More Rhode Island

Well it has been a good week here in RI. We went to the beach twice once at Sand Hill cove State  Beach and once at East Matunuck State  Beach. We also managed to get the canoe in the water a couple of times. We paddled around Mill Cove in Wickford and the other time we paddled the Chipuxet River into an area called The Great Swamp. The Great Swamp was where we used to paddle some 35 years ago when we lived in RI.
Today we are preparing for the arrival of Irene. IN case you haven't hears She is that little lady storming up the East Coast in the form of a Hurricane. Billed to be the biggest hurricane to hit New England in decades. For a couple of days we have talked over just what we should do,since we don't think a campground filled with huge trees is a good place to be durung a hurricane. We contemplated driving west to New York or Northwest to Vermont but it seems both places will be affected as well. We finally have decided to move the Motor Home to an area of the campground where there is a large open field at the top of a hill. In that area there are no trees and there should not be any threat of flooding as the water will flow down hill. We are then going to drive the Jeep to Bob's brother Dave's home in Wickford to ride out t he storm. Hopefully we will not  be forced out by rising water as his house is located on the edge of a sheltered cove which is

The biggest little state in the union,RI.

It rained pretty hard most of our last night in New Hampshire.In preparing to leave Mon morning we pulled the slides in. Because of the rain lots of water had pooled on top of the slide cover so when we pulled it in the water poured off of the slide. This has happened before so we didn't think anything of it. Then Bob pressed the store button to retract the Jacks and splash, water all over the kitchen floor!! That had never happened before.Several wet towels later we were on our way to RI. We arrived at Bob's brother Dave's house in Wickford around 5 pm. We planned on parking in front of his house until we found a site at a campground in RI. On Tuesday we managed to get a site at Wawaloam Campground in Exeter,RI. Turns out it is a very nice wooded campground way out in the boonies. Here is where we will stay until Friday Sept 2 when we head to Mystic,Conn for our nieces wedding. It will be nice to stay somewhere longer than 4 days.

Lakes Region New Hampshire

Silly sign at Weirs Beach

Bob trying on hats at a gift shop at Weirs Beach



 Meredith Harbor



Meredith Harbor

On Thursday Aug 18, after finishing up at Camping World we headed about an hour north to a campground we found in New Hampton,NH. We set up camp and headed across the road to Pemigewasset Lake with the canoe. We made a leisurely paddle around the lake with the dogs.Then it was off to the grocery store to buy supplies for supper. The store was located in the beautiful little lakeside town of Meredith,NH. On Friday it was off to the pool for a little sunbathing and relaxing. The pool water temp was a chilly 67 degrees, but we both managed to take a dip,and when I say dip I mean jump in jump out.Friday night we drove back to Weirs Beach in Laconia NH to check out the night life(there was none). Saturday was another day at the pool(water temp 61 degrees) and then we drove back into Meredith to spend the afternoon strolling along the harbor. Sunday we sat around and read the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe(Bob's idea,not mine) and then I suggested we take a drive to Franconia Notch,NH where we spent part of our honeymoon many moons ago. We learned that The Old Man of the Mountain (a rocky outcropping high up on the mountain that resembled the profile of an old man) had fallen off the mt in 2003. It was sad to see nothing where his profile once hung. Then we drove the length of The Kancamagus Highway which winds 35 miles across NH up through a Mt  pass and back down into MT Washington Valley.Tomorrow we pull in the slides, store the jacks,unplug and head for RI.  

Camping at the Camping World

We arrived at the Camping World in Chichester NH Tuesday afternoon. Surprisingly we learned that the part for our refrigerator had indeed arrived. Now all we needed to do is get the insurance inspector there to verify that the refrigerator is dead. We managed to get him to come Wed morning. So Tuesday night we camped out in the parking lot of Camping World along with a family of 7(Grandma,Grandpa,and 5 grandchildren) that had been there for 3 nights already waiting on their rig to be repaired. Wed morning the insurance inspector agreed with the RV tech and the work was begun on the repair.Instead of sitting in their waitng room all day , we headed out to visit the Laconia NH area where we did quite a bit of skiing in our younger days. Best case scenario was that the repair would be finished by Wed afternoon, but as you know nothing is ever easy and they didn't complete the job so we ended up camping in the parking lot a second night. This time we met Roger and Bonnie, a very nice couple driving a 2002 Allegro Bus just like ours and towing a Jeep Liberty just like ours. They split their time between living on a boat in the Bahamas in the winter and traveling in their Bus during the summer. They were fun to talk to and compare notes and funny stories about our rigs. The repair was completed by 2 p.m. Thursday and by that time we had decided to stay in NH at least a couple more days since we were already there. We located a nice campground in New Hampton NH,so off we went to spend a couple of days more in NH just to make sure the refrigerator was going to continue working.

Higganum,Conn

Had a wonderful time in Higganum,Conn visiting with Jack and Lori.Lori is a great cook and she fed us like royalty. Sean their son was off with friends at Old Orchard Beach,Maine. Jenny their Bride-To-Be daughter had been kidnapped and taken to Boston for the weekend for her Bachelorette party. So us "old folks" just sat around and chatted enjoying the nice weather on Saturday. Bob and Jack took the canoe out for a paddle on the Higganum reservoir (a Conn State Park)which is right across the street from their house.Sunday it rained so off to Outlet Malls we went. So did everyone else in Conn. We found some real good bargains. Monday it rained cats and dogs so we drove to Rhode Island and visited with Donna's StepMom Rita. We also checked out one of the campgrounds in RI that we planned on staying at. We tried to find a second campground but ended up at a deadend road where we couldn't go any further even though the map on the Ipad said we could. Bob doesn't trust the GPS now I don't trust the Ipad. We decided to leave for New Hampshire Tuesday morning so that we could check in with Camping World and be there when the part for the refrigerator arrived. We also needed to be there so that the insurance inspector could inspect the refrigerator in the presence of a technician who would explain what was wrong with it. The inspector then would decide if we were eligible for coverage or not.These insurance companies will try anything not to pay for a claim. We paid big bucks for this warranty so they better pay our claim.

Kennebunkport

On Monday, August 8, we left Bar Harbor and drove the 200 miles down to Kennebunkport, settling into a great, little, very wooded campground, less than a mile from Dad and Peg's place. We visited with them for a bit, sitting with them and Tommy while they had dinner that night.
On Tuesday we drove a few miles to Goose Rocks beach and spent a few hours on the really clean, beautiful, white sand beach. Bob managed to go for a swim, even though the water temperature was around 65 degrees, while Donna did manage to get her feet wet. It seemed like everyone around us was either French-Canadian or a Red Sox fan. Or both. After leaving the beach we visited with Dad and Peg again, even got them to enjoy the fresh air outside for awhile.
Wednesday was a nasty, rainy day, so we drove up to Freeport and the L.L. Bean store. We thought they might have a good, small refrigerator that we could put in the bus, but they didn't. It's getting to be a pain buying ice all the time and digging stuff out of the cooler. By the way, we got word from the service guy at Camping World in Concord that the cooling unit for the fridge would not be in until next Tuesday, at the earliest. Ended off picking up a portable fridge at Wal-Mart. Visited with Dad and Peg for awhile again today. Dad had bunch of Aiden pics that Julie had sent him stuffed away in a photo album. We took a bunch of them and bought a collage frame at Wal-Mart and presented it to him the next day. He loved it!
Thursday was sunny and warm again, so this time we went to Kennebunk Beach for a few hours. It was a bit windy on the beach, and kept clouding over, but Bob went in for a swim again.
Bob reflects: I was watching a kid skim-boarding on the beach and started reminiscing. Summer of 1965. 14 years old. My best friend Ponce (David Parnigoni) and I went to a lumber yard in Westerly and had them cut out these round plywood boards, about 3 ft in diameter. We took them home, beveled one edge all around, and painted both sides, with Maltese crosses on top, and Voila! We had skimboards! Nothing like the high-tech, super-duper materials of today's boards, but they worked for us! We spent the whole summer skim-boarding up and down East Beach. Or at least when the tide was low. We even hitch-hiked back and forth from Watch Hill with our boards every day. That's how we got around back then.
Back to the present. We pulled up stakes at the campground on Friday morning, paid one last visit to Dad and Peg, and headed to Connecticut to spend a few days with Brother Jack and family. We were traveling down I-495 through Massachusetts, about 3 miles from our exit, when the traffic came to a complete standstill. Apparently, there was a horrible accident les than a mile ahead, and 495 became a parking lot. A truck was hauling a backhoe, and the backhoe tipped over onto a car, trapping 4 people inside. We were stopped for 1 hour and 45 minutes. We spent the time talking with some of our new "neighbors" around us.
Finally got going again, and got to Jack's place in Higganum, CT, around 5:30.

Acadia National Park

I forgot to mention that when we arrived in Bar Harbor it was raining. Friday morning dawned sunny and cool. After solving our latest problem ( the battery disconnect button) we and the dogs were off for a day in the Park, and what an awesome park it is. We started at the Visitors center. You have several options on how to tour the park. LL Bean operates a free shuttle bus service throughout MT Desert Island including Acadia National Park.The bus will drive you all around the park loop allowing you to get off to view an area and then you just get back on another bus to go to the next site. There are also other tour guide busses that will guide you around the park or you can do self guided tours. We opted for a self guided tour driving around the park loop, stopping at places such as Thunder Hole where you can watch the ocean waves crash on the rocks and spray water up into the air. We took a short hike to Sand Beach the only sandy beach in the park. We had a picnic lunch at one of the picnic areas and then we drove up to the summit of Cadillac Mt.( good thing we were in the jeep and not the Bus) where there is a spectacular  view of the park and surrounding area.
Friday evening we drove into Bar Harbor for dinner at Stewmans Lobster Pound.We started off with Blueberry Margaritas then Bob had a seafood combo and I had a Lobster roll,yum. After a stroll up and down Main Street where most of the shops are we stopped for dessert at Ben and Bill's (not Ben and Jerry's)Chocolate Emporium and Ice Cream Shop. We had heard from our friends Dave and Lynn that they served Lobster ice cream. Bob chickened out but I decided to try it. I thought it would be ice cream with little flecks of lobster if any at all,but it turned out to be vanilla flavored ice cream with big chunks of frozen lobster. It didn't taste the least bit fishy. There was quite a lot of lobster in it and before I got to the bottom of the dish I had had enough. Somehow ice cream and lobster don't really belong in the same dish.
Saturday was another beautiful, sunny day, so we decided to take the dogs out in the canoe. We drove into the park again up to Jordan's Pond and offloaded the canoe at the public boat ramp, then proceeded to canoe around the pond foa a couple of hours. The water was crystal clear and cold, much as you would expect from a mountain lake. We also enjoy the comments we get from people walking along the edge of the water when they see the dogs in the canoe: "Oh, isn't that so cute? Hey, there's two of them! How precious!" The dogs just take it in stride.
After completing our paddle we drove down to the southern part of the island and visited a couple of the picturesque towns on Mt. Desert Island, Northeast Harbor and Seal Harbor. Many of the homes in these areas reminded us a lot of some of the homes in Watch Hill, and the harbors themselves were filled with dozens of moored boats of all types and sizes.
We woke up Sunday morning to rain and wind, pretty much a nasty day all around, so that would limit any outside activities that we may have wanted to do. So Donna did a little research and found out the general area of Martha Stewart's vacation home in Seal Harbor, so off we went to find it. We don't know how you can hide a 35,000 square foot house that overlooks the ocean, but hide it she did. We think we came close to where it is located, but we realized we would not be able to find a mailbox with M. Stewart on it. So we brought the dogs back to the campground and then took the free L.L. Bean bus to downtown Bar Harbor for a lunch of chowder, lobster salad, and clam roll.
The rain never let up all day, so Sunday afternoon was a hang around the campsite and do the laundry kind of day. Tomorrow, Monday, we head out and back down to Kennebunkport for a few days.

Winthrop and Bar Harbor

We had a great time at Dave and Lynn Costas home in Winthrop Me.They were awesome hosts. We canoed,kayaked and Dave even took us on a tour of Lake Maranacook in his motorboat. We went out to dinner to a local color restaurant called The Liberal cup in neighboring Hallowell, ME. The locals who stop by often for a beer can earn a chance to have their own beer mug labled for them hanging above the bar. I think they have to drink 250 or so beers in one year to qualify.According to Dave and Lynn, Hallowell is considered the most liberal town in Maine, and now Bob wants to move there. We camped in Dave and Lynns back yard from Monday to Thurs then pulled up the jacks to head to Bar Harbor, ME and Acadia National Park. You had to be there to witness the process of extricating the Bus from their backyard. The gate had to be removed this time which gave about 3 more inches of width. But Dave did a great job in guiding Bob up the hill and through the gate. It came through without a scratch,-or so we thought. It wasn't until we got to the next campground that I noticed a piece of trim had come loose at the rear drivers side of the Bus. Minor considering the situation we had getting out of their backyard.
So here we are in Bar Harbor, ME. We arrived on Thurs afternoon. The campground we chose does not accept reservations and was full except for tent sites. The way it works here is you stay at a no hook-up site,get up the next morning and look for people leaving then put your car or a chair in the spot to indicate it is taken. Then you move your camper to the spot and let the office know where you moved to. That first night we somehow inadvertantly pushed a battery disconnect button which cut all power to the coach from our coach batteries leaving us with no lights. We ended up going to bed without supper because we couldn't see to cook anything. Some campers we are!! The following morning after moving the coach to our new site and with the help of a friendly Canadian we figured out what we had done and voila': electricity. Needless to say we won't forget where that button is or what happens if we push it.
Tomorrow we go exploring Acadia National Park.

Into New England

Sunday morning we successfully backed the Beast out of Barbara and Michel's driveway with only minor damage to the mud flap, and proceeded to head east. This is going to be a travel day, as we need to get as close to possible to Concord, NH, to get the fridge problem diagnosed on Monday. And guess what? We drove all the way to Concord, almost 400 miles, through parts of 6 states: PA, NJ, NY, CT, MA, and NH. Spent the highest so far on diesel in NY state - $4.42/gal. Pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot outside of Concord around 7 pm to spend the night, and woke up in the morning to find a total of 14 campers of all shapes and sizes around us. It was like circling the wagons.
Camping World was just down the road, so we pulled in and waited a couple of hours while they checked it out. Sure enough, the cooling unit on the fridge was shot, which usually means replacing the entire fridge, provided the warranty company approves. This means spending the next week to 10 days in Maine while waiting for the parts to arrive, then going back to Concord for installation. Good thing there's lots to do and see in Maine.
We left Camping World and headed east to Maine, arriving in Kennebunk around 2:30, and spent a couple of hours visiting with Dad and Peg. We even wheeled both of them outside and sat at the front of the home to enjoy the beautiful weather.
We left Kennebunk with the promise to return within a week, and headed north towards Augusta. Our old friends from Wakefield, Dave and Lynn Costa, live in Winthrop, on the edge of Lake Maranacook. Arrived at their home and had to maneuver the Beast down a small hill into his back yard with a tree on the left, stone wall on the right, and about 3 inches to spare on the gate opening. Parked just a few feet from the edge of the lake, and slept without air conditioning and with open windows, as it was so nice and cool.
I am not looking forward to getting the coach out of here in a few days.