Busy, Busy

Karen and Tom rolled in right on time, and unfortunately brought some more cool and windy weather with them, I'm kidding, the spring is reluctant to get going.  We enjoyed HH and dinner together after they settled in.

Then together we set out to put a dent in the local seafood population:-)   We introduced them to Susan's Fish and Chips for some haddock and onion rings, chowder and more.

Then, of course, on Wednesday, dollar oyster day, we went to Billy's where while Karen turned her nose up, we demolished more than 50 oysters between Tom, Jan, and I.  Delish!  Didn't even take any pictures we were so busy:-)

In between the rain drops and wind, we did get a few nice evenings where we could sit outside.

And Jan kept knocking it out of the park with a chicken, bok choy, and shiitake mushroom stir fry over noodles.

We have been fighting an issue with our AquaHot system for some time now.  That is the system that provides domestic hot water as well as interior heat to our coach, either by 2 electric elements or a diesel fired burner.  About a year ago the second element would just quit for what we thought was no reason at all, well we found out there was a leak at a fitting unknown to us until it really poured out.  But even after we fixed it the second element continued to quit now and then.  I called our AquaHot guru, Rudy, and with him on the phone and I doing what he said, we troubleshot everything he could think of to no avail.  Over time, just one of the many stabs in the dark to try to solve this, I found that if I reset the low voltage relay the second element would come back.  The weird thing is though, the low voltage relay has nothing to do with the elements.  It allows you to reset the system after a power outage to enable the diesel burner.  I told Rudy about it and he agreed it made no sense whatsoever, but it was most likely a failing control board.  Well, I figured if I had to go out and press the reset every so often it was better than spending over $500 for a new board.  Well, unfortunately it happened more and more frequently to the point where on a cold morning of 32, it quit and even the diesel balked before running, so I said it was time to bite the bullet.  I knew Karen was getting her AquaHot serviced on the way here, so I called and asked her if she would carry a new board to us, and I would buy it from the place that was working on her coach.  So she brought it along and I installed it, an easy and quick job, and knock on wood, I can report it has worked flawlessly now for more than a week.

The control panel and the board behind it.

 I had mentioned JoJo's before, a favorite Thai restaurant that actually Karen and Tom found initially last year, so they were looking forward to going back, so off we went.

I had a Tom Yum noodle soup that was the bomb!

Now another very important mission was accomplished as well.  The Clam Shack in Kennebunkport with one of the very best lobster rolls in Maine was opening on Friday, of course we had to be there!  Their lobster roll is awesome and very different from every other roll around.  The normal roll is made on a toasted New England hot dog bun, the one with the flat sides, the Clam Shack uses a round roll toasted that has a bit more chew.  It is an absolute favorite of Karen, Tom, and Jan, me, I'll stick to the hot dog roll ones.  So I made up for it with their namesake, one of the absolute best clam rolls I have ever had anywhere!

The awesome clam roll and famous lobster roll,
everything was immensely enjoyed by all

We even went up around the corner to our regular spot overlooking the ocean to eat them, and even though it was cold and windy, the ocean was white capped, we all persevered and savored our lunch outside.

If you remember a few posts back I talked about and had a few pictures of a campground we stayed at in VA where the checkin spot was on such an angle I thought we'd maybe rollover, and the site was so bad we had to unhook, and turn around backwards.  With all the rain we've been having we have experienced a pretty bad leak that initially I thought might be the clearance lights not sealed properly.  And after another hard rain here and the resulting leak, I took a quick look at the clearance lights on our 7' ladder and thought they looked fine.  I said we'd have to rent a 10' ladder and look into it more carefully, but meanwhile Jan, the diesel mechanic, had removed the molding around the windshield and found, lo and behold that the rubber extrusion that holds the windshield had come completely off the fiberglass opening over a space of about 10 inches!  No wonder we had a leak.  The rubber extrusion is formed somewhat like an "H", one side holds the windshield and the other the fiberglass skin of the coach.  It is designed to flex and move and not stress the windshield so is not caulked or glued into place.  With the extreme flexing at that campground we "popped" it out, and on more reflection we thought we had noticed more air noise since, duh.....  So we rented a ladder and I was able to work the rubber back in place, then caulked around the outside between the gasket and the rain gutter.  So now we are confident we have repaired the leak and as a bonus expect it to be much quieter when we travel again.

The top piece is the rain gutter, and the larger rubber part on the bottom
is the extrusion or gasket to hold in the window.
This was before I caulked and cleaned it all up

We had an awesome bowl of haddock chowder that Jan made on a cool evening.

That left another small project to attend to, replacing the 3" inlet hose to our Sani-Con macerator.  Our type of older Sani-Con is not being made any longer, so getting the pieces and parts is becoming more and more difficult, so the worst part of this job was just finding the replacement hose.  A pet peeve is the company that made this used this terrible hose that over time seeps through which causes smell and a mess, hint, hint, come up with a better replacement!

Before

And after

We went with Karen and Tom back to JoJo's and sampled some more deliciousness. 

Karen and Tom's time here is drawing to an end, so today it's back to Billy's to devour who knows how many oysters?  So before they leave I helped, very little by the way, Tom replace the wax valve on their coach to hopefully solve their continuing cooling problem.

We're down to 2 more HH's, 2 lunches including Billy's and a fond farewell on Friday with them heading downeast to Eastport, and Jan and I doing a road trip in the truck to visit our son Jason, Joanne, and their family outside of Buffalo, NY for Memorial Day weekend.

Settling In

The weather has been steadily warming, trees are just now totally leafing out, yes spring happens later here in Maine.  We've been able to sit out almost every evening this past week.  And we've been out running around, exploring, etc.  We even passed the LL Bean Boot vehicle, we never even knew there was one.  Did our best with the pictures.

We popped down to Old Orchard Beach to look around and see the pier before the season and crowds arrive.  We had never been there before, and we found it still closed for the winter.  The pier was first built in 1898 to a length of 1825' !  But several storms and a fire shortened it to its present length of 500'.

Then we came back through Saco/Biddeford and man the Saco River was raging with the spring runoff!

We've had some pretty evenings.

And of course on Wednesday, back to Billy's for dollar oysters and awesome lunch.

Oops, all gone:-)

Jan made yet another wonderful Asian meal, a stir fried shrimp.

We took a ride up and around Sebago Lake to check out the area and found a cool little place to eat in Bridgton called Standard Gastropub.  It is a small, friendly place with a cool vibe, short very interesting menu with specials.  Everything is scratch made. It was excellent.

Jan had burnt ends, perfectly cooked brisket ends

And I had awesome wings in a tasty BBQ sauce

This post is tending to be a food blog instead, odd, huh?  We also have a favorite Thai place here, JoJo's.  It is a tiny place that seems to do most of their business as take out, so we finally got a chance to go and it was fantastic just as it was last year!

Spicy Tom Yum soup

Creamy delicious Tom Kha

Very spicy Thai Beef salad

Awesome Vietnamese rolls

After lunch the tide cooperated and we went for a walk on Scarborough Beach.

If you remember the electrical towing plug broke when hooking up our truck and the parts arrived so we could replace the old plug, of course it required all new wiring, but it wasn't difficult and now we have a brand new plug.

The old broken plug

The new one

All done

Then to our delight near the campground we had seen last year this little sign up now and then at a local house selling lobsters, and we never were able to find them open, well I was driving back after an errand and low and behold the open sign is there.  In I go and find some nice hard shells at an awesome price so I picked up our first live lobsters of the season!

Enough for a pig out dinner and lobster rolls for lunch the next day.  Man, were they delicious!!

Then one more thing needed to be looked at, our auxiliary air compressor had been sounding funny.

This is the pump that automatically comes on periodically to provide air for the computer to relevel the coach when it needs it.  It builds up a little moisture every so often so I need to disconnect the line to let out any water that has accumulated which I did.  Obviously when I do that, it releases all the air in the small leveling tank, therefore the pump needs to run for a few minutes to raise the pressure again.  Well while I am sitting there listening to it run, I notice there seems to be a little smoke coming from somewhere?!?!  Sure enough at one of the connections, there was evidently a loose connection that burned the wire.  Thank goodness I was sitting right there and saw it.  New connectors and good as new.  This was something that could have been a huge deal.

Not good!

All fixed

So now we are waiting for Jan's sister Karen and Tom to arrive to join us for the next 10 days or so.  Double the mouths to devour even more lobsters:-)

Our First Week in Maine!

It poured for most of our drive into Maine, so our coach now looks terrible, covered with dirt, and, ha, we aren't able to wash here.  Maybe we can get a mobile wash crew to come in, otherwise we are going to be dirty a long time.  It has become very apparent we are pushing the limit on early spring here in New England, it has been mostly cold and rainy, too cold to sit out, and we've tried.

Welcome to Maine!!

We got a little break in the weather when we pulled into our site for the next 7 weeks, and although it looks idyllic, we ended up going inside right after we took the pictures as it was just too cold and windy, about 43.

I know all of you will have a tough time imagining some of the first items on our agenda were food, seafood, Maine seafood:-)  We picked a new for us place, Susan's Fish and Chips, a hole in the wall that turned out great for our first meal.  It's cool little place that used to be a garage, friendly, and the fish chowder, fried clams, haddock nuggets, and onion rings were awesome!  Welcome back.

More rain, but the next day was Wednesday, buck a shuck day at Billy's Chowder House in Wells, ME, where you can find us every future Wednesday as well, another thing we have been drooling over for months.

We tried to decimate the oyster population

Then real deal seafood stew and lobster stew, topped off with some of the best onion rings in existence.

Now with the abundant seafood available again, don't think all we did was eat out, oh no, we cooked fresh swordfish the night we arrived, and then we found some awesome looking flounder that I stuffed with crabmeat.

The rain and the cold hung in there this whole time, so we thought since our itinerary is somewhat limited this year, we should go to LL Bean's in Freeport and continue north to Red's Eats, home of the very best lobster roll anywhere, a famous and very popular spot in Wiscasset.  We did and the weather finally cooperated!

Even before the season starts and right at opening time, the line has already formed:-)

Our view while we ate

The Amazing lobster rolls with an order of fantastic scallops!

Then we rode around Boothbay Harbor and Ocean Point relishing the wonderful break in the weather, what a day!

A view off Ocean Point

We did some errands and Jan got her hair cut, but we had more places to hit particularly before the season begins.  So off to Harraseeket Lunch we went.  Steamers and seafood chowder on our menu.

So now the weather has broken, spring is in the air, lots of things to do while we settle in, and, of course, a lot more seafood to devour:-)

Our digs here in Maine, we're on the right with the flag