Warming Up!

Be careful what you wish for they say, and wow, right into summer!  We had 3 days of 85 degrees plus, then it broke and went back to normal, high 50's and 60's, pretty nice really.

This will be a pretty short post, we didn't do anything over the Memorial Day weekend, the campground was packed, tons of families, kids, golf carts, etc, so we kind of hunkered down.  It rained and was miserable on Memorial Day itself, so most of the folks left early.

More food pics of course:-)  We changed things up and went to Burano's for pizza, very good.

We hadn't cooked tuna ourselves for quite awhile, and with the local seafood market having gorgeous fresh tuna, we said why not.  It was delish.

Every year we're here we manage to get to LL Bean at least once, and I buy a new pair of slippers for the next year.  I almost live in them all year long in the motorhome.  We each have been wearing them for years and years.  And of course when we go to Freeport we have to stop at one of our favorites, Harraseeket Lunch.

Haddock and whole belly clams,
with their stellar seafood chowder

We have really used and appreciated our canopy this spring, lets us sit out in the rain, and with the sides strategically lowered takes us out of the wind, makes for a pleasant HH with a cigar.

And if you look close at the bottom right, you can see a corner
of one of the aforementioned slippers:-)

We also found and tried a new sushi restaurant, Oishi, and were very pleased, another new restaurant!

Not much more to report, mostly we are looking forward to a visit by our son Jason, and DIL, Joanne tomorrow for a few days, so this is an official warning to the lobster population, we are coming for you!

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.

Come On Spring!

I really shouldn't complain, as we are very familiar with how spring can be in Maine, although, since I'm human I will a little bit.  It's been cool to cold most days, highs in the 50's at best, lows as low as in the 30's, rainy, but with some welcome sun mixed in, but the wind has been our nemesis.  Jan set out to fix it though and ordered 2 sides for our canopy, so before we go out, we observe the wind and erect the two sides that make the most sense, and it's been working out.  We are so pleased with the concept that we ordered another 2 sides.

And with the weather iffy, what to do, well, go out for the seafood that we have been craving:-)  First day, back to a nearby favorite, Susan's Fish and Chips.

Onion rings, haddock, and whole belly clams,
but for some reason we could only give it a 7 out of 10

We headed down to Kittery another day to go to the Trading Post, and while there we wanted to go back to Bob's Clam Hut, and when I say go back, we figure it has been at least 10 years or so.

Whole belly clams, scallops, and rings,
we'd give these an 8.5

Then the day we were waiting a year for, came, Wednesday, $1 a shuck day at Billy's Chowder House in Wells, one of our absolute favorites.

Jan was a piker, she only got 6

2 bowls of lobster stew, with awesome rings

Yeah, this stew is the real deal!
Wonderful a 10!

Then came the biggy, Red's Eats for the best lobster roll in the world, huge and succulent, maybe save our own:-)  This place has lines down the block all season long, rain or shine, and even as good as it is, with an awesome owner, for us anymore this is a once a year deal, it is truly a commitment.  We knew we wanted to go before Memorial Day and with no rain in the forecast we made our way to Wiscassett, and arrived a little early, which unbelievably put us first in line!  A record.  But the line started forming less than 5 minutes later with almost 30 minutes until they opened.  These are the biggest, most decadent lobster rolls anywhere, and what makes them so good?  Simplicity, just lobster meat piled high and overflowing the toasted roll with melted local butter to pour over top.  That's it, perfect!

We are revamping our fire pit set up for various reasons and have decided to use a 20 pound LP bottle instead of the propane on our coach as we have been doing for years.  It has been fairly convenient, but it necessitates filling our on board tank fairly often which is not always an easy thing, and we have to have the fire pit in close enough for the length of our hose.  We started talking about this while we were back in Florida because our new park doesn't have propane delivery, and we could see many advantages to not being tied to the coach.  Anyway we went down to NH, no sales tax, to buy a new 20# tank.  While there at a U-Haul store that sold them, the owner came out to fill the tank and we got talking about restaurants, imagine that.  He said that he and his wife were foodies and went out every chance they got and suggested 3 places to us that we had never heard of.  We thought that kind of amazing, even though there are literally hundreds of places around, we pride ourselves on being in the know.  

Well, one of them was Lord's Clam Box in Sanford, yes inland, so off we went, and man-o-man we have a new top ten place.  Order at the counter, they give you a buzzer for when your food is ready, very reasonable prices, huge menu, none of this spin the screen so they can get a tip as so many places are doing anymore.  Well it was absolutely fantastic, maybe the best clams we have ever had!  This will become another regular and has moved a few others off our list.

Amazing clams and haddock,
rated 10.5

And sensational seafood chowder

And that pretty much capped our first week.

Maine!

One thing we did just before we left Nashville was wash the motorhome, including the roof that gets so bad in Florida.  For those of you that full time, you realize washing your rig can be a big deal as the vast majority of parks don't allow it.  Four Corners allows it so we took advantage, and amazingly enough we made it all the way to Maine without any rain! 

We stopped one night in Max Meadows, VA at a new to us park, Fort Chiswell which was a perfect overnight, right off the interstate with long pull throughs.  Then we pushed to Pine Grove, PA to Twin Grove, another good overnight easily accessible with long pull throughs, which the next day got us to Brattleboro, VT to the KOA, one of our favorites.  It is a small park owned by a young couple that have done an excellent job of improving it year after year.  Lots of shade, nice sites, beautiful grounds.  

We bought a corned beef intending to have it for St Paddy's day but had never gotten to it, so on our first cool night in Vermont, Jan cooked it up, traditional corned beef and cabbage, delicious.  But kind of like with Thanksgiving turkey, for us the best part is the sandwiches the next day, and in this case, beautiful homemade reubens with, of course, a Guinness:-)

We spent the afternoon working on our cigar inventory.

I have shared before that there are two specific things we like to do when in Brattleboro.  Go to Stapleton's General Store in Proctorsville for one of their sandwiches, and then on to the Woodstock Farmer's Market.  We had a gorgeous day for it, blue skies, and up here the trees are just budding out.  It was even warm enough to sit outside for our lunch.

The special of the day fried chicken strips and a Caesar salad on a wrap

And a delicious roast beef and cheddar

Then on to Woodstock which was especially nice since we are ahead of the summer crowds so the store was only busy, not SRO:-)  Sometimes they have locally raised pork, and we hit the jackpot, Jan bought out their supply of loin chops and shoulder chops, only 4 each so don't get the wrong idea.  It is a wonderful store so if you are ever in the neighborhood, it is definitely worth a visit.

Then on to Maine, and Bayley's Camping Resort for the next 7 weeks.  We still have to get settled in.  Watch out lobsters, we're coming for you!!!