A K.I.S.S. Moment

On Monday we decided to go try another one of the recommended restaurants down in Wells, Hobb's.  We had never been there and we pulled up at opening time, 1130am, got seated with a wonderful view of the harbor, looked over the menu, gave our drink order to the waitress, she asked if we needed a minute, we said yes, and..................15 minutes later she had still not come back or showed any signs of coming back!  Bye, bye.   So we went right down the road to what looked like a popular small seafood shack, Fisherman's Catch, and were welcomed with open arms.  Friendly place, nice menu, popular, lots of people there, and we had a delicious lunch, way, way too much food, but we took it with us.  We believe everything happens for a reason:-)

Clam chowder

Excellent combo plate, clams, haddock, scallops, and shrimp

Steve and Pam, friends and neighbors of ours in Florida had told us they were docking their beautiful boat in Kennebunkport this season and to drop in sometime.  It was a pretty day and although we really didn't think they'd be there this early, amazingly enough as we pulled into the marina's parking lot, Jan announced, look at that, Steve's truck!  They had just moved the boat there recently, and he was busy getting it squared away, so we had a nice visit, a grand tour of their sensational boat, and sure hope to see them again this season before we leave.

Moi, Jan, and Steve

It's fiddlehead season here in Maine, the season is short, only about a month or so and it centers around May.  They grow wild here and are picked by hand, and in season they are abundantly available.  They are the top part of a fern frond before it unfurls.  Funny, in our 20 years living in NH, we never saw much of them and had never eaten them.  It was on one of our visits with friends, Doug and Nancy who live here in Maine, that we discussed them and they said how delicious they were.  We picked some up, loved them and always try to have a bunch of them while they are available.

Of course on Wednesday we had to go back to Billy's as we hadn't yet eaten them out of oysters:-)

Jan wasn't a piker this time, 15 for each of us!

Then after, since the tide was cooperating, we took a walk on Well's Beach.  The destruction was appalling from the big storm Lee.  I couldn't get any decent pictures of the damage.

We went back to Lord's for another delicious lunch.

Lobster stew and seafood chowder

Clams and scallops

Lords has something you don't see very often on the wall.

Now to the K.I.S.S. issue.  KISS for those who don't know is the adage Keep It Simple Stupid, meaning when something is not working start at the most simple point and go from there, which is exactly not what I did with our problem.  Our problem started off by losing our turn signals between Knoxville and VA, the flasher was fried, so we thought it would be simple getting a new one, not so, and since the next 3 days were all travel days we couldn't order one.  And I'll tell you it is very nerve-racking driving the interstate in traffic without signals, we got a lot of dirty looks.  We stopped into a Loves who thought they had it but didn't, so at lunch I started calling NAPA's that I thought we could get the rig into in Knoxville as we went through and did find one.  They had it, I put it in, all the signals worked on the back of the coach and the truck, but nothing in the front.  We still had a long way to go, so we grit our teeth at least knowing we could be seen from the back, which we nursed all the way to Maine, and in the meantime found out not only had we lost our front turn signals, we had lost our front parking lights as well.

Obviously I checked fuses and schematics first, no joy.  Then I dove in the hole and decided it was a circuit board that must have gone bad.

I searched and searched for a new board, but it had been discontinued, looking back that was a good thing or I would have bought it.  There are 2 gentlemen that are electronic experts on one of my forums, so I reached out to Paul first, he and I went over a bunch of stuff to no avail and then he said he had talked to the other expert, Frank, and he didn't believe it was the board.  So with Frank's above and beyond help on the phone, we troubleshot for over an hour, and decided it had to be a multiple connector, so while Frank read the schematics, I did the testing.

It wasn't the connector, but with all of the testing, we did, in fact, prove the board was working, so finally with many more connections to check, all of them not easy to get to, I let Frank go.  So Jan and I started pulling apart connectors here and there and all had power!  What in the world would cause both parking lights to quit at the same time?  Finally with nothing else left we pulled a light out.............and found it broken, then pulled the other light out and..........it was also broken!  What are the chances?

It never occurred to me that both bulbs could be bad at the same time, so I ate crow and admitted to both Paul and Frank that I had led them in a wild goose chase.  Quite embarrassing.  So with egg on my face, we now have parking and turn signal lights:-)

So after that beat down what could we do?  Well, when Jan found lobsters at the grocery store for $7.99, that meant lobster rolls is what we do!  And we had the most luscious homemade lobster rolls for lunch and decadently even had them for lunch the next day!

Then the highlight of our week was a nice visit with Bob and Harlean who dropped in after their event here in the park.  We did a lot of catching up and made plans to meet them and Scott and Sue later on.