Monday, August 29, 2011

We made it to Maine

It has been an exciting stay in Bangor Maine. Our main (no pun intended) objective was to eat lobster, lots of lobster.  We are staying at a very nice campground, Paul Bunyan. The folks here are very helpful so we took all their recommendations for where we could find good lobster.  Captain Nick’s was our first stop.

2011-08-22_19-01-15_51Our first night in Bangor Captain Nick’s had a special, $9.95 each for these dinners of 1 1/2 pound lobsters, baked potato, and cold slaw.
Day 1 we drove to Bucksport, Maine to see the impressive new bridge over the Penobscot River.  The old bridge became unsafe due to rusting cables so the new bridge was built in record time.
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The 2 bridges sit side by side.  The east tower  has an elevator that we went to the top, 460 feet in 17 seconds.
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The view from the top looking down on the 2 bridges was great.
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In looking down from the top of the bridge tower we could see Fort Knox. Not the one that holds lots of gold.  This Fort Knox was built in 1844 through 1864 but never completed. During the Civil War a few troupes were housed outside the Fort as it was not done.  After the Civil War it was abandoned.
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One of the most interesting parts of the Fort for Tom was the cut granite arches. Just look at the intricate workmanship.
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The next day we drove to Bar Harbor – that’s Baa Haa Baa.  We could not have a day without lobster so we had our first lobster rolls in Maine.  Delicious! That is a lot of lobster.
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Then we drove through Acadia National Park on our way to Bar Harbor.
We passed by a bay where the rangers were directing traffic. We stopped to see what was going on. A Minke whale had washed ashore on Sand Beach, a popular swimming area in the park.  The rangers had towed the whale to this cove and the students from the Whale Institute were cutting it up and taking it to the Institute to see if they could determine the cause of death of the whale.  The ranger said this was very unusual.
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Bar Harbor was so crowded.  We did get some real good ice cream to finish off our lobster rolls though.
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Day 3 was a rainy day. We started with another lobster roll at the Eagle’s Nest in Brewer. It was so small and crowded that we shared a table with a couple from Nova Scotia.  What a delightful time we had talking about the RV lifestyle with them.  We thought the last one had lots of lobster, but this on was huge. There was so much lobster it just spilled over everything.

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It was looking pretty wet outside so we decided on an indoor experience, the Cole Transportation Museum.  We were very surprised at what a fabulous museum this was.  It was advertised as the museum with the most snow plows on display, but it was so much more.  These pictures will give you a idea of the extent of the very well displayed articles.

Friday we did some geocaching and went down to the Folk Festival Grounds down by the Penobscot River.  We ate a delicious lunch of grilled crab sandwich that we ate so fast I didn’t even get a picture.  I did however get a good shot of our shared desert, blueberry upside down cake with cinnamon ice cream.  Our view on the patio was nice, too.
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Saturday, we expected Hurricane Irene to come right over the top of us, so we planned on staying inside all day.  We had originally thought about driving west to Burlington or New York, but it just did not feel right.  That was an excellent decision as Bangor was one of the few areas that did not get too much damage from Irene.  We started our day with our big slide in and we were cozy in the heavy rain and wind that came in waves, but did not last long.  I did cook breakfast for a change: seafood Tuscan sausage, cob smoked maple cured sausage, eggs, and bagette with Maine blueberry jam. 
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This is the view out the bedroom window looking at the lake behind us.  The water came up to within about 4 feet from us then started draining so we were not in any danger of flooding.
Pansy took it all in stride – what a traveler.
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Tomorrow we move south to visit Augusta, the capitol, and Delorme, my GPS factory, and maybe some more caching.

1 comment:

  1. So glad you dodged the bullet with Irene. That lobster looks so good! Wish I could have it for lunch - Yumm!

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