A Good Week and Our 19th Anniversary of Full-Timing!

As I said we parted ways with Karen and Tom, but before we did we had one more lunch at Billy's.

And made one more trip to Kennebunkport for take out at The Clam Shack and had a blustery picnic along the coast.

A nice evening

Then early in the morning we launched on our road trip to our son, Jason and Joanne's in Buffalo for the Memorial Day weekend.  It was an uneventful all day drive with nice weather, in fact Buffalo had nicer weather than we have been experiencing here in Maine this spring.  We had a nice greeting capped off with an extraordinary gift!

What could it be?

OMG!  Wow!

For those of you familiar I don't have to explain, but for the others this is a superlative bourbon that is essentially unavailable anywhere, again, wow!

We settled in after dinner by their pool with wonderful weather and enjoyed a cigar and a drink.

Jason, Joanne, and Sophie's head

Turned out they were celebrating Jax's birthday early this weekend as well with the family and Jason was cooking for the group.  He outdid himself with a brisket and pulled pork which he smoked for hours, the brisket overnight.  A lot of prep, but boy, so worth it, it was delicious!

Trimming the huge brisket

Seasoned and ready to cook

The pork butt all ready to go

Meanwhile Jason and Joanne took us sightseeing to a quaint little ski town, Ellicottville, NY, to walk around and have lunch.  Another beautiful day, we had lunch in a neat place called the Gin Mill.

Came back to be greeted by Sophie, even Jan got some loving:-)

Another evening of visiting, drinks, and cigars.

Jax joined us the next day and loved his genuine Maine whoopie pie that Jan brought along!

Birthday party day arrived and Jason prepared the meat.  First the pork.

Then pulled.

Then the amazing brisket, I was too busy eating it to get a really good picture:-)

The birthday boy.

It was a fun filled weekend, amazing food, wonderful people with glorious weather, but we took off to come back bright and early to beat the traffic which we did.  It was a great time.

Once back, we decided to change out our dollar oyster day and be wild with dollar shrimp day at Billy's:-)  

It was very good, and not nearly as crowded as oyster day, so I think we'll alternate for the next 3 weeks.

I had another project to do.  Some readers know that after probably 20 years with Blue Ox tow bars and baseplates, their policy changes and lack of customer support led us to change to Roadmaster in 2020.  If you want all the nitty gritty I've put in a link.  So after 3 years and over 31,000 miles of towing the tow bar was getting a little sloppy, perfectly normal by the way.  The companies install acetyl washers between the steel parts for lubrication and spacing.  But over time they wear and need to be replaced.  Where Blue Ox's answer was to send in the tow bar and let them do the maintenance, Roadmaster was extremely helpful and offers kits to address the issue, new bolts, nuts, washers, etc and very specific instructions to do the work.  Yes, we are Roadmaster fans now.  What they don't tell you however, is the nuts are locknuts put on with Locktite so it took 4 men and a boy to get them off, actually between Jan and I, we managed it:-)

Before and after on one of the bolts.

There were washers in each gap in this assembly which did provide a bit of a challenge to reassemble with all the washers in the correct spot, but the diesel mechanic came up with an ingenious plan using tape to accomplish the task.  So our our tow bar is all fixed up for the next 30,000 miles or so.

That night I made dinner for a change, sauteed cod with vegetables over slightly cheesy and spicy grits.

Yesterday we had our first really warm day since we arrived, we even wore shorts for the first time, spring has been reluctant this year, so we celebrated by driving up to Boothbay Harbor and went to Trevett Country Store for an awesome lunch of haddock and scallops.  It was fantastic, did some errands on the way back and still wore our shorts even through HH!

3 weeks to go.