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.