Monthly Archives: August 2009
Harry & Miguel…
Today was Moving Day.
But first I got to talk to the two American Eagle Owners parked next to us. Both of theirs are 2001 models and then there is another one in the park that is a 2007.
It’s very unusual to see another Eagle in a park with us, much less three in the same park, and two right next door.
They are part of the American Coach Association, a group for American Coach owners, and are traveling together after attending an American Coach rally in Decatur, IL Hopefully we’ll get to talk some more before we leave on Tuesday.
As I said, today was Moving Day. The park finally had a vacant site with a sewer connection, so we moved over this morning about 11:30 am. If we don’t have a sewer connection, we can’t use the washer.
So as soon as we got moved and set up, Jan got the laundry started.
About 1:30 pm we headed over to Orono, ME, about 15 miles north of Bangor, to have lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Margarita’s, before we caught the 4:10 Harry Potter movie.
Unfortunately, no one told us that the restaurant didn’t open until 4 pm. So we headed back over to Bangor to eat at Oriental Jade, the Chinese restaurant we ate at a couple of days ago. And as luck would have it, it’s right next door to the movie.
After lunch, we still had some time so we went to Hannaford’s, a grocery store right next door, to pick up some things.
And then it was off to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
After the movie, we still wanted our Mexican fix so while heading back to Margarita’s, we came across Miguel’s Mexican Cafe right down the street from the movie.
The food was good, but it’s the same at every Mexican restaurant we find up here. No one uses jalapenos in any thing. Even the pico de gallo is jalapenoless.
So the food is pretty bland compared to what we’re used to in Texas.
After supper we headed back to the coach for more laundry.
Tomorrow we plan to drive south down to Bar Harbor about 50 miles away to see some of the Maine coast line.
We’ll see how it goes since it’s raining right now and is supposed to still be raining tomorrow too.
Later…
Bean Hole Beans…
Today was pretty much another do-nothing day.
I did take time to replace the windshield wipers on the coach with cheaper ones. The reason for this was that the expensive ones I put on back in February before we left Houston, really weren’t doing a very good job. This was because they had such a curve in them they wouldn’t stay pressed against the windshield very well.
The new ones from Sam’s work great.
This evening we attended a Maine Bean Hole Bean Dinner here at the RV park. It was basically grilled hot dogs, baked beans, cole slaw, and bread. The term ‘bean hole beans’ comes from a New England tradition where the beans were cooked in a large cast iron pot in the ground.
The beans they use up here are a little different than what we’re used to. They’re called yellow-eye beans. They’re related to kidney beans, but ivory colored with a mustard-colored eye, kind of like a black-eye pea, but larger.
Maine Yellow Eye Beans
We had a good time talking with the other RV’ers, especially a group that had recently been to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland on an RV caravan.
An RV caravan is a group of travelers traveling together from one destination to the next. These tours can be professionally organized by a caravanning company, or informal – a small or large group of friends traveling together from place to place.
We’re going to try to pick the Wagonmaster’s (think Wagon Train) brain a little bit for the best places to stay and see.
Tomorrow we’re going to move to another site for a couple of days. The site we’re at doesn’t have sewer so we can’t do laundry, so we’re moving over there for a couple of days before we leave for Houlton, the last town in Maine before we enter Canada.
We’re kind of waiting to see what Hurricane Bill is going to do since it’s supposedly heading for Nova Scotia/Newfoundland.
Tomorrow, while we’re moving to our new site, I plan on topping off our propane tank. The last time we filled it up was in Whitehorse, BC in Canada last year on our way back from Alaska..
In the summer time, the only thing we used propane for is for the refrigerator when we’re traveling, and for hot water when we’re boondocking. When we’re plugged in to shore power, we use the electric water heater. So the 40 gallons can last a long time.
However, we should start running into colder weather soon and we do use the propane for our two coach heaters. We also have two small electric heaters that we use until it gets really cold.
Last year on our way to Alaska, the coldest temp we ran into was 6 degrees in Garrison, MT, and the heaters had to run almost constantly.
So we’ll top off now before we get into Canada.
And after we move tomorrow, we’re planning on going to see the Harry Potter movie.
After that, we’ll see…
