Maine and "home"

We have a lot of catching up to do since I last posted.

Tuesday we went to Cape Elizabeth and hung out watching the tide change while we waited for the Blue Angles to do a fly over. Never happened. We had a nice relaxing time while we waited.


Then we continued on to LL Bean stopping for lunch at Day's Seafood Take Out. Neat place right on US 1 a little south of Freeport. Our kind of place. Give your order at the window and wait for your number to pick up your food. Then find a picnic table and chow down. Fine dining.

Of course at Bean we checked out the outlet store first and then the main stores. We picked up a few items but not much.

The next morning we planned to go kayaking so we got our drinks, snacks and jumped in the truck. Key on, glow plug indicator off, key to start, drop in drive, move forward and WHAT NO POWER STEERING. Kill the engine and restart, like that will help NOT. Open hood and find the serpentine belt is off. What the hell, Oh

Ruined it's day. Slowed ours. Call Good Sam ERS, they tell me I'm still under warranty and kick me over to GM's ERS. I give them my tale of wooo. How far off the road are you they ask. I'm in a commercial campground. But how far off the road they ask. Less than a quarter mile I say. Can a wrecker get to you? Yes they have big Class A'a next to me. Yes but can a wrecker get to you? YES I say. Ok we will have them take you to dealer x. Ok. Call them and let them know you will be arriving and the nature of the problem. OK I say.

I call the dealer, we don't do warranty service on a GMC we are a chevy dealer. I tell them it isn't warranty service, the stupid mini bear, I mean chipmunk, just wanted to commit suicide and kicked the belt off. No can do they say we are Chevy and can't do warranty service on GMC since there is a GMC dealer close by. What is their number I ask. They give it to me. I call GMC ERS and tell them the tow will have to be to the GMC dealer. Can't do that they say, too far. What? They are in the same area. Let me check the lady say's. Ok we can do that.

In a few minutes GMC ERS calls back and lets me know it will be about 1.5 hours before we see the tow truck and don't believe the automated message. That is followed by an automated message that the tow will arrive in 30 minutes.

The tow operator arrives and loads us up. We jump in the cab and off we head. The tow truck is a Ford diesel. over 300K on the clock. It sounds like it needs a tow. Now power off the line. One injector isn't fireing. In for service tomorrow. If it lasts that long I think.

We make it to Bill Dodge and Matt the service specialist took very good care of us. $95 later we had a clean truck with the belt on and the departed critter disposed of. We didn't attend the services.

We did get to go kayaking in Scarbourogh Marsh.

There are more pictures here.
I'll post a few more days tomorrow.

Labor Day Drive

We had found that there was an early arrival fee at Bayley's campground in Maine so we took our time getting ready for the road. We left Moose River about noon after doing our wash. We decided to take US302 over to I 295 in Portland ME. Rough road. Really Rough. We saw lots of RV's heading West. They must have had to go to work the next day. Lucky them.

We arrived about 3:30PM and put on a back up show for some of the other campers. We got things done and the peanut gallery congratulated us on our calm. After we were set up we went to the Clambake for Lobsta.

Moose River CG St. Johnsbury VT

Well I decided not to edit the last post. So this one will have our time At Moose River. Next will be Maine.

On Saturday we headed to the Farmers Market with a stop at the Farmers Daughter gift shop. Big, with lots of antiques. We bought a couple of trinkets. We proceeded to town and found the farmers market. Crunchy Granola. We did by some Blueberries and a most excellent sweet roll.

This is one for your bucket list.
The Fairbanks Museum is located in St. J. so we headed off to find it. Of course we made a wrong turn and I had to get the GPS out and have it lead the way. Wow it is fantastic. If you are near St. J. you should make time to visit. I don't think I can describe in words what the eye took in. On the mezzanine you could go from Switzerland to Japan to the Civil War by just turning a corner. Some of the displays on the main floor were visible through glass "flooring" so you could get an overhead look.

We stopped at Maple Grove but there were no tours on Saturday. So we went to the store/gift shop and looked at the maple and related products they had for sale. Of course I made several trips to the maple candy samples. Yummmmmm.

Back at Moose River we went to play bingo which was being run by the local Lions club. We didn't win anything but we had a good time. After bingo we kicked back until the Bean Hole dinner. Good feast.

After everyone had their fill things were cleaned up and made ready for the free entertainment, Country and Western singer. We've heard better. We think she was southern Vermont since she said "Jeezum Crow" with a southern accent.

On Sunday we decided to go to Lake Willoughby and kayak. On the way we stopped in Lyndon to look at several covered bridges. We stopped at a sport shop and inquired about launch sites and got a heads up that things would be quite choppy with the wind we were having. Sure enough the launch site at the southern end was very choppy. There was on person our kayaking and several divers were putting their dry suits on over their snow mobile suits. Didn't look like fun to us so we continued on the the north end. Wow what views. At the north end the lake was a bit calmer but the wind was still quite stiff so we decided to forgo the paddle. We headed to Barton where Suzette knew the owner of Bel-View campground. We visited for a while and took a self guided tour of the CG. We returned to Lyndonville by way of US 5 and stopped for a quick lunch before visiting the 2 bridges we missed on the way north.

Back to the campground via St. J. where we topped off the truck in preperation for tomorrows move to Maine. Back at camp we visited with Mary and Gary Lunderville who had lived in Jerhico and Gary was on Essex Rescue. Small world. At 5 was the corn roast. We ate way to much corn and leftovers from the bean hole dinner on Saturday. This was followed by another bonfire and a good country and western singer.

We had a really nice time at Moose River and would recommend it to anyone.

You can view our pictures here.

More ketchup

Just don't want to do it all in one post. Besides I had a day done and managed to delete the content and not get it recovered before the next auto save.

Friday August 29'th

One thing I forgot to mention in the Thursday post was that Jerry and James wanted us to meet with them at the proposed house site. Since today is a travel day we said no but I did call Jerry and discuss with him where we thought the house should be. Hopefully he has enough information to get an estimate for the site work.

We got hitched up and left for St. J. and Moose River CG. We made a stop at an overlook a little west of St. J. and visited with another RV'er who had stopped.

Arriving at about 11:45 we got checked in and decided to opt for cable TV at an additional $3/day because the campground between several hills and both the TV and Verizon Cell signals are weak. We were assigned a pull thru site. Neat the way they are layed out. Two sites are very close but approached from opposite directions so that the street sides of the RV's face each other. But they are offset such that we are not across from each other. This allows for a large "yard" between two RV's on their curb side.

Our pull thru site

After getting setup and having lunch we just kicked back and rested a little. We talked with another RV'r, Jerry, who is Full Time and uses VT as his home base. He said it was an easy process and that the registration of his rig was no problem. I think he uses his son's home as an address.

I'm going to bed now. I'll edit this later and add more. so check back to this post.

What a week - catching up

This has been a busy "vacation" I will try and catch up with a day by day, blow by blow account in this LONG post.

Monday August 25

Laundry day, $10 for 2 loads at the campground. Yep expensive but convenient. After that chore we headed to Winooski to a bike shop and to check our a canoe/kayak launch by the Millyard. The bike shop didn't exist but the launch site did. Steep downhill carry but they had built a slide to allow you to get a kayak/canoe down/up.

Since the bike shop had closed we went to Burlington to get a new tire and spare tube for Suzette's bike. After I installed the new tire we rode down the bike path to Burlington's watefront. Looked in on Friendship but they did not have customers for the noon sail so no one was there. We headed on over to where the Lois McClure had been tied up but she had sailed for Basin Harbor which is the home base for LCMM.

On our ride back to the campground we got a call from Ann that we were to meet them at the fair at 5:00. We left early so we could look for our friend Bruno who work camps there. We managed to find him but used up to much time so we only had about a half hour visit before meeting up with Wally and Ann.

We did the fair food thing, bloom'n onion to get the cholesterol up, then walk to the Ox pulls, walk back to the exhibit area and look before the next course. Sausage w/krut Suzette had a cheeseburger. More walking and looking at exhibits. Time for desert so we head to the maple sugar house/exhibit and get maple frosted doughnuts. Just finished with them and my cell rang. Damn what could that be? Oh it's Fran, our realator, with an verbal offer. Humm that' interesting.

Walked, talked, looked and were ready to head to the car when we came by another Al's. So I just had to have a pint of fries. Hummmm good.

Said our good by's and set the meeting time and place for Tuesday's activities. Now to see what the offer does to our spreadsheet.

Tuesday August 26'th

Called Fran back with our counter offer. Called our Vermont realator(s) to see if we could arrange another showing of properties on Wed. With that set we went to meet Wally and Ann for our bike ride on the fill section of the bike path. We had a nice ride but it was cool and the wind was blowing a bit.

From Biking and Kayaking The Winooski

Back to camp to have lunch and get ready for the next adventure a nice little kayak float down the Winooski. We loaded the 4 kayaks in the truck and headed for McCrea Farm put in and a 3 mile down river float. Damn wind. Once we reached the RT127 bridge it did get windy and choppy. A hard paddle for about a mile, ugly ugly. We were all glad to reach the fishing access take out.

After we returned to camp we started cooking the chili mac in the dutch oven. What no chili mix. Wally went to the store and returned with 2 packets, one is a spare, a six pack of Long Trail and a bag of roasted unshelled peanuts.

When Donna and Jerry arrived we set out to consume the pot of chili and the corn bread we had baked on the grill. After dinner we visited for a while giving Jerry his B'day card and a very used $10 bill so he could by his Interagency Senior Life Time Pass. Wally and Ann left, Jerry and Donna stayed a while longer and visited.

Wednesday August 27'th

After breakfast we went over our Florida plans in light of the pending sale of our Virginia house. I resubmitted my Florida State Parks volunteer application. We received a call to meet Don our realator in Jeff about 1100. We had to stop by Wally and Ann's to pick up some forms that we had had overnighted to us at their address. Short visit and off to Jeffersonville to meet with Don. We went with Don and his father to look at another piece of land. Didn't like it, to verticle. Lunch at Jana's before meeting Diane at the LaBarron property.

Mount Mansfield is in the background

We met the Diane, the selling Realtor, as well as the land owner. We spend about an hour looking things over, finding the lot pins, discussing the covenants and related details. The proposed house site does not afford a view of Mansfield so we want to see if we can move the site.

That burned off most of the afternoon. We made plans to meet with Don on Thursday for breakfast and get the paperwork started.

I needed to be at LCYC by 1700 to sail on K2 so we went back to the camper and downloaded the pictures we had taken earlier in the day of the old hood in Essex.

We had a good sail with what little wind there was.

Thursday August 28'th

Met with Don at JP's in Essex for breakfast and to get the contract offer going. A lot of signing, dating, and initialing. After breakfast and the discussion on buying the property we made our way to Underhill Center to meet with James and Jerry O. who will be our general contractor on the new house. We discussed a lot of items, heating, A/C, ICF, siding and roof choices to name a few. Since we were most of the way to Jeff. we decided to visit the Union Bank and talk about a building loan and other accounts. We had a very productive meeting with Susan Lassiter VP/Branch Manager. Next we called Peterson & Ruple and made an appointment to meet on our way back to Essex. Another good discussion so we decided to use them to represent us and signed a POA so Lori or Barry could sign for us.

Back at camp we started putting things together so we had less to do on Friday morning before we left for Moose River. Off to Wally and Ann's for dinner and talk.