, that way you can pull over and have something to eat in mere moments, but other times we'll make tunafish or a salad etc.  But when we have an opportunity to splurge here in Maine, well.....

Since we only had a short way to go, we planned to eat lunch before we got on the road, and then while we were at it we decided to cover lunch the next day as well:-)  So that plan became the first of our home made lobster rolls.  You can buy lobsters at the local grocery store and have them steam them, quick and easy, and affordable.  Then bring them back, pick them and make awesome lobster rolls!  Five lobsters got us 4 huge lobster rolls.

Our picking station

The wonderful delicious result!

 PS: We'd put these up against most any lobster roll:-)

So we bid farewell to Karen and Tom, had our lunch and then pulled out to hook up the truck and head north to Wiscasset.  I should interject here that we have been having issues with the new truck as far as towing it.  This is our 3rd Ram that we have towed and the first two were so simple to set up, this one is loaded with all kinds of electronics which evidently complicate the whole procedure and then add in an auto parking brake that applies itself with a mind of its own, and well, it's frustrating, and it is also a problem that Karen is having on her identical to our truck as well.  Another issue to make it even worse is the lights for the truck aren't working consistently either.  Sometimes when you go to check the turn signals and brake lights, they don't come on, we also found that if Jan has the truck brakes on it will light up the brake lights on the motorhome, then after a bit it all seems to work.  We had it wired with a diode system that is designed to protect each vehicle from the other, and to enable a press on the motorhome brake to illuminate the truck brake lights, and the truck should never be able to light up the motorhome lights.  We pulled into our site at Chewonki, and I decided to do some research and investigation.

The view from our site!

First I read up on the diode system to refresh my memory, I have installed several myself, and then went out to the truck.  Basically a plug is installed on the front of the truck and then a four wire is led under and back to the tail lights where the actual wiring and install of the diodes is done.  I pulled the tail lights off and found what looked to be homemade diodes that the installer had used, nothing wrong with that, I guess, but they were installed improperly, causing the feedback to the motorhome lights.

This is what a normal diode install looks like, as you can see the internal 
truck input, and the motorhome input are separated, so they cannot
affect one another, then there is one output to the truck tail light
that can be made from either the truck itself or the coach

And this is what I found.

The four wires at the bottom, large green and large white from the coach,
and yellow and little white directly to the bulb and as well
as touching each other, the reason the coach lights come on 
when the truck brakes are applied.

The single outputs should each be going to the truck bulb, not internally into the truck.  And since Karen had the same company wire her truck, she reported her wiring looked exactly the same as ours.  I also called Roadmaster, one of the 2 biggest tow bar companies and had a long conversation with them confirming my findings, they made a huge point that the truck brakes should never illuminate the coach's lights, ever.  So we each have a diode set ordered and will rewire it correctly and hope that will take care of our anomalies.  A bit disappointing.

We had several restaurants we wanted to go to from Wiscasset, can you imagine?  And first on the list was Dolphin, great food in a beautiful spot on the water with awesome blueberry muffins that come with your lunch.

We each had a cup of haddock chowder

And shared a fried haddock fish and chips, and may have munched
on a bit of our muffins:-)

We, like a lot of the country, had 2 days of HOT, high 90's weather, NBD, it is summer after all.  Anyway another place we wanted to go back to was Moody's Diner, so off we went about 40 minutes away to find them closed for the heat, no AC evidently, so we had to punt.  Jan found a new place we had never been to nearby, Narrows Tavern, and as it turned out we had a delicious lunch.  Fish tacos and chicken caesar wrap.

Then we took a ride around to Ocean Point on the way back.

Another place we wanted to go was one of our favorites years ago, Five Islands, but since Covid we couldn't go, either they were closed or their open schedule didn't align with us, so we went.  It is in a remote beautiful spot, so we waited in line, and got our food, and............were so very disappointed:-(  Seems they have changed how they do food, and we just didn't care for it. 

Looks good, but

Then the next place on our list was Shaw's in New Harbor, thank you Bob and Harlean for telling us about it.  Wonderful lunch overlooking the harbor, lobster stew, haddock bites, and awesome onion rings!

Then finally, on our last day, off to Moody's again, and on this rainy day, it was packed, waited 30 minutes or so, and had a fantastic lunch, one of my favorites, hot turkey sandwich with gravy, Jan was more sensible with haddock chowder and salad, but heck, once in a while doesn't count, right?

So now we are in Hermon, near Bangor at Pumpkin Patch for a few days where we plan to wash the motorhome, put another coat of topside paint on the roof, wash the truck, and get the light issue fixed once and for all, and maybe eat out a few times.  

I cooked for a change last night when we arrived, and plan to cook again tonight while we celebrate Jan the diesel mechanic's Birthday!  Happy Birthday sweets!

Even got a Birthday Guinness:-)