Almost With Tears in Our Eyes, Departure Day Has Arrived

Thought we were only changing sites one more time as I mentioned previously, we actually moved twice, an awesome site on the small lake opened up so we moved over.  Fall is definitely in the air here, trees are starting to change, and the mums are everywhere.

 

We had a cool, very windy, rainy day so we decided to go back to JoJo's again, the Thai restaurant and had delicious scallion pancakes as part of our lunch.  We had never had them before, very tasty!

Pancakes

Chicken satay

It rained all day, but cleared just in time for cocktail hour!  Turned into a beautiful evening although a bit chilly.

We also, on our rainy day, decided to tackle making beef pho for the first time, we had made chicken before and it is very similar, but takes a lot more time to make the broth, the most important part of the dish.  We do think, if we say so ourselves, it turned out awesome!

As our time was running out, we asked each other if there was any other place or restaurant we wanted to go to before leaving.  We picked going back to Trevett Country Store in Boothbay for lunch, even though it was a pretty long way, we wanted to explore another area of Maine near Whitefield anyway so we tied them together.  Our lunch was excellent, haddock and whole belly clams!  And Whitefield was interesting, an area of farmland, rolling hills of woods and fields and pastures filled with many Amish families.

The weather must have known we were leaving as it could not have been nicer, blue skies, temps in the low 70's, and venturing into the 40's at night, in fact last night was 37!  Wonderful for walking and getting a few chores done.

One of our pristine evenings

Jan got her haircut and then we launched for our last visit to Billy's Chowder House for Wednesday oysters, and awesome lobster stew.  Just a picture of the stew, figured you'd seen enough oysters by now:-)

By the way, it doesn't get any better than this

The weather just kept giving, just beautiful!

Across the tidal marsh near Billy's

And the view from our new site

Which brought us to our last day, and we filled it.  Jan had ordered a bunch of fish that we could freeze and take with us, so after grocery shopping she picked up our 10 lbs of cod, 3 lbs of swordfish, 3 lbs of scallops, and a halibut filet for dinner:-)  Then she had to get it in all in vacuum packs for the freezer.

10 lbs of beautiful loin cut cod

Ready for the freezer

One of the restaurants we found several years ago and enjoyed, Empire Chinese Kitchen, has continued to only offer takeout on only a few days because of Covid, I think it is past time to give it a rest, but that's only my opinion.  So we had decided not to bother this year, but we relented at the last minute on yet another gorgeous day and ordered, and we have to admit we were very glad we did.  It is just as good as we remember and eating with a view of Portland's harbor added icing on the cake, or should I say Bao bun:-)

First, our view.

Har Gow, shrimp dumpling on the top
Honey Walnut Shrimp below

The AWESOME Bao Buns,
Peking Duck on top,
Spicy Pork Belly below

It was a taste sensation.  Then later we picked up our 7 small cooked lobsters for our dinner finale and 2 upcoming lobster roll lunches while on the road:-)  Which wound up our last day, only to be topped by this sunset on our last evening!!

So off to western Mass now and then farther south.  Goodbye Maine, for now.

One Week Left, Still Eating:-)

There has been a small price to pay for spending 3 weeks here outside of Portland, we have to change sites 2 times.  The first move gave us the opportunity to get some propane for the motorhome, we have had our fire pit working almost every night now that it's cooling off, and tomorrow we move again.  The site we are in right now is the best and we hate to leave it, but it is what it is.

Of course, pulling in backwards made a big difference

So we have been cooking, eating out, walking a lot, driving around, and just enjoying the area.  Jan made a new friend on one of her walks.

Harmless, no poisonous snakes in Maine

Home cooking

And pretty weather

Also been getting some errands done, oil change and tire rotation on the truck, got our flu and booster shots, went to Costco, had to buy a new hotspot because ours died, grocery shopping, you know, normal stuff that has to get done wherever you are.

Went back to a great Thai restaurant, JoJo's, that we went to with Karen and Tom in the spring.

We went downtown and walked around the wharf area for an hour or so, and had a nice lunch with an awesome view at the end of a pier at Luke's Lobster.  

We have been having a ball with Asian food this year.  We've always enjoyed it and have cooked it now and then, but Jan discovered a chef, Marion Grasby who lives in Australia who is half Thai and half Aussie who has a Youtube channel and has written several cookbooks.  She is very charismatic, easy to follow and has an ability to take a lot of very complicated dishes and make them simple yet delicious.  It's been a lot of fun.

Awesome shrimp fried rice

Which brings us back to Wednesday, and you know what that means, oysters!

Coupled with a very nice walk on Well's Beach.

One more week to go:-(

2 Weeks and Counting, Have We Beat Back Murphy?

As I've mentioned in the past, we used to live in New Hampshire for 20 years, so we are pretty familiar with this area as we would come over quite often.  With family and friends we used to rent a house right on Wells Beach every year for 2 weeks.  On the way over we would always pass a small lean-to along the way selling the best veggies, superb corn and tomatoes, and in fact the young man who worked there would tell us his family sold the veg to send him to college.  Well it's been a long time since we've gone by there again, and we hardly recognized it, now there is a large, very nice building and store, some flowers and plants, but still the wonderful veg, including corn and tomatoes.

Made a delicious dinner

Like one of the commenters said, he had poor results with JB Weld on the basement door, and now I have to agree, it didn't even last 24 hours after it dried, very disappointing.  The way these doors were constructed make it very challenging to fix, Monaco tack welded the door surface on, only 5 or so welds that have all broken, you can't weld them back on without ruining the paint on the outside, and if the next plan of attack fails, we will have to put bolts through from the outside and try to make it look like they were designed to be there, but meanwhile I decided to try it for now with an aggressive bead of silicone, and if it works, to clean it up and apply Sikaflex when we get to Florida, time will tell.

One of the failed spot welds

Removing the disappointing JB Weld

Applying the silicone

Now crossing our fingers this will at least get us to Florida.
The clamps will stay on for 36 hours

We are trying to do several things before we leave Maine, and one of them was to go back to the Clam Shack in Kennebunkport to get what some people feel is the best lobster roll in Maine, it is also one of the very, very few that don't use a New England hot dog bun.  Best or not, they are very good.

And what a beautiful day and spot to enjoy them!

Friends, Bob and Harlean came to visit and we spent a very nice time with them.  We got carried away enough we didn't get any pictures:-(

We took a nice ride around to Portland Light and Cape Elizabeth, another spot we'd never been for some reason.

We also ran up to Harraseeket Lunch for one more meal, we were amazed at the number of people there, especially right at opening time, we figure now after Labor Day, the locals have emerged.

Unfortunately, we weren't all that pleased with the meal:-(  But we did stop at the fish market on the way back and had a wonderful halibut dinner.

Then it rained all day, and Jan and I did something we almost never do, we went to the movies!  We saw Maverick in an iMax theater and it was awesome, maybe we'll have to do it more often?

And just like that it was Wednesday again, $1/oyster Wednesday at Billy's Chowder House, so what could we do?

Upped our game, 35 between the two of us

And yes, the lobster stew is amazing!

So how did we beat Murphy?  Certainly not with anything but luck.  And actually I am not ready to fully announce victory yet, it's only been a week.  We think our saga with the 2nd element on our AquaHot had to do with the leak of that water fitting.  We think it had been leaking for some time, albeit very small until it leaked profusely enough for us to see it, from the discoloration on the fitting.  And further we think that is what popped the 2nd element off with increasing frequency, still can't answer why the low voltage reset fixed it, but this week had been the longest we've gone without losing the element.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.

And that leads us up to our entry step.  It had quit before, a few years back from being gunked up, and a very thorough cleaning by the diesel mechanic cured it, but this time I have to admit, I felt it might be something more than that.  So this morning was the day.  I raised the front of the coach up and Jan crawled under, 4 cans of brake cleaner and a ton of scraping, exercising it, and even washing it down with hot water, they appear to be fixed.  Hurray!  But time will tell for sure.

What a ton of crap!!

2 weeks to go, stay tuned.