Triple Whammy Solved! Still Rainy and Foggy

Our last day in Bangor was Jan's birthday, she wanted to go an nice place called Timber for lunch and a Guinness.

Happy Birthday!

A nice lunch and after we drove west to Newport to catch a seafood truck for some fish.  We bought 10 pounds of haddock, and the oysters were $1 a piece so we bought a dozen.  Of course the fish needed to be portioned and vacusealed which Jan knocked out in no time, 8 meals and enough for at least 2 chowders!

Ready for the freezer

We shucked the oysters for our appetizer, but for some reason, neither one of us liked them very much, they weren't spoiled or anything, just not our cup of tea.

The replacement monitor for the Surge Protector/Transfer Switch was supposed to arrive June 30th, but it was delayed, wonderful USPS, then said to arrive on the 1st, the day of our departure.  The campground was very accommodating and let us stay until it showed up at 11:45am, so once it came off we went in our clean coach right into a pounding rainstorm about 20 miles away from Eastport, our destination:-(  But it turned out to be a nice evening, one of the very few, we are still plagued with rain, fog now, and chilly temps, not complaining as the rest of the country bakes.

The fog came rolling in.

There are 20+ foot tides here, quite amazing.

We got a break in the weather for the 4th and drove down to Machias, a mere 41 miles away to go to Helen's for their awesome fish chowder, and Jan was lucky enough to get the recipe, so now her fish chowder is awesome as well!

Said chowder, onion rings, and sautéed scallops

After lunch we went and visited Bad Little Falls, the falls that Machias was named for, Machias means bad little falls in Wabanaki.  It was churning and full of tannin, this was the site where the settlers established sawmills.

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We were looking for lobsters, and we found some, Capt Matt sold us 5 which we brought back for dinner and had fat lobster rolls for lunch the next day.

I see you

Happy 4th of July!

It was a nice evening.  And lunch the next day, and is that another Guinness?

The next day it poured, and you can't really tell from the pic but it is pouring, but we are snug under the awning with a fire, whiskey, and a cigar:-)

But we must have been living right because in about half an hour this is what we had.

Then an adventure to Canada, St George for lunch and then a walk around in St Andrews by-the-Sea.  It was established by Loyalists in 1783.  We hadn't been to Canada since Covid so we wondered what the crossing might be like, other than being interrogated by the Canadian customs officer about guns, it was a nonevent.  There was a rustic take out place in St George that we wanted to try, Birch Grove, so we made a loop around, first there then to St Andrews.  We got a seafood platter so we could try everything, quite good.

Clams, haddock, shrimp, and scallops

Then over to St Andrews, it was bustling, but we found a good parking space and walked around for about an hour.  Nice place, our campground owner calls it a quiet Bar Harbor.

 

Then heading back we passed the St Croix International Historic Site, we had seen signs on the US side as well on the way up to Calais, so we pulled in.  The island was one of the first settlement attempts by the Europeans in northern North America.  The French in 1604-1605 put 79 people on the island for the winter and only 44 survived, they were cut off from fresh water enduring freezing temperatures while most died of scurvy.

You can see the island in the middle of the picture

We had been watching the tides so we could time going down to Lubec to walk on an enormous beach there, now Lubec isn't far the way the crow flies, but it is about 40 miles driving.  So it was a pretty morning, the tide was finally right, and off we went to find........the beach completely fogged in, couldn't see more than 100' or so, with a strong cool wind right off the water holding the fog in, we both agreed, no go.

Believe it or not, there are miles of beach out there

So what to do, go back to Helen's for lunch:-)

Fried clams, onion rings, and that famous fish chowder!

We came back and went into Eastport a few miles from our campground to walk around a bit, pretty quiet.

Then back to the campground to sight an eagle couple nearby in a tree, with further investigation we found their nest across an inlet from us.

So as I said our triple whammy has been completely solved, new hydraulic oil cooler, generator fixed, new surge protector/transfer switch.  The monitor was the last item, wrong one first, then we had to wait for the new one that didn't come with a connection wire, so we had to wait another week for that.  We needed to find a spot to mount the monitor and decided to put it under our SeeLevel panel, so I built a box, mounted it, together we fished a wire from the switch in the basement up to the mounting location, got it all in and it works beautifully.

We have another few days here, and then we make our U-turn to head west, back down the coast of Maine, across to Buffalo, then points really west, Montana, etc.