QC95-01 A visit in Maine

October 8, 2009 (Thur) Home to Roxbury, CT (136/136 miles)  - We both had Dr appointments this morning - we are happy to report that we are good for another 3 months at least - so an early start was out of the question. But that was OK because we only had a short way to go on this first leg. We had left most of our packing for today so we were busy before and after and finally got off at about 2:00pm. (66° sunny with some clouds) Gas was our first order of business. The local Raceway has always had the best prices in the area but they have gone to charging a different prices for cash and credit. That makes for a good deal when paying cash but not when using a credit card so we waved as we went by. $2.15 a gallon at the Race Star at the Rt 36 parkway exit was a 34¢/gal savings - relatively big bucks when filling a motor home gas tank.

Around the greater New York City area, and in some other parts of the motoring country, a motor home is considered to be a truck - at least when it comes to paying tolls. As we've mentioned before, The Garden State Parkway tolls are now double that of passenger cars as are the tolls on most other roads and bridges. We think this is a little unfair just because Q has dual wheels in back. He is, after all, just a glorified passenger car (sorry Q). You can imagine our shock when the toll collector at the Tappan Zee Bridge crossing the Hudson River asked for triple the car toll of $5.00. We can't possibly be causing that much more wear and tear! We'll go a different way next time.

Other than that the trip was unremarkable. Getting turned around in Jerry and Margot's long driveway was a little tight but we were able to find a rare level spot and joined them for a delicious spare ribs dinner. The festivities were interrupted briefly for Jerry to take Margot to the hospital emergency room, she injured her leg preparing dinner, a known high risk activity.

Q054523 Jerry and Margot's driveway.
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October 9, 2009 (Fri) Roxbury, CT to Bernard, ME (276/417 miles) - We'd hoped to be off very early. We knew we had a tough 300 miles to go and we didn't want to get to Dick and Ruth's place too late. It didn't work out that way. Our alarm didn't go off so we were over an hour late getting started (7:17am 49° cloudy). Wanting to avoid more toll ticket shock we had decided to take a slightly longer (we thought) route to avoid the Massachusetts Turnpike and the tolls around Boston, MA. On the way, we asked Hildene to do some calculations for us. She determined that going the "long" way would add about 3 hours to our trip. Not good! So back to Plan A.

Yesterday the trees gave only a hint of the season. Yellows and browns here and there gave promise of things to come. Today, as we drove north, there was more color - a long way from true fall foliage but enough to make us think that in a couple of days and a little further north the landscape would be ablaze. It also made us think that others, many others, would soon be out meandering along these roads enjoying the colors and slowing traffic to a crawl. But we'd forgotten that this was a 3 day weekend (Columbus Day on Monday) and might very well be the last relatively mild weekend of the year. People with nowhere in particular to go were already clogging the roads. US-1 along the coast of Maine is notoriously bad in the Summer was only marginally better today. We'd have made better time on foot in the small "touristy" towns and we'd inevitably get behind a elderly driver or slow truck on the open but winding roads.

The traffic on SR-3 between Ellsworth, ME and Mount Desert Island is normally heavy and often aggravating but today was the worst we've ever encountered. It rivaled a Friday afternoon southbound on the New Jersey's Garden State Parkway in the summer. The whole distance, about 10 miles, was a parking lot! It added another 45 minutes to an already over long trip. There was construction at the intersection of SR-2 where it turns East for Bar Harbor and SR-102 but it wasn't so extensive as to cause the backup. We concluded that it was really just plain old heavy 3 day weekend traffic. We were glad to let the Bar Harbor bound weekenders battle it out while we headed South on SR-102. Bernard is almost as far south as one can go by car in Mount Desert Island. Dick and Ruth's home sits just off Bass Harbor and overlooks the water. Beautiful spot.

The others arrived later - Roger and Marty, 30 minutes and Jerry and Margot 45. It was great for all of us to be together again - almost all of us, we missed Ruth.

October 10, 2009 (Sat) Bernard, ME (2) - Because of her spinal stenosis and other problems, Ruth now needs more care than Dick can give her so she has moved into a nursing/assisted living facility in Bar Harbor. That was our destination this morning. Ruth joined us in the "Music Room" with a panoramic view of Frenchman Bay where we all sat in a circle and reminisced, with plenty of laughter, about "old times". Ruth seemed to enjoy it as much as we did. Soon the dining room staff threw us out so they could set up for lunch. It was hard leaving her, as we had to do, knowing how much she had enjoyed our being there and how much she would like to be with us the rest of the weekend.

Lunch, naps (we're all getting older you know) and just hanging out filled our afternoon.

As they left last night to go back to their Bed & Breakfast in Southwest Harbor Roger and Marty clipped Q's step with their bumper disabling its ability to retract. Mark worked on it for a while last night but the dark and a light drizzle limited the effort. After we got back from Bar Harbor he worked on it again and was able to force it up into the travel position but it needs serious attention when we get home.

Q054799 Dick & Ruth's driveway