Late Maine Spring

Lupine in Hatchet Cove

Last year while we were traveling in Alaska, we got reports from our Maine friends as to how bad the summer was here. It was a cold, we summer. Gardens failed to produce much of anything useful. Pumpkins only made it to 6 inches in diameter. Some said that it rained every day in June.

I'm of the opinion that we bring good weather with us where ever we go. Of course, it's never perfect, we've seen some nasty stuff. When we leave somewhere, it often gets really bad where we've been. Like when we left Pincher Creek, Alberta at the end of May last year. They got 8" of snow, while we had wonderful summer weather farther north in Banff and Jasper.

So, since we're the good weather omens, it stands to reason that Maine would have great weather since we're back here now. So far, so good. We've been here for two weeks, and we've had 1 day of rain. It's mostly been sunny, with crystal clear skies. Yesterday Portland recorded a record high temperature of 86 degrees. In Friendship, it was in the mid 70s. And the forecast calls for a "hat trick" Memorial Day weekend of three beautiful days. So, if the weather is a marker of happiness, we should be delighted.

Spring is abundantly obvious everywhere here. The dandelions are very healthy, the lawns are growing impressively fast, and tulips and lilacs are most colorful and fragrant. Of the wild flowers growing here, I like the lupine the most. We have a patch growing next to our house, and they are peaking right now. My photos show other patches down near Hatchet Cove, near the water's edge.

The trees are in bloom, too. Our apple trees in the back yard are blossomed and looking very healthy, as much as old, old apples trees can look. I expect that we'll have another bumper crop of apples to pick up in the yard this fall.

We've been busy trying to capture all this weather by working toward a fairly large vegetable garden this summer. We arranged to have George Simmons stop by with his tractor and till a plot that's about 22' x 35'... not huge, but most likely more than we'll want to tend later. Seeds have been started indoors for broccoli, tomatoes, eggplant, and more. We also tilled flower beds next to the sunroom, and we've been planting hostas, nasturtiums, and will have lettuce and spinach growing there, and a few herbs.

Meanwhile, we've been making repairs where needed, and working to finish the 3rd bedroom upstairs. It was used for storage for our personal junk while we tripped off to Alaska last summer, so we had to empty it out first. Now the junk is scattered all over the house, but most of it is still upstairs. We've patched and started painting, and expect to start moving back into that room in the next few days.

We decided to make the large bedroom into a sewing room for Consuelo. She had considered making the attic more accessible and sewing up there. But I think that would have been a poor choice, since there's no ventilation and it gets pretty hot or cold, depending on the weather. We'll sleep in the now-being-finished 3rd bedroom, which should be fine, as we don't spend a lot of time upstairs otherwise.

We also found a new refrigerator at Lowes and had it delivered. Since it's a bit larger than the old one, it lives in the expanded kitchen area for now. We'll have ice on demand here, something that we've missed. And we'll save some money on electricity, too.

In another money-saving move, we signed up for cable TV and Internet. We get HD now, more channels and really high speed Internet. Most of the savings comes from dropping Starband satellite Internet service. They were really nasty when we called to cancel our service, wanting to charge us a cancellation fee. We had not signed a contract beyond our original 2 year commitment, and we stood our ground, and they relented.

Our Maine vehicles and boat have been registered. We tried to take our Ford Explorer on a 100 mile trip last week, but it had been stored in the barn in our absence, and we lost the power steering about 1/2 way there. We took it into a repair shop and hope to have it back today. No money saving there, I'm afraid.

Major summer projects include building a deck off the back of the house. The small deck that's there is pretty rotten. Consuelo fell of the back of it while hanging laundry and got a pretty bad bruise. We have the plan ready to go to the town office today for a building permit.

Chestnut blossoms

Similarly, the barn is pretty rotten, too. The south side has developed a bulge where the wooden foundation has completely failed. I've had some discussions with folks who know better than I that we might jack it up and keep it in place for a while, but a good heavy snowstorm might bring it tumbling down. More thought needed there. We do use the square footage for projects and storage, and losing it would be problematic.

We're enjoying our house here. Summer will bring boating days, events and visitors from near and far. This will be fun!

Go East, Old Man!

Spring Robin in Elk Horn

Our home has been rolling down the road toward Maine. After leaving Lincoln, NE, we headed north to Pender, NE, to the Blue Ox factory where we had our tow bar, the part that connects our car to our motor home, checked and repaired. It was still in pretty good shape after 5 years of traveling.

We developed a problem with our slide awning, designed to cover the main slide to keep it clean. It failed to unroll when the slide extended, requiring a ladder and some muscle to open it and extend it before the slide went out. The awning is made by Carefree, and a call to one vendor in Lincoln resulted in a report of "No we don't want to deal with Carefree". Camping World in Council Bluffs said they might be able to fix it, so we went there after Pender. But Camping World really didn't want to help either, saying that they might replace it, but it would likely take a couple weeks. We decided that getting it fixed in Maine would be our best course of action.

Danish Windmill in Elk Horn

From Council Bluffs, we roamed along I80 to Elk Horn, IA, listed as an "overnight stop" on one of our RV lists. We found a wonderful Danish Windmill and Danish Immigrant Museum there, and a tiny campground which offered us electric. In the morning, we toured the sights, anso found a nice quilting store on Main Street.

We could have made one more stop on our way to Rochester, but made the trip in one day. We arrived at the Silver Lake Campground around 5:30 PM, got ourselves parked and set up, and began contacting our friends there. We had planned most of our appointments for the following week, so we called Mayo and asked that they reschedule. We managed to moev up everything, including our dentist appointments.

I made plans with Curt Kraft to play golf on the next day. Now that Curt is retired, that was no problem for him. It was the first of 6 golf outings in 1-1/2 weeks, interrupted only by Clinic visits and weather one day. That was a load of fun.

The time in Rochester was wrapped up by a get together with my former work mates at Jon Camp's new house in Stewartville. It was good to see everybody and chat for a while. I showed a boatload of pictures and ate altogether too much. Thanks, Jon.

Immigrant Museum in Elk Horn

On Saturday, May 1, we moved the house to Lake City, MN. They were having their annual 100 mile garage sale along the Mississippi River, and we toured a few garages. We bought little... a few hostas to plant in our yet to be built Maine landscaping. Saturday night, we had dinner with John and Deb Wilkinson at the relaxing river condo. Good food and good company. We'll see them again in late summer when they come to Maine.

Sunday began our trek east. We stopped at a Flying J in Beloit, IL for an overnight. We ate at a greasy spoon in a truck stop, and the next day, I developed serious diarrhea and a low fever. We kept moving though, and arrived later in the day at the Elkhart Red Cross, our home chapter for our volunteer activities. We got our paperwork up to date, and they found a couple tasks for us to do while we were there. We also did some shopping at the RV places. I managed to find a pair of awning arms which may effect a repair for the awning.

I was thoroughly embarrassed that night when I set off the alarm in the Red Cross building. I had unlocked a door while going back and forth to repair an Ez Up shelter for them, looking up info on the Ez Up web pages. At 9:30 PM I realized that I had not re-locked the door, and apparently nobody from the Chapter had caught that fact. So I opened it and locked it, setting off the alarm. I went back into the motor home and said to Consuelo, "the cops will be here soon." And they were. I reported my actions, he said fine, then somebody from the Red Cross came out and turned off the alarm. Embarrassing, but had to be done. Turns out that the Exec Director was the one that was supposed to check the locks, so she was embarrassed, too.

On leaving Elkhart, our main slide failed to retract. After trying several things, I relented and gained access to the manual gear to roll the slide in. Fortunately, a little elbow grease was enough to get the slide moving up a ramp it needs to climb, after wich it retraced the rest of the way on its own. One more thing to fix in Maine.

We stopped for overnights in Hubbard, Ohio and near Scranton, PA, before finally arriving at Croton Point Park in Croton, NY.