On The Road Again

We usually like to plan lunches for when we are on the road.  Leftovers are our normal choice, that way you can pull over and have something to eat in mere moments, but other times we'll make tunafish or a salad etc.  But when we have an opportunity to splurge here in Maine, well.....

Since we only had a short way to go, we planned to eat lunch before we got on the road, and then while we were at it we decided to cover lunch the next day as well:-)  So that plan became the first of our home made lobster rolls.  You can buy lobsters at the local grocery store and have them steam them, quick and easy, and affordable.  Then bring them back, pick them and make awesome lobster rolls!  Five lobsters got us 4 huge lobster rolls.

Our picking station

The wonderful delicious result!

 PS: We'd put these up against most any lobster roll:-)

So we bid farewell to Karen and Tom, had our lunch and then pulled out to hook up the truck and head north to Wiscasset.  I should interject here that we have been having issues with the new truck as far as towing it.  This is our 3rd Ram that we have towed and the first two were so simple to set up, this one is loaded with all kinds of electronics which evidently complicate the whole procedure and then add in an auto parking brake that applies itself with a mind of its own, and well, it's frustrating, and it is also a problem that Karen is having on her identical to our truck as well.  Another issue to make it even worse is the lights for the truck aren't working consistently either.  Sometimes when you go to check the turn signals and brake lights, they don't come on, we also found that if Jan has the truck brakes on it will light up the brake lights on the motorhome, then after a bit it all seems to work.  We had it wired with a diode system that is designed to protect each vehicle from the other, and to enable a press on the motorhome brake to illuminate the truck brake lights, and the truck should never be able to light up the motorhome lights.  We pulled into our site at Chewonki, and I decided to do some research and investigation.

The view from our site!

First I read up on the diode system to refresh my memory, I have installed several myself, and then went out to the truck.  Basically a plug is installed on the front of the truck and then a four wire is led under and back to the tail lights where the actual wiring and install of the diodes is done.  I pulled the tail lights off and found what looked to be homemade diodes that the installer had used, nothing wrong with that, I guess, but they were installed improperly, causing the feedback to the motorhome lights.

This is what a normal diode install looks like, as you can see the internal 
truck input, and the motorhome input are separated, so they cannot
affect one another, then there is one output to the truck tail light
that can be made from either the truck itself or the coach

And this is what I found.

The four wires at the bottom, large green and large white from the coach,
and yellow and little white directly to the bulb and as well
as touching each other, the reason the coach lights come on 
when the truck brakes are applied.

The single outputs should each be going to the truck bulb, not internally into the truck.  And since Karen had the same company wire her truck, she reported her wiring looked exactly the same as ours.  I also called Roadmaster, one of the 2 biggest tow bar companies and had a long conversation with them confirming my findings, they made a huge point that the truck brakes should never illuminate the coach's lights, ever.  So we each have a diode set ordered and will rewire it correctly and hope that will take care of our anomalies.  A bit disappointing.

We had several restaurants we wanted to go to from Wiscasset, can you imagine?  And first on the list was Dolphin, great food in a beautiful spot on the water with awesome blueberry muffins that come with your lunch.

We each had a cup of haddock chowder

And shared a fried haddock fish and chips, and may have munched
on a bit of our muffins:-)

We, like a lot of the country, had 2 days of HOT, high 90's weather, NBD, it is summer after all.  Anyway another place we wanted to go back to was Moody's Diner, so off we went about 40 minutes away to find them closed for the heat, no AC evidently, so we had to punt.  Jan found a new place we had never been to nearby, Narrows Tavern, and as it turned out we had a delicious lunch.  Fish tacos and chicken caesar wrap.

Then we took a ride around to Ocean Point on the way back.

Another place we wanted to go was one of our favorites years ago, Five Islands, but since Covid we couldn't go, either they were closed or their open schedule didn't align with us, so we went.  It is in a remote beautiful spot, so we waited in line, and got our food, and............were so very disappointed:-(  Seems they have changed how they do food, and we just didn't care for it. 

Looks good, but

Then the next place on our list was Shaw's in New Harbor, thank you Bob and Harlean for telling us about it.  Wonderful lunch overlooking the harbor, lobster stew, haddock bites, and awesome onion rings!

Then finally, on our last day, off to Moody's again, and on this rainy day, it was packed, waited 30 minutes or so, and had a fantastic lunch, one of my favorites, hot turkey sandwich with gravy, Jan was more sensible with haddock chowder and salad, but heck, once in a while doesn't count, right?

So now we are in Hermon, near Bangor at Pumpkin Patch for a few days where we plan to wash the motorhome, put another coat of topside paint on the roof, wash the truck, and get the light issue fixed once and for all, and maybe eat out a few times.  

I cooked for a change last night when we arrived, and plan to cook again tonight while we celebrate Jan the diesel mechanic's Birthday!  Happy Birthday sweets!

Our Time in Scarborough Has Run Out

It has been a long spring that didn't seem to want to get off the ground, and now it's summer:-)  Saturday, one day early, we bid good bye to Karen and Tom as they head their own way, and we go up to Wiscasset.  We finally have managed 2 Happy Hours outside, the first on June 8th, and the second not again until June 19th!  

We found one weather window and went on the mailboat to 5 islands in Casco Bay, Little Diamond, Great Diamond, Long, Great Chebeague, and Cliff.  Although cool outside, it was a lot of fun.

Leaving the dock

Fort Gorges

Pocahontas Light, standing 6 feet tall,
the smallest lighthouse registered by the Coast Guard

The motley crew

At least some were enjoying all the rain.

Our new truck has been working out very well, although we weren't very pleased with it shutting off and restarting the whole time.  I found a device on a forum I was reading that could easily be installed to stop that, but still be able to enable it should you want to, the Autostop Eliminator.  Works great.

Remove some trim

Before

After

We finally went to one of Portland's standards, J's Oyster, and I am sad to report that other than my steamers that were good, the rest of us were not impressed:-(

We even got a few projects done including replacing the leveling system control pad, and doing a complete service on the generator.

We all got delicious take out Banh Mi's from Banh Appetit, and ate them in the park overlooking the water.

Jan got some of the tons of fish she buys here to freeze.

Another project we had that we thought would take an hour or so morphed into weeks, mostly because of issues with a supplier we were working with.  We have Velvac mirrors on our coach, one of the standard mirror manufacturers in the industry, and although the mirrors are fine and work well, their weakness is in their chrome plating, 5 years is about the max they go before peeling, in fact we have replaced our entire mirrors numerous years ago.  But now, especially since Covid affected so many things including price, replacing our peeling mirror arm with new was cost prohibitive, and having them plated was also cost prohibitive, so we decided to see if we could find them at a salvage yard.  We did, BUT, what an ordeal, from the wrong arms, to delay after delay, finally getting two the right size, but one of them even worse than the one we were replacing, very frustrating, and no I am not going to name the company.  At the same time since we'd have the mirrors apart, we decided to upgrade our side cameras as well.

Our failed arm

Me removing the old camera.  You can see the wedge has lost its chrome as well

We decided, since replacing the wedges was $200 each, that we would remove the chrome as best we could and paint them black instead, turned out pretty well.

We were very pleased with the final product.

And the last project was to remove the satellite dish from the roof since we have switched over completely to streaming, and it was just sitting up there rotting away.  When we bought our coach in 2008 it had a King Dome in motion antenna up there, since it only offered SD, one of the first things we did was tear it off and install a Winegard DirecTV antenna, and it served us well for years and years, but time to go now, and we had Tom to help:-)

Jan scoping things out.

I have been having a little issue with my leg and after I went up to help realized the roof was not a good place for me at this time.  Tom jumped up to help us out and together Jan and he were able to remove it.

Just needs some clean up and sealing, the best news, it's gone!

So now we start moving again, for the rest of the year, the very longest we will be in one place will be two weeks, more to our liking.  

Is That You, Spring?

We still haven't been able to have even one Happy Hour outside yet!  Cold, windy, and often rainy, but still all good.  Jan found a highly rated take out only place that specializes in Banh Mi's, Banh Appetit, that we wanted to try.  We got a perfect opportunity one day, picked them up, had enough time to run to a nearby park overlooking the water, munched the awesome sandwiches down and got Jan to her hair appointment on time.  The Banh Mi's were delicious, one beef and lemon grass, and the other pork belly, we'll be back!

Then we had a real nice visit over Memorial Day weekend from our son Jason, Joanne, Jax, and even Sophie.

Jason had his heart set on a lunch at Billy's, so Jan and I grabbed him and off we went while Joanne, Jax, and Sophie explored.

We did it up right:-)

Although the weekend weather did not cooperate, we all made the best of it.  Their short visit was capped off with a lobster dinner.  Jax took care of getting them in the pot.

Jax even made a little progress eating them, he declared the legs sweet and delicious, but passed on the other parts:-)  

All too soon we had to say goodbye.

Then on an almost warm day we made our annual trek to Red's for the best lobster roll in New England, except maybe homemade:-)  They open at 11:30, and last year we arrived at 11:10 and were first in line, this year, not so lucky, same arrival time found us 20th in line!  And 1 hour and 15 minutes later we got our rolls, it's a bit of an ordeal, but the lobster roll, WOW!

Then with another hint of warm, we went over to the Lobster Shack at Two Lights, good food, nice view, but the cold wind was biting.

And as I said at the beginning, even though we haven't been able to have an outdoor HH yet, we are getting definite hints that spring is actually around the corner, enough so that we accomplished a few chores on the motorhome, and we don't have to bundle up as much on our daily walks.