October 18, 2003 - Annville, PA - 3

Late breaking news!  Son Rick and his wife Lynn sent us a bunch of pictures of our newest granddaughter!  Yahoo!  Yeah, that's right, go to Yahoo to see them if you'd like.  http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/lynnjenx  We're as proud as if we had something to do with it all.

We're peeking into Ma's kitchen....with one corner of the counter full of birthday greetings.  Among them, a card from President and Mrs. George Bush.  Nice touch, eh?  The White House greeting is available upon request for those celebrating 80+ birthdays and 50+ anniversaries in case you'd like to do the same.

The parlor, or sitting room, gets lots of use.  Ma's apartment is upstairs in Donna and Dave's house that was bought from Ma some years ago.  All 6 girls were raised here here......for some years with just one bathroom!  Poor Pop.

Talk about independent living but being with family at the same time.  This is it.  The youngest granddaughter comes upstairs to play with her on a regular basis, and at the time we were there, that 5-year-old granddaughter had a neat scam going.  She'd draw things of pieces of paper and price them, and then sell them to her grandmother (25¢, 50¢, or $1).  The kid even has a plastic set of McDonald's  restaurant foods, and would come and ask for the order, take it to her bag of goodies, deliver the hamburger, fries, and whatever, and then present the check.  And Ma would pay, and Jillian, the granddaughter, would stash the cash.  Like I said, pretty neat scam.  And a pretty good deal for everyone concerned, in our opinion.

On the left is a house, and that's not their driveway.  It's the street!  Their yard is on the other side of the street.  Going up the hill is on the left, and coming down the hill is on the right.  There's not even enough room for two cars to pass each other at this point.  Two steps out the door, and the people are in the roadway.  The concrete post is there for good reason--protects the corner of their house.

There's pavement right up to and around the door.  Now, I don't usually complain about "interesting" driving situations.  Rather enjoy the challenge most the time.  But this one bothered me every time we drove by.  I'd slow to a crawl, afraid somebody would come out of the house and I'd nail them.  Or worse yet, that I'd meet an oncoming car.  Scared myself and the woman who was coming out of the house one time real good.  Only in New England, I'm sure!  And there's Bill and Carol's rig parked along side us.  It's really fun having friends to travel with, enjoy meals together, and sightsee with......and then everybody goes home for the night.

And here's to you!  Is this a great lifestyle or what!  And there we are all hooked up for the first time (installed the towing gear with Barb's brother-in-law Guy the previous week).  Boat on top of the Jeep, bikes on their rack on the back, and ready for the road.

Rather than doing what normal rational RV'ers would do this time of year, and heading for Florida, we went to Maine.  The first night we spent at the Wal-Mart in Brunswick.  Ran around a bit and came across a small nature sanctuary. The Hamilton Sanctuary on Foster Point Road in West Bath, Maine. Tide was out, and there was this fellow digging clams in the mud of Back Cove.  And "Sedro" going across the parking lot.  See, there's this town in Washington State called Sedro Woolley, and all my life I've known this caterpillar as a Woolly Bugger.  So of course, Barb calls them all "Sedro."  Anybody out there know their real name?  Or what kind of a whatever they turn into?  I know for sure that they make great trout bait!

Yup, it's fall in New England.  The colors in the woods this time of year can be spectacular, and no picture on earth does them justice.  When we were here in 2000 I tried to take some pictures of them, but it didn't work well at all so this year I didn't even try.  See the October 29, 2000, entry if you want to see what I mean.  And as we were driving around, we came across the "Looney Lagoon".

The mermaid was taking a bath, and the two-headed alligator didn't seem to be paying any attention at all.  We sat there for a good 10 minutes, and kept finding something else hiding there.  Everything from a giant lobster to a dog sled team.

Near as we could tell, that was the artist....but we're not sure.  And finally, Barb got to see the ocean and the Maine coast.  At the Reid State Park.

Yeah, it was windy and cold and rocky and we belong in Florida or Arizona this time of year.  Heading further north, however, as we want to see Acadia National Park while we're this close.  And besides, last winter we were in the Pacific Northwest and we still have the clothes we bought from Goodwill for that season.

Gee, I wonder who has the camera now........ This pond was fresh water, across the street and down a ways from the ocean.  Still near Brunswick, ME.

There we are, parked right behind Bill and Carol for the night at Wal-Mart in Brunswick.  There were several other RV's there, so we didn't feel so stupid about being here this time of year after all.  We each went separate ways for a day or two, and then met up again in Ellsworth.  They'd driven past us at the Elks Lodge, and were parked for the night at the Wal-Mart, but that didn't keep us from getting together for a lobster dinner.  The remains can be seen sticking out of the plastic buckets.  I had a blueberry crumb pie with ice cream for dessert, and it was as good as the lobster.  We paid $8.95 per pound for ours, and each was a tad over a pound.  We've seen them in stores for as much as $15.95 per pound, and they were still alive, which meant you'd have to cook them and all that.  And here we didn't even have to do dishes afterward!  Of course, neither did anybody else.  Plastic plates and flatware and paper cups.  Fun place and great meal.

Next day it was off to Acadia National Park (just down the road from Ellsworth) and Bar Harbor.  Or "Bah Habah" as the locals say it.  Don't' know the story of the cruise ship in the harbor, but the contrast between it and the local boats was interesting.  The bridges (you know I like looking at bridges) in the National Park are supporting the "carriage" roads.  I was impressed with the rock work those stone masons did.  It looks symmetrical, but if you look closely there really isn't any match at all between the sides.  It just gives that impression.  There are some 54 miles of carriage roads that took almost 30 years to build.  Acadia is the first National Park east of the Mississippi River, and the land was largely donated to the Federal Government by private individuals.  The Rockefellers among the donors.  John D. Rockefeller Jr. liked building roads, and would not only design them, but would work on them himself.  Knew the workmen by name, the story goes.  Huge fire in 1947 pretty much wiped out all the mansions the wealthy had built during the "glory days", but there are still many historical sites that are fun to see.  Barb and I spent two days poking around the park, and still didn't see everything.  How long would it take us to ride those 54 miles of carriage roads on our bikes?  No motorized vehicles allowed on them. 

A better view of the nice stone work, and then Barb had the camera and managed to catch some color....in progress.  The whole tree looked like this; this is a Maple of course..

There are private homes in the park, or at least they look like they're in the park.  And the ones we noticed weren't little homes, either.  There are concessionaires offering nature tours from the water as well.  Boat was full, too, which surprised us for being this late in the season.  If you look carefully at that picture with the boat, you'll see little white flecks.  Those are lobster trap buoys.  The water was covered with them (we're talking tens of thousands of these folks!), and the tour boat made no obvious attempt at dodging them.  Interesting.

A short break to climb around on the rocks, and watch the schooner cruising along. And it too had to contend with the lobster trap buoys.  All the water we could see on the island had these buoys, and it's amazing to us there are any lobsters down there anymore at all, what with all these traps.  And each buoy didn't only have one trap, either.  We watched several boats hauling traps, and most had at least two traps per buoy.

Couple of shots showing the contrast in shoreline.  Most was rocky like the picture on the left, but there were sandy spots as well here and there.

Hey!  What's this?  PDA?  Sure is.  (Public Display of Affection)  The cute couple were on bikes, and we'd seen them going over maps in the parking lot.  And a mooch who kept trying to steal our lunch.

Not exactly the softest seat in the place, but couldn't beat the view.