This morning, I expected to be socked in to a thick blanket of fog. It
was dead quiet outside. I peeked around the blinds and did see a couple of tent
campers moving around their tents. One guy held his hand face up and sort of
looked up to see if it was raining. It wasn’t from what I could tell. I’m glad
we have a truck camper. It isn’t too pleasant
to pack everything when it is in a soggy state.
We got out of bed and had breakfast. Headed for the dump station to
empty our holding tanks and fill-up with fresh water. Next stop was to the
registration office to checkout. Before entering, I noticed a sign with today’s
weather forecast. “Severe weather warning for later in the day, 90% chance of
thunder storms with heavy wind”. It wasn’t raining or extremely foggy and we
decided to explore the quiet side of the Island as long as the weather wasn’t a
problem.
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| Bass Harbor Head Light |
Sieur de Monts was our first stop after leaving Blackwoods Campground.
Here we walked the Wild Gardens of Acadia at the Nature Center. Abbe Museum was
here also, but we wanted to explore the outside as long as the weather held up
and we bypassed this attraction. The Hull Visitor Center was next. We tried
last night, but we missed the five o’clock closing. I wanted to get an Acadia
National Park hiking stick pin. My collection of these pins is coming along
very well. My hiking stick has about 16 inches of these pins on two sides. The
stick was given to me by my grandson Sawyer a couple of years ago, when he was
around nine years old. It isn’t an exotic species of wood. It’s plain old dog
wood that came from our property. At the time, we were trying to make whistles
with the dog wood. I started carving and first thing you know it was my prize
walking stick.
Back to the quiet side of Mount Desert Island, the Bar Harbor side is
full of tourists but the South West part of the Island is dotted with little
towns, and coves. One gets to see the real coast of Down east Maine. I would
say once you cross Somes Sound you are on the so called quiet side. Route 102
brought us down to South West Harbor. We stopped to get a few pictures of the
boats anchored in the harbor. We walk up the highway a short distance to a
pickup truck with fresh fish for sale. Helen bought some haddock. This vender
did a good business this morning. He had several people stop for his products.
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| Sailing in the fog! |
I turned off on RTE 102A which followed the coast line. A place called
Seawall Picnic Area caught our attention and we walked the rocky shore line
looking at rock shapes for our collection. The fog was still heavy off shore
and we could hear boats moving up and down but we couldn’t actually see them. I
managed to shoot a couple of pictures and still wound up with two souvenir
rocks.
Seawall Campground came up and I drove in just to see if it was better than
Blackwoods. I would say it’s about the same (heavily wooded sites with paved
roads and the same type of restrooms). It would be an option, if we ever come
this way again.
So far this weekend was working as I was hoping. The long adventure trip to
Alaska wasn’t an isolated adventure. We were experiencing the same feelings of
discovering new places, meeting people, sharing our experiences and generally
having a good time.
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| Navigating the Rocky Coast |
When you see pictures of the Maine coast, you are nearly always brought
to this next spot that we discovered. It’s called “Bass Harbor Head
Lighthouse”. It is not a well-marked road. What you do see is several signs
that have (No RV’s). The road is very narrow and at the end is a parking lot
that is small and hard to navigate. Our truck camper did very well, I backed
into a spot and we were off… down the trail to the most scenic view of the
“Rocky Coast of Maine”
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| Do You Think She Is Practicing Surfing? |
The rest of the Island had a few more scenic coves, such as Duck Cove,
Goose Cove and Seal Cove Pond. We passed Hall Quarry on this quiet side of
Mount Desert Island. The quarry had samples of the polished Granite in several
colors. The slabs were in the five by ten foot size. Priceless!
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| The Green Fence? |
The weather was still holding up for us and we were back on the mainland
heading for home. Most of the trip home was uneventful. We stopped in South
Paris, Maine to check out the new Casino. It was only a mile out of our way. To
our surprise the parking lot was full to capacity. I did manage to find a spot
and we dashed into the Casino. Every slot machine was taken except for six or
so. We donated a few coins and left. The first thing we heard on the radio was
that emergency warning sound with the following automated voice saying…severe
thunder storm warning with heavy winds and possible down trees and power lines for
Lancaster, Lunenburg, Colebrook and Pittsburg, NH… Take cover! It was just starting to drizzle
and it was now night time and dark. I drove with caution and made it to Bethel,
Maine before it really started to rain heavily. You know when your wipers are
on high and you still can’t see anything. I slowed down to 20 miles per hour.
The camper was still rock steady. It was windy, but not severe…yet! The New
Hampshire border came up fairly fast and now we were only 20 miles or so from
home. The lighting started. At first it seemed to be at a distance and then it
was all around us. Down to 10 miles per hour, the traffic was light, but when a
car did drive by it was hard to, or I should say impossible to see the road.
The next twenty minutes was rough! The
town of Gorham soon was before us and the worst of the storm was behind us. We
both had a sigh of relief. Our home town six miles up the road was the end of
this adventure full weekend. The truck camper had lived up to its reputation of
giving us adventure and fun for the weekend. I can’t wait to see where “Boomers
on the move” will take us next.
That is what we saw and did
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