Homeward Bound

After a beautiful day yesterday, the view out our window was of low clouds and heavy overcast. Still, the scene was colorful.

We elected to get breakfast on the road. The first place we came to didn’t seem to have much parking, so we passed it up. It turns out that we didn’t see another restaurant for many miles = a late breakfast.

The road took us past (but not up) Mt. Washington. In the higher elevation, the woods were spectacular, even in the overcast. We crossed New Hampshire twice, both times at places where it is narrow. So we soon got into Vermont. We had a number of stops to make in Vermont. First was Goddard, the school where Jean’s daughter took her masters. It is a non-residential college, plus it was Columbus Day weekend so the campus was deserted. We walked around a little and took some pictures.

Then we followed the back roads to Bragg Farm. This is a sugar farm where we normally spend a night in the Harvest Hosts program. We also pick up our year’s supply of maple syrup. We were not staying overnight this year, but we still went in and shopped. They were doing a good business on the weekend.

Next stop was Montpelier, the capital. Once again, we followed what has become a tradition and had lunch at the Skinny Pancake, a popular crepe restaurant. Then we walked around a little, and visited an interesting record store. While perusing the CDs, we spotted a man on his hands and knees on the floor. He was sorting through a low shelf of old vinyls. He was obviously a collector. He eventually picked several, one of which he said only had two tracks he was interested in.

By then it was time to head into Burlington and Gene’s son Alan’s house. We started out on Route 2, the road we had been on all day. After a while it got very rough, and we gave up and went the rest of the way on the interstate.

Next day, Monday, Jean and Valerie went shopping, and I got a prescription filled. For some reason, my insurance wouldn’t cover it. It was for a 90-day quantity and they said I had another month to go, even though the bottle had fewer than seven pills in it. It was a generic, and the pharmacist found a way for me to get it filled for $10. My handy son fixed a drawer in the motorhome that had started to come apart. The day was very relaxed (for us; Alan and Valerie are workaholics).

Tuesday was more relaxing all around. The four of us drove to Waterbury for lunch, and then on to Stowe. We went to the Von Trappe farm in the mountains. This is in a beautiful location. It mostly caters to the tourist trade, but they do raise some cattle and sheep.

We left on Wednesday after a great breakfast by Alan, enjoyed on the deck. The Lois McClure, which I usually visit, was not in Burlington. Alan said that they moved her to the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum for the winter, so on the way south we stopped there. I didn’t get to see the ship but I did talk with her former boatswain. I was interested in his reaction to a book I am thinking of publishing on basic rope work for historic reproductions. He was enthusiastic, which made me feel good and optimistic.

We stopped for lunch in Fair Haven. We went to a nice café where we had eaten before, but got there just after closing. We had salads in a pizza place instead. Downtown Fair Haven is a typical New England small town. There are interesting buildings,

And a village green.

We made it into New York, where we stayed in a campground which had TV. We mostly saw news about Hurricane Michael. This trip seems to be book-ended by hurricanes. Next day was overcast, with occasional rain and fog. It seems to be an every-other-day phenomenon. The drive was pleasant, though.

We made it into Pennsylvania, and found a campground a bit off US-11, which we were now following. We plugged the address into the GPS, which led us on a merry chase across miles of dirt (gravel?) roads in the misty rain. After more turns than I would be able to remember, we arrived, covered in mud, at a campground in the hills.

 Next morning, I asked the campground manager if there was another way back to US-11. She told me a way that was shorter, with fewer turns, and almost all on pavement. She said the GPSs always sent people the long, difficult way there.

South of Scranton, US-11 veers away from I-81 and follows the Susquehanna River. We often got views of the wide river, but nowhere where we could get a picture. We enjoyed the wide valley views. In places where the road runs close to the bluff we saw frequent springs running down the hillside. The road is smooth and wide for the most part.

Most of the towns are small, but there were a couple big enough to lose the route in. All you have to do is miss one turn sign (assuming there actually is one) and you are lost. In one town I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions to Route 11 and the man at the counter didn’t know what I was talking about. Gas stations and convenience stores often hire people who are not from the area and don’t know the town. There was a customer there playing the electronic slots, who was able to give me directions that put us back on the right road. In the second town we were able to find our own way back.

Our last night in Pennsylvania, we were not able to find a convenient campground, so we spent another night at a Walmart, along with three other RVs.  Since we needed to run the generator, we parked some distance away from them so as not to disturb them with the noise. The generator runs on propane, and we were getting low, but we made it through the night okay.

Next morning I was able to squeeze myself into a crowded U-Haul dealership without hitting anything (or being hit, I stuck out onto the road a little) and topped up the propane tank. Then I went to a nearby gas station and topped up with diesel. As it turned out, the propane cost about a dollar more than the diesel --- but we don’t use as much of it.

We picked up I-81 near Harrisburg and followed it into Maryland. We made a short run back on US-11, but we were doing well so we decided to go the rest of the way home. We got back on 81 and other than a brief glitch changing to I-64, we made good progress. Traffic wasn’t bad for an interstate. It was a long day, 349 miles (long for us) but we made it back to Forest in time to meet Jean’s brother, Chillie, for dinner at 6:00. Thus ended our New England adventure, after 23 days and 2,584 miles. Some problems but mostly a good trip.

Maine

After wandering around in Massachusetts getting lost and found again, we finally got on the way on US-1. We went through a corner of New Hampshire and then we were finally in Maine. Much of the coast has extensive salt marshes.

Our first stop was the town of Wells. We found a nice campground near the water, we could even see marsh and ocean through the trees of our site. We went into town in search of breakfast, the post office, and a Wells Fargo bank, in that order.

Breakfast was delicious, in a place that serves several kinds of Eggs Benedict. The waitress told us how to get to the post office, but was stumped about a Wells Fargo bank. One of the other customers said that Wells Fargo was their bank. Good, where is it? In Florida — they were also visitors. We eventually found out that there are no Wells Fargo banks in the whole state of Maine.

After looking around Wells for a while, we drove down the road past our campground, expecting it to lead us to the beach. It led us to a marina. Across the water we could see a long row of houses, which was obviously where the beach was. We went back to the highway and looked for a road that might lead us to those houses. Lo and behold, there was a sign with an arrow that said “Wells Beach.” Much more accommodating than Massachusetts.

There was a parking area right at the water but it had a sign “No RVs” Not that this would normally deter us, but there also seemed to be no space. We followed the sign that pointed toward RV and bus parking. The road led between typical wall-to-wall beach houses. Every block or so there was a public walk to the beach. It looked good. There was lots of room at the parking lot at the end, including a place to pay for parking. There was also a contingent of the Wells Fire Department there, testing and repacking their hoses.

We took the first marked beach walk and discovered that it led through a large marsh. We elected to skip that. We went back and sat on a bench facing the marina on the other side of the parking lot and watched the birds and a little bit of action on the piers.

After a while, we decided to head back. As we passed one of the earlier beach walks we could see that it led straight to the beach. We found a place to park and walked down there. The beach here is very long and was almost deserted (as were most of the houses). The beaches so far have been very flat, with waves breaking a ways out. We walked along the edge of the water and found a few shells. Then back to the campground after a reasonably successful day.

The next day, Friday, we went back to the same café for breakfast. Gene had to try the Red Neck Bennie. That is an Eggs Benedict using a biscuit instead of English muffin, a sausage patty instead of ham, and sausage gravy instead of béarnaise sauce. About the only thing left of the original was the egg. (That is also pretty much the same situation in restoring an old wooden boat, which we saw a bit of.) It was good, but no improvement on the original.

Our next stop up the coast was Freeport, so we had to go into the LL Bean store. It is, I believe, the only store the company has; everything else is sold from the catalog. The store is huge. The campus takes up a whole block and the main store is two floors and a mezzanine. It was full of people — they do a big business. However, not much from us. The prices are very high. Even the sale prices were out of our league. It was an interesting exercise, though. (And I do mean exercise, we must have walked a couple of miles.)

We stopped at the Bath Visitor Center and got some information, then went on to Wiscasset to a campground. In the evening Gene went to lower one of the rear blinds and it came down extremely crooked. He spent more than an hour of frustrating work getting it straightened out again. The cloth got torn, and it probably needs replacing when we get home. Meanwhile it is down and straight and will stay that way.

Friday we went back to Bath to visit the Maritime Museum. This was highly recommended by friend Whitt in Mystic. Bath has been a center of boat building since the 19^th century. The museum consists of several buildings around one of the old shipyards. On the grounds is the Wyoming monument. The Wyoming is the largest wooden vessel ever built in the United States. She was a six-masted schooner, over 460 feet sparred length (end of the bowsprit to end of the boomkin at the stern). The sculpture, which is full-size, consists of six flagpoles between an open frame outline of the bow and a similar outline of the stern.

There is also a restored schooner (much smaller) at the pier which we went aboard. We spent a lot of time in the main building, which had displays and models of everything maritime.

After we tired ourselves out in the museum, we went to a recommended local café for a delicious lunch. Then back on the road north and east. Wiscasset is a pretty little town, which has one stop light. For some reason that stop light backed up traffic well beyond the township limit, at least five miles. We had to have spent at least an hour crawling through the countryside before we even go into town.

We started running into trouble finding campgrounds. The last two we were in were scheduled to close down for the season after the weekend. We ended up staying in a Walmart in Thomaston. That would normally not be a problem, but when we tried to turn on the gas furnace, it wouldn’t come on. Sometimes the outside vents for the furnace attract wasps who build their nests in them. I have a screen over the vents to prevent that but you never know. I went inside and bought some cans of compressed air, and blew the vents out. Nothing came out of the vents and it didn’t make any difference. Nights are cold here now. We have a small electric heater that we used in previous nights when we were plugged in to shore power. That is not possible in a Walmart parking lot. We were well out of the way, near the back of the building on the garden end. Luckily, the generator worked; so we could use the little heater. It only meant sleeping all night with the generator running right under the bed. As it turned out, that didn’t bother as much as we feared.

However, that put a big crimp in our plans. We don’t know if the problem is in the furnace (probably a major repair) or in the thermostat that controls it (relatively easy fix). But it was now Friday night of Columbus Day weekend, and nothing much will get done. It also means that we will have to have hookups every night or live with the generator every night. With the fact that campgrounds seem to shut down for the season after Columbus Day, the prospects didn’t look too bright. Gene felt that this has been a bad luck trip anyway: our start was delayed by Hurricane Florence, then the fuel hose came off, then the vent fan stopped working (when the nights were still hot), the blind tried to destroy itself, and finally the furnace refused to work once it got cold. He was ready to throw in the towel and head back home — via his son’s house in Vermont.

So Saturday morning, we turned off US-1 and set our course for Vermont. As the day went on and we started getting into higher elevations, the colorful trees became brighter and more colorful. We drove hour after hour through peaceful countryside, with occasional small towns, and more bright trees. In many ways it was the best part of the trip so far.

View through the windshield

At the end of the day we parked in a campground just over the line into New Hampshire. Our Maine leg was over but it left us wanting to come back for more.

Massachusetts to Maine

After Mystic, we got on US-1, heading east. The first place we came to was Waverly, RI. Winding around the crowded streets, we missed where US-1 turned (of course) and soon found ourselves driving out a long peninsula. As we went farther out, the houses got bigger and fancier. We finally spotted a huge, yellow building that was either a fancy hotel or an oddly-shaped apartment house. At that point, we turned around and went back to town looking for our road.

We finally got back on track, and proceeded to Massachusetts. We wanted to see Cape Cod, and managed to get a reservation at a campground at Sippewisset, sort of on the armpit of Cape Cod. That is not a comment on the area. It is pretty country, with interesting architecture and colorful houses. The roads where we were are narrow, and the small towns crowded. I guess that is what is meant by “quaint.” The campground was crowded, and it was difficult backing into our space; but once settled in we close the blinds and enjoy our little house.

Next day, Saturday, we drove in to Falmouth. They have a Tourist Information office there, but it is closed on weekends. Who closes a Tourist Information center when most of the tourists are there?

       From there we drove down to Woods Hole, almost by accident. The streets there were narrower and more crowded, so we immediately left again. Jean was most interested in finding a beach, so we headed east. We shifted our route to the northern side of the “arm” because she saw a beach on the map there.

New England has many quaint churches, but on the Cape we spotted an Anglican church that stood out.

 Cape Cod has many beaches, but you have to know where they are; there are no signs for them on the highway. We thought we might be in the right place, so we turned off the main road. There were a couple of men talking beside the road, so we stopped and asked them. They informed us that we had missed the beach we were looking for by a couple of miles, but there was a much better beach down at the end of the road.

We drove to the end and, sure enough, there was a nice, long beach with plenty of parking. We spent some time on the beach, collecting shells, and enjoying a beautiful fall day.

After Jean had her beach fix, we drove back to the campground, making the usual number of wrong turns in this unfamiliar territory.

Sunday we headed off the Cape.

Cape Cod Canal

It was time to do laundry, so we found a reasonable campground with a laundromat. We checked in and the girl gave us a map with the road to our site. The road was very rough, rocky, and partly washed out in places. This campground, like the last one, was on a hillside, and being New England there were lots of rocks. When we got to our site, we looked for the number, 36. Instead, we were at site 112. I got out and looked around and could make no sense of the situation. The map seemed to have little to do with the area. I finally flagged down one of the other campers and eventually determined that I was at the wrong end of the campground. I had entered the area in the usual way, driving past the office. Instead, I should have gone in the opposite direction, away from the office --- most unusual. When we finally found our site (on a better road) it was a little tricky backing in, but very nice once we were settled in. On the good side, there was a short path down the hill from the back of the site to the laundry. It had new machines, and they were free!

The washer had clothes in it, but after a little while, the person who they belonged to showed up, and we negotiated who would use the machine and in what order (we both had a couple of loads). She turned out to be an interesting woman, with a cute three-year old in tow, so it proved to be an interesting afternoon.

Monday dawned overcast, which eventually turned to fine rain. We took I-95 around Boston (not bad traffic). We decided to check out Salem. We probably picked the wrong way in. The streets were narrow and rough with lots of traffic. Interesting houses, though. About the time we would think about giving up, we’d see another sign that said Information Center ahead. This went on for quite a while. When we finally got to the Information Center, the only place we were able to park was a meter with a fifteen-minute limit. After talking with a ranger, we headed toward where we thought he said there would be more parking, but got confused in the old streets. We finally stopped for lunch at a Cafe99, and took to the phone to find a place to stay. We had had more than enough of Salem.

We scored a site on Cape Ann, with a nearby beach. This campground was also hilly (we are in New England, after all) but it was much easier to maneuver. Jean loved the flower garden in the front and wished she could ship it home.

We drove to Wingearsheek beach next morning. We were almost the only ones there on a cold, foggy Tuesday. The beach is very flat, with a fine, grey sand. There is a lighthouse across the inlet. I took some lighthouse pictures while Jean scored some shells on the beach.

It took us a while to find our way off Cape Ann. The maps we have can be very confusing. We finally found a Walmart on the GPS and set it as a destination. This got us back on the main road. We didn’t actually go to the Walmart. On the way (and when we knew where we were) We stopped for lunch. Then we continued up US-1.

We went through a corner of New Hampshire, and finally got into Maine. We got a campground in Wells. It is a pleasant campground next to a marsh. It is even mostly flat with level sites. The day was cold and rainy, rather dreary for travel. But with clam chowder for lunch, hot chocolate with rum when we settled in, and home-made chili for supper we considered the day a success.