Good Bye Maine!

We had one more day left in Ellsworth when I left you, so we made the most of it.  We both were feeling like salads, and we really liked Timber in Bangor so up we went.  Quite good.

Beef

Ahi Tuna

It was a nice day, something we have been in short supply of this year so we drove down to Belfast and took a walk along their harbor path, which goes right through a working boatyard.  Lots of really interesting boats to see, and a great walk.

Starting across the pedestrian bridge towards town

This is a steel steamship, you can see its stack, built in 1902, one of only 3 left in the world

This is a new 136' sailboat based in the Marshall Islands waiting to get its mast stepped

Heading back after turning around in the park

Then the next morning after Jan made some delicious sticky wings for dinner, we were off to our last week in Scarborough.  As I mentioned we had this week totally booked up:-)

Our lunch along the road to Scarborough!

This time at Bayley's we had a nice site right on one of their ponds.

The next day, we went to a favorite Vietnamese restaurant for lunch, followed up by a visit to an asian market.  No pictures to give you a break, besides we ate a lot of the same things I've shown you in the past.  

We needed to rotate the truck's tires, completed the next morning, followed by one last sortie down to the Clam Shack in Kennebunkport, which turned out to be a mistake in many ways.  First of all the traffic and crowds of people were insane, secondly their famous lobster rolls and onion rings which we have had many times before were really lacking, barely enough lobster to cover the roll, and $10 for 6 onion rings!  Are they resting on their laurels?  And thirdly when we went around the corner to our seaside bench, the fog was so thick we could hardly see each other.  So we decided after that disappointment we would run down to NH to the liquor store, then to another asian market in Portsmouth, and come back by way of a farm stand hoping they would have early baby potatoes, but no, too early in the season.

Jan needed to get her hair done, which she did after which we went and had another Vietnamese lunch followed by a stop at the fish market to get more fish for dinner and mostly freezing.  So now we have vacuum packed frozen fish portions for two; 15-Cod, 4-Haddock, 4 Halibut, 3-Scallop, and 4-mixed portions for chowder!  We are set for at least a little while:-)

We took care of a few items for our road trip, we'll be in Montana in 2 weeks, one stop of 3 nights at our son Jason's and Joanne's, all the rest are either 1 or 2 night max, going to be trucking along.  

That left our last day, Friday.  We had quite a bit planned, first to meet Bob and Harlean, and Scott and Sue at the Red Barn in Augusta for lunch and a visit, great, great visit and delicious food to boot, we also picked up a quart of the best seafood stew in the world:-)  And I promised the next time we'd get together there would be pictures which we forgot last time, and sure enough by the time we finally thought of it this time, Scott and Sue had already left, so no offense guys.

Moi, Harlean, Jan, and Bob
See you next year!

Then we stopped at a fish market on the way back to bolster our scallop count, and then the pièce de résistance, we wanted to have a lobster dinner on our last night in Maine and we also wanted enough lobster meat for two more lunches of lobster rolls for our drive.  We found a little family run lobster place right near the campground with very good prices, and friendly service, so we stopped in for 3 large lobsters for our dinner, and 4 chix for our rolls, and then just as we starting cooking it started to pour rain.  But we rolled out our awning, moved the cooker and all was well.

Hard to tell, but it's pouring

The final happy result

We're off!

Westward Bound

We were blessed with a few good weather days, warm enough even for shorts, still interspersed with fog and drizzle.  We really enjoyed our last days in Eastport, even saw a good sized ship come down the inlet in front of us.

Went into Eastport and ate lunch outside at a decent little place, Waco Diner, the oldest diner in Maine, 1924.

The ferry going by

Seafood chowder

Fried platter, haddock and scallops

The fog wafting in and out made for some nice views.

And a cool, foggy evening called for a great shrimp and noodle stir fry:-)

Our last day was still cloudy, but the tide charts looked good for Lubec, it wasn't raining, so we thought we'd make one more attempt to walk the beach in Lubec and have lunch.  So lunch first, basically Lubec has one restaurant, which I won't name, we walked in and were greeted with, we don't have a lot of things, no lobster meat, no french fries, no clams.......  It so happened we weren't looking for any of those things, so, and since it's the only show in town, we sat down.  They were friendly, but, it was okay, say pretty good, acceptable.

Fish tacos, with fish chowder on the top, and seafood chowder below

After lunch we headed for the beach, and found a strong biting wind from the east, low clouds, and a bit of drizzle, but much better than earlier when we couldn't see anything, so we gave it a short go.

Previously

This time, about the same spot

We walked into the breeze as far as we could, then turned and hightailed it back to the truck:-)

As far as we got, that's the bridge to Campobello Island

And what did we have on our last evening in Eastport?

FOG!

And of course the next morning, the day of our departure was.........gorgeous:-)  Oh well, so off we went for Ellsworth, near Acadia NP.  We went from cool to hot in one day, 86+ when we arrived at our site, shorts!  We did detour on our way since we knew we were going right by Tracey's, a little seafood shack on Rte 1, that sold lobsters for a good price, we pulled over, ran back, and picked up dinner and enough for our travel day lunch in 3 days.

Since we only have a little over a week left in Maine we have it pretty well planned out.  One of the things we absolutely wanted to do was the 3.2 mile hike around Jordan Pond in Acadia, one of our absolute favorites, we left the coach before 0530am and began our hike at 0615am.  Perfect!  And what a day.

Does it get better than this?

We went clockwise, our preference and almost immediately you end up on a 3/4 mile long boardwalk through the woods along the pond.

We interrupted his breakfast

The half way point and we have seen, one person!  Just like we have the place to ourselves, very worth going early because this is a very popular trail.

3/4's around where we know of a beaver hut, sure enough we even catch sight of one of the beavers, and only one more person!!

Their hut up against the shore

Then finished up back at the Jordan Pond House, home of the famous popover's, but we were way too early to have any.

Then back to the motorhome with time to clean up before we did another thing on our list and that was lunch at Bagaduce Lunch, another favorite.

Clams, scallops, and onion rings!

And a view to boot!

So tomorrow, we head back down to Scarborough and Bayley's where we started this spring, one completely filled week there, and off we go west, my friends.

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.

.

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.