Acadia National Park

After Casco, we headed up the coast a couple hours to Mount Desert Island, most of which is taken up by Acadia National Park.  We had a nice spot in Southeast Harbor for 4 days.  The weather is always changing, seems like a cool front comes through every other day.  However, when it's nice, the views are spectacular.  The park was full over the weekend, so we went up into the hills to a smaller, quieter park on the Penobscot River.  When we got there, the big black rubber gasket that seals off the living room slide out came undone, necessitating a repair.  So, we're back in the Bangor area awaiting an appointment in a couple days to get it replaced.  This is the first time we've had to back track, or wait more than a few hours on a repair.  Oh well, adventures in RV Land.  We're not in a huge hurry, and there's plenty to do here.

Thunder Hole, Acadia National Park.  This is one of those sea caves that goes BOOM when the waves come in

Bar Harbor, from the summit of Cadillac Mountain

Just a nice, rocky scenic overlook

Craig from Casco makes his own maple syrup.  It goes great on french toast!  I caught Missy licking the jar when I left it too close to the edge of the counter.

The campground had a path leading to nowhere out in the woods, so Missy got some time off the leash.  Here's her best Rin Tin Tin pose.

Beautiful day in Acadia

Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse.  There's a Coast Guard family living in the tender's house, feet from where we're standing.  Not bad duty...in the summer

Gaff rigged schooner making way

Mount Katadhin.  The highest point in Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.

The dam creating the Penobscot River Reservoir.  It was brimming over the top.  From what I can tell, all these dams are slated for removal to restore the nature flow of water to the sea.

Casco, Maine

After central Vermont, we headed east into Maine.  When we toured the northeast back in 2012, we didn't make it very far into Maine, only going to Old Orchard Beach.  We're spending a little more time this year.  First stop was to see Craig and Jodi in Casco, about 45 minutes north of Portland.  We met them in Alaska and spent a couple days touring around Anchorage with them last summer.

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They live out in the country and put us up in the yard (yahd) for the weekend.  Of course, since we were visiting it was cause for celebration so a few of their friends brought RVs and parked along with us.  We had a great karaoke party in the garage, then a guitar sing-a-long by the bonfire.  They're also big fans of rock climbing up and over the many, many forested hills around Casco, so we did a lot of off roading.  All in all, a great visit with good friends!

The view from old family property.  Craig and Jodi's house is mid-frame, a little to the right.  How'd we get up here?  Funny you should ask...

Close up of the Chute's house.  You can barely make out the roof of our RV.

The Jeep crowd.  Great friends, great fun.  As Jodi likes to say, "you can't plan a good time, sometimes fun just breaks out..."

Craig and Jodi were married on this spot over 10 years ago

The view of the temporary RV park from the front deck

Climbing over mud, rocks and logs.  Nobody even knew who's property we were on, there's so much of it nobody cares

Craig and Jodi hiding behind us...

It gets cold in Maine.  I had Craig pose in front of the firewood supply that'll help heat the house this winter.  We'll be in Florida guys, you're welcome to visit!

Vermont

Central Vermont is bee you tea full!  We only drove through it last time in 2012, but we spent 4 days this time.  The first couple days were in Randolph, where we hung out long enough for me to finish some final school work and tour the Ben & Jerry's ice cream plant in Waterbury.  We also stayed 2 days in Quechee State Park so we could visit our very good friends the Curleys.  Again, we'll be back.  Just hanging out in New England might be on the schedule one of these years.  So much to see and do!

Sometimes we get crammed in with neighbors in some really ugly campgrounds.  Not the case at Lake Champagne Resort in Randolph, VT.  The view out of the windshield was like something from the Sound of Music.

No trip to central Vermont would be complete with tasting some super premium Ben & Jerry's!

Mark Curley and I have been friends for 20 years now, going back to when he used to try to supervise me at Vandenberg AFB.

Newport, Rhode Island

After Lakeville, we dropped down an hour or so to the military famcamp in Newport.  They've got the Naval War College and a few other high tech things going on here.  The spot was great, right on the water and spacious, though water and electric only.  We only stayed 2 nights, but that gave us a day to check out the waterfront.  We'd been here in 2012 to tour the mansions, but didn't see the waterfront district.  This time we had dinner and took a sunset cruise of Narragansett Bay.  We need to come back again.

This is quite the sailing town.  The mooring field goes on forever.

A sister ship.  We were on a similar schooner called the Adirondack.

Intrepid sailors.

Sailing off into the sunset

Hammersmith Farm.  Jackie Kennedy's childhood home and where they had their wedding reception.

Even sailors get a hearty welcome

Money shot.  We do love sunsets over the water.  

Lakeville, Massachusetts

After a great time at the Horvath's, we moved next door to Massachusetts to visit our good friends from MacDill, George Phippard, and his daughter and son in law.  Tim and Kathy live on Long Pond in Lakeville, MA and it was so nice seeing them again.  We had spent time together on the beach at MacDill when they came to visit George.  While we were there, George took me over to see Plymouth Rock and have some fresh seafood on the water.  Tim designed a fantastic patio/deck/dock/outdoor kitchen with both wood and propane fire pits.  What a great way to spend an evening (of course I brought my guitar...)  We were only there a couple days, but it sure was enjoyable.

Premium spot at the KOA in Lakeville.  We've had pretty good luck with these, patio furniture, swing, and fire ring included!

Hanging out lakeside with George, Tim, and Kathy.  Missy was standing on the stone seawall, looking down at the water a foot below.  Of course, several curious mallards swam right up to here to say "hello."  Missy must have thought water was solid enough to walk on, because the next thing we knew she was swimming back to shore.  Luckily, there's a small boat ramp to Laurie's left and she just doggy paddled right up to it and walked out of the water.  We're still not sure what lesson she learned...

Tim took us out for a great sunset cruise on their pontoon boat.  Of course, Missy took the helm for a turn.

Good buddy George.  He's a retired US Navy Seabee and has been a full time RVer for 20 years.

Plymouth Rock?  Really?  It's about 6 feet across and only a couple feet above the tide line.  It's an urban legend anyway, not mentioned in any writings until almost 100 years after they landed.  Nice area though!

The mooring field at Plymouth Harbor.  We had dinner right across the street.

Ledyard, Connecticut

After our nice stay in the mountains of Pennsylvania, we headed back down to the coast to visit good friends Yancey and Kris in Ledyard (pronounced lejerd).  On the way there, we had a very brief, grotesque, and hilarious encounter with a buzzard.  It came swooping out of the woods from the left, right in front of the windshield.  It probably didn't see us, because it banked left back into the woods suddenly, but not before spitting out whatever roadkill it was eating.  Again, right in front of us.  At least the rotten meat didn't hit the windshield, only the front and down the side of the RV and our car we tow.  All's well that washes off with soap and water, right?  We stayed 4 days at the Horvath residence, nice weather for most of it.  While we were there, Yancey took me to the nearby Groton Submarine Base to tour the Nautilus, our first nuclear sub.  We played trivia at The Spot, and checked out Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos nearby.  They've got a big stone fire pit in the back yard too, which made for nice warm evenings under the stars.  Thanks to Yancey and Kris for a great visit to coastal Connecticut!

Nice, red splat of roadkill.  The red streaks going down the side were less obvious...

Kris and Yancey are friends we made in Florida RVing.  This is their rig in its frequent summer home out back.  We were parked beside the house.  Parking, power and water for two RVs, pretty slick!

The Rain Maker sculpture, Foxwoods Casino.

The Gang

The Nautilus, first nuclear powered vessel, first sub to cross the North Pole, submerged the whole way.

That's me in the red T shirt.  I'm standing outside the sub museum under a "rib" that forms the frame of a submarine.  The big one comes from one of our ballistic missile submarines.  Huge!

At the Mohegan Sun casino, they have free concerts pretty much every night.  This is the band "Autograph."  These guys were a minor success for a short time in the 80's, two of them on stage are original members

Central Pennsylvania

After DC, we headed north into Pennsylvania.  First stop, the Gettysburg battlefield.  I’d read the book The Killer Angels as part of a military professional reading program, but seeing the battlefield with your own eyes really brings the fight to life.  Laurie drove on the auto tour so I could gawk and wonder.  The different individual skirmishes happened at incredibly close distance, and the amount of dead in such a small area must have been horrific.  After touring the battlefield, we did a quick overnight stop in Landisville, PA to visit Dennis and Sue McCaughey.  Dennis plays and sings tropical rock professionally, and is a good friend from our many stops in Key West.  He’s based out of PA, but plays Key West frequently.  Luckily, he was playing his home town so we stopped in for the show.  We were also lucky to meet Sue’s father, a WWII vet.  At 92, he’s still really spry.  He landed at Utah beach as a replacement on D-Day + 30 and fought through Europe until the end of the war.  We took in the show and then moved on to a nice hillside campground in the woods northeast of Harrisburg.  I don’t think there’s square mile of PA that’s flat.  Whenever we come up here, I’m constantly amazed at the hilly terrain.  Beautiful.  While we were there, we toured the oldest brewery in the country, Yuengling, in old historic Pottsville.  We also went to Hershey’s Chocolate World.  I didn’t realize that Mr. Hershey pretty much built that whole town from scratch.  Quite the story.  We were like kids in a candy store, har har.  After a weekend in PA, it was time to move on down the road, north by east…

We'd never visited the battlefield before, pretty gripping.

One of many States that erected monuments to their fallen troops.

General Lee's memorial

When we're just parking overnight, any parking lot will do.  This was our spot for the night visiting Dennis and Sue.  Missy loved running around in that field.

The oldest brewery in the country, still in operation.

This was a lot of fun, really meant for kids but still interesting seeing a town that chocolate built.

Hershey chocolate tastes so good because the fresh milk they use comes from happy cows...

We had a lovely spot up in the hills, here's a foggy morning while walking Missy