Our first week
Interesting first week we’ve had. Cold temperatures, five inches of snow overnight Thursday, Deb worked Monday/ Thursday/ Friday, and some such.
Tuesday we drove to Bangor to buy metal shelves for the kitchen. There isn’t much counter space, no cabinets and so on. The Whitetail Inn caters to sports-oriented clients, here for the lakes, fishing, snowmobiling, hiking and hunting. Correspondingly, it is furnished roughly and we are altering our apartment to suit a longer stay and our desire for comfort. The apartment is in an old house, top floor. Nothing is level. The floors slope to the center and all the doors are wonky. Reminds us of the three-decker Victorian where we lived in Boston.
We drove to Bangor on ME-2, winding through small towns and next to the Penobscot River. Very pretty drive, very few vehicles on the road.
After finding the shelves at Home Depot (see the photos of the apartment), we drove to the Mason Brewing Company for very good calamari tacos, a burger and Banh Mi sub with pork belly. When I get a Banh Mi in Pittsboro, the port is pulled and barbecued (of course!). The brew was good, and the pub very nice. Deb had cider and I had Ghost Reaper IPA (sorta spicy). The pub is on the Penobscot River, which is iced over. Someone had a brilliant idea to make bathroom urinals out of beer kegs!
We found a yarn shop in downtown Bangor, and Deb bought yarn for a cowl. We looked for small appliances at Target and bought an electric kettle for tea. Back home via I-95 with leftovers for dinner.
On Tuesday, we drove back to Bangor to buy a better desk chair for me. The cheapo I first bought gave me back pain. Found a decent one on sale at Staples. Back home again.
Thursday, there was five inches of snow on both vehicles (Debbi has a rental and I have our truck). I found that the locks on my truck cap were frozen, so I had no access to the snow tools in the bed. After Deb went to work, I found some lock de-icer and got the cap open. The foam snow pusher made short work of the accumulated snow.
This weekend, we’ve done some planning for the trip west we’ll make in June. We’ll probably go to a yarn shop in Millinocket this coming week, and maybe down to Freeport to buy flannel-lined jeans at LL Bean. What we’re experiencing reminds me very much of winter in Boston and the four months I worked in Ottawa. We’re getting used to the outdoor temperatures, but nothing can make us like nighttime lows in minus degrees. Eleven weeks to go! We can do that standing on our heads (inside).
A slow, sunny, snowy Sunday
We took it easy today. Bought some more stuff at Walmart for the apartment, bought some groceries at Hannaford. Took a country drive east to Lee, a small town where there is a Health Access Network clinic. That’s the medical group where Debbi is working, but it looks as if she’ll only be at the Lincoln location. Lots of snow, lots of trees, lots of ponds (we’d call many of them lakes) and steep roof lines to shed snow. High temp was 37 degF.
Some things we’ve noted already:
- The Aubuchon Hardware store has more snow blowers in one place that we’ve ever seen before!
- All the grocery stores sell hard liquor (spirits)!
- The cars and pickup trucks are mostly filthy with snow schmutz. I think there are dirt roads, because the roadways we’ve seen were clear.
- Many schools are termed Academies.
Tomorrow while Debbi works (she’s on 12 hour shifts Monday/ Thursday/ Friday), I’ll rent a post office box to receive the many Amazon shipments we are sure to have sent! Might explore the deli in town, visit the historical society and do minor things. Expecting precipitation tonight.
We’re in Lincoln ME
So I got to Lincoln, Maine, today. Clear roads, no precip today at all. Rained all day yesterday as I traversed from Frederick MD to Rocky Hill CT. Snow started appearing on the ground as I passed through Kennebunk Maine. Lincoln is a “small town;” Debbi has already met clinic people in the grocery store. We’re in an expansion of the Whitetail Inn; a separate house/ top floor/ more room than we had in Boston. Great grocery store (Hannafords), a small Wal-Mart, and we’ll explore to see what else is here. We rearranged furniture in the apartment; bought some desk chairs; cooked some dinner. Here are a couple of pictures.
On the road to Maine
Well, we’re on the road again. Debbi accepted a three-month assignment in Lincoln, Maine, and flew there today. I drove to Frederick, Maryland, today and visited with a high school friend for a while. I’ll see another friend tomorrow, then head farther north, taking several days to get there. We’ll have a room with kitchen at the Whitetail Inn. Since motorhomes don’t do well in the cold, we loaded our pickup truck with stuff, and I’m driving that. The GPS unit shows our track; view that at https://share.garmin.com/cfogoose.
Temps are falling
No pictures in this post. We’ve been looking at temperatures along our Lazy-S trip home, and we think it’s going to get cold soon. No RV is really equipped to handle freezing temperatures, and this one is not going to be good in snow. So, we decided tonight to go straight across the country to the DC area. We’ll take I-80, then I-70, then I-64, through Charleston and western Maryland down to the DC area. We’ll only save a few days, but frankly we want to go home. A few days in DC to visit friends and ANC, then home to Creekside Farm. Sorry to miss relatives in Michigan, but we expect to be in The Dalles in February, and we’ll take the northern route home after that.
In Cheyenne for a few days
Today, we drove from Pueblo CO to Cheyenne WY, checking in at the Warren AFB Family Camp. We’ll stay here a few days. We’ll visit our “bonus” daughter, Heather Smith, and her family. Haven’t seen her in the flesh since 1999, though of course we’ve kept in touch.
The trip here from Pueblo was mostly unremarkable, performed on I-25 in a straight shot north. The leg between Colorado Springs (passing the US Air Force Academy) and Loveland was extremely busy with traffic and construction. CDOT is putting in express lanes most of the way, and we joined lots of folks heading into Denver for a Broncos game. Please forgive the photo artifacts; bugs keep suiciding on our windshield!
Family camp is pretty nice, as has been all of the FamCamps. USAF takes care of people! Altitude sickness symptoms are all gone.
Down the mountain, thankfully
The night of 9/23-24, Jim struggled to breathe well in the thin air. Finally, at 4am, Jim woke Deb so he could get off the mountain. We crawled down the mountain in the dark past Eagle Nest to Cimarron, where we refueled in the dark. The road straightened out and we stopped for breakfast in Raton NM. Miraculously, symptoms disappeared when we got to 7000 ft elevation. It probably was better that we couldn’t see past the edge of guard rails when descending at very slow speeds.
We stopped for rest just over the border in Colorado and napped for an hour. Because of our very early start, we were ahead of the check-in time for the next campground, so we killed time in Pueblo. We bought books and mags and Barnes & Noble and longer screws to re-secure the microwave in its cabinet (it vibrated loose on rough road). We paid for early access to our campsite, and rested more. Scampi for dinner, then early to bed.
Albuquerque to Angel Fire: altitude sickness
On Friday, 9/23, we left Kirtland AFB to head north. After passing near Sante Fe, we visited San Ildefonso Pueblo (Tewa language Native American tribe). Jim had been there in 1976 when visiting friends from Texas. He bought a JD Roybal corn dancer painting that he treasures. The pueblo and others are nearly closed due to COVID, as Native Americans are hit very hard by the virus. We wore masks and had our vaccination papers checked. We opted not to pay a fee to take pictures, but you can see those from others by clicking here. We walked around a bit and visited the museum, but the most important thing we did was buy a piece of pottery. It’s a lovely clay bowl, made in the traditional coil process (no potters wheel), glazed with blue-green copper oxide. The Pueblo sits very close to the Rio Grande river.
Leaving San Ildefonso, we drove to the southern outskirts of Taos for lunch. Along the way, we drove through the Rio Grande gorge and learned the river is the 3rd longest in the USA.
After that, we followed an incredibly twisty US-64 up thousands of feet to Angel Fire NM. There, in a wide valley at 8400 feet elevation, we felt the first twinges of altitude sickness that we haven’t felt since visiting Cuzco and Macchu Picchu in 1984.
Last day in Albuquerque
We were lucky that the AC unit for the motorhome arrived yesterday, and the wonderful folks from Tally Ho RV repair installed it. Jim helped step-and-fetch and enjoyed learning how the replacement was done.
We’re staying an additional day at Kirtland AFB to get some stuff done on the computer, including submitting the payment claim for the AC unit to our warranty service. We’ll do laundry again, since the machines are nearby, and we made reservations through next Wednesday.
Tomorrow, we head north. We’ll stop at San Ildefonso pueblo, where Jim bought a squash dancer painting in 1978, then over a couple of days to Cheyenne, where our “bonus” daughter Heather lives with her family.
Driving to Albuquerque
Today, Monday, 9/19, we left Homolovi SP and headed east, with the ultimate destination being the family camp at Kirtland AFB. Along the way, we detoured to the Petrified Forest NP and drove through a bit of the Painted Desert. The road through this joint park is like a washboard, so the Goose was bucking up and down all 27 miles. I think the Goose needs stronger front shocks.
We were surprised by all the color in the petrified wood. The trees, which fell when dinosaurs roamed, were covered with silt, then volcanic ash. They absorbed a lot of minerals, which explains the colors.
The Painted Desert is mostly red, of many hues, with white/ blue/ gray/ green thrown in. We were in a hurry, and we’ve seen lots of rocks by now, so we simply drove through.
We ate lunch at El Charritos in Gallup NM: very tasty. We continued on I-40 to Albuquerque, and passed through El Malpais, a lava field through which I-40 passes.
We had to detour nearly the entire circumference of Kirtland AFB to find the open security gate. The FamCamp is first-come, first-served, so we are glad there was an open pull-through spot. Otherwise, we would have dry-camped in overflow and hoped for a site tomorrow.
We’ll get the Goose’s AC diagnosed tomorrow, and hope it’s something simple like a starting capacitor for the compressor motor. We’ll probably stay at Kirtland for a few days to rest from the long drives and worry.