July 2015 – Bangor, Maine

Once again we left our campground on Monday with a wet RV and cloudy skies threatening more rain at any time.  Our destination was back towards Bangor, Maine, although this time we would be staying to the north of Bangor instead of along the coast.  Therefore, instead of traveling along US 1 along the coast, we took Maine Highway 9 which is a direct shot to Bangor.  For most of the trip the highway wound its way through the hills of central Maine where there were no towns to slow down for.  It is interesting to note that in most of the northeast there appears to be very little land outside town limits, except in this part of Maine they were known by the Township designation instead of incorporated towns.  For this reason, the trip was much faster than along the coast and we arrived in just over 2 hours.  The trip was uneventful except for a problem that developed with the truck.  Once we got the rpm over 2500 whether we were going up a hill or decelerating down a hill, which uses the motor to assist slowing down the truck when we are towing, we would hear loud noises, buzzes, and roars from the engine.  It did not appear to affect the power or handling of the truck, but it was disturbing.  It looks like we will once again be spending time and money on dealing with the truck.  Thankfully, there is a Ford dealership only a couple of miles from the campgrounds.  The Pumpkin Patch RV Resort is a very nice campground just a few miles from Bangor.  They do a great job to create a pleasant country atmosphere at the campgrounds with many nice touches to the landscaping and site maintenance. Most of the sites are very large pull-through sites so it was easy to park and set up the RV.  These are easily the longest sites I have seen.  We actually have enough room to park the truck either in front of or behind the RV.  While the atmosphere in the campground is friendly, it is obviously mostly transient guests.  There are very few seasonal campers (if any) and many of the sites open up each day.  While we are not unusual to be staying a week here, it is certainly not the norm.

Before we left Calais, we received a phone call from Kal’s dad that her mom was back in the hospital in serious condition.  Not knowing if we would have to make a quick trip back to Birmingham, it was good to have phone coverage again.  In addition, the campground is only a couple of miles from the International Airport in Bangor and Kal started looking into plane tickets.  So on Tuesday, we decided to just stay in the campground waiting on word about her mother and Kal did laundry while I got caught up on this blog.  We did take the truck into the Ford dealership where we found out they operate a Ford Truck Center, which means they work on diesel trucks, mostly 16 wheelers.  In any case, if anyone can figure out what is wrong, they should be able to.  We described the symptoms and made an appointment for Thursday to have it checked out.

On Wednesday, we again wanted to stay close to the phone as Kal’s mother was still critical, although her condition had stabilized somewhat.  Therefore, we went just up US 2 a couple of miles to the Ecotat Gardens and Arboretum. This is a small garden of less than 100 acres that includes both a series of small formal gardens and a natural area they term their Tree Walk.  There were a couple of volunteers working there that told us a bit of the history of the place.  The former owner had passed away a few years ago and since then the gardens and trails had fallen into disrepair.  Over the last two years they have been working to restore the gardens and remove the downed trees on the Tree Walk.  They have restored about half of the small garden areas which are very lovely.  The Tree Walk is an easy trail down to the spring and back through a spruce-hemlock forest.  A very pleasant walk.  There should be labels for all the many plants and trees, however, most of these are either missing or have been removed by the volunteers so we did not learn much about what we were looking at.  We spent a pleasant hour wandering in the garden and enjoying the scenery.  Although the volunteers working there were disappointed that we were not there to volunteer ourselves!

For dinner we found a local sports bar, Seasons, in Bangor to watch the Gold Cup soccer game between the US and Jamaica.  It was a very good game and we had our choice of TVs to watch, even though the US was upset by Jamaica.  They certainly had enough opportunities, especially in the second half, to at least tie the game.  We had a great waiter who provided all the service we could want.  Since we were going to be there for two hours, we decided to start with an appetizer, their chilli nacho.  It was a HUGE plate of nachos covered in cheese and chilli and after munching on it for an hour, we did not need any dinner.  Since we split the appetizer, we spent two hours enjoying the soccer and spent very little for dinner.

Thursday began with taking the truck back to the Whited Ford Truck Center to diagnose the problem.  While we waited on them to check it out we met a very nice gentleman from the area who had spent many years full timing in his RV all over the country.  He gave us some great insight into how to travel without spending any money on camping fees by staying in Walmart, Flying J, Cracker Barrel, and other parking lots.  I am still not comfortable with traveling this way and prefer to make reservations wherever we go.  They took only about an hour to check out the truck and found that the problem was a leak in the turbo system where exhaust is used to power up the turbo.  It certainly sounds like what we were experiencing so I am confident they have identified the problem.  There is no danger with driving the truck, except for occasional exhaust fumes in the cab, however, there would eventually be a power loss whenever we use the turbo at high RPM.  Since we cannot afford a power loss, especially since the next three weeks will be in the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont, and they are obviously experts on diesel engines, we quickly decided that we would have to get if fixed before moving on.  The repairs were going to cost over $1400 since they have to remove the transmission to get to it and would take a day to a day and a half to complete the repairs.  Unfortunately, they could not schedule us until Tuesday next week, which is after we were scheduled to be in Bethel, Maine which is over 2 hours to the west.  After thinking about it overnight we decided to extend our stay at Pumpkin Patch to get the truck fixed and delay our arrival in Bethel.

Since Kal’s mom’s condition continued to improve with her responding well to treatments, we decided to be more ambitious in the afternoon, although not much more ambitious.  We drove a few miles to the Bangor City Forest where they have some walking trails.  The East Trail also connects to the Orono Bog Boardwalk, which is actually in the city limits of Orono on land owned by the University of Maine. As the name implies, this boardwalk is over 300 feet of floating boardwalks through a peat bog.  The boardwalk begins in the surrounding mixed hardwood forest that is dominated by red maple, and quickly transitions to a mixed spruce-tamarack forest on the fringes of the bog.  Then the boardwalk takes you out over the peat bog itself with multi-colored spaghnum moss, sedges, and stunted spruce and tamarack trees.  These trees may only be two to three feet tall, but many are over 100 years old.  Not only is the peat bog under water most of the year, but the four feet of peat is highly acidic and very low fertility.  The University of Maine provides a number of very informative interpretive signs along the boardwalk that gives some very good information about each ecosystem and how the University monitors the water levels with floating tubes.  It was all very interesting and well worth the trip.  I would highly recommend a visit if you are ever in the area.

Friday was once again very cool and wet so we decided to visit the local casino in Bangor, the Hollywood Casino.  It is a full-fledged casino and hotel with an attached parking deck that was greatly appreciated in the weather.  The casino has nearly 1000 slot machines, many of which are penny slots that could be played for $0.30 or less so we had a lot to choose from.  They also have all the regular table games, roulette, crap tables, and even a poker room.  The afternoon did not start out very well with both of us quickly losing our first $20.  After taking a break to take a look at all the old movie posters and pictures in the hotel lobby, we started with our second $20.  For a change I was doing all right a half-hour later and was breaking even when Kal got VERY lucky on one machine and won $35.  We quickly cashed in and left only $25 down for the afternoon.  That is our idea of a successful and enjoyable afternoon in a casino.

Saturday began as an overcast and gloomy day, but it was suppose to break up by the afternoon, so we headed north into the Central Maine Highlands to Peaks-Kenney State Park.  This state park is along the shore of Sebec Lake, which is a glacial lake which means it is a linear lake with rounded hillsides and numerous boulders along the shore left from the glaciers.  We took a short 0.5 mile hike before lunch along a babbling brook that was very nice.  The weather was so cloudy that it was quite dark under the forest canopy and gave us a different view of the Maine forests.  We ate lunch in their large picnic area that includes a nice “sandy” beach, which was really more of a small rock beach than sand.  I was surprised to see a life guard at the beach as most state parks we have been to have had to cut this position.  In any case the weather was too cool and cloudy for most of the children to venture into the water, even though there were plenty of children at picnics and parties in the park. After lunch we went for a longer walk on their Birch Mountain Ridges Trail, which was supposed to be an “easy” trail.  Although I would not call it a strenuous trail, it was certainly not easy as it climbs 250 feet to the top of the ridge fairly quickly.  However, once we made the top (with only a few stops along the way to rest our knees) the walk along the ridge and down the other side back to the lake was very pleasant and easy.  I saw a lot more birch trees than I have seen previously and was surprised to see that most of the regeneration was birch as well.  While there were some paperbirch trees and some of them over 20″ in diameter, most of the trees were grey birch.  The ridge was dominated by spruce and hemlock trees that were getting to be over 16″ in diameter in places.  I know this forest was logged back in 1920-1940 so it is still a young forest.

We still had time in the afternoon to take a side trip to Abbot Village, Maine where Kal’s great-aunt “Deed” Clukey and her husband had lived.  We never had the chance to visit her in Maine while she was alive, so we decided that a short side trip (only about 15 miles) to visit her grave would be nice.  After getting directions to the cemetery from some very nice people selling hand made furniture (VERY nice furniture, if we were not living in an RV …) we were able to locate her gravesite.  We took some pictures and sent them to Kal’s dad, Dennis.   Along the highway we stopped at an historical covered bridge crossing the river on a sideroad.  It turns out it is called Low’s Bridge and was originally built in the 1830.  It was destroyed twice in floods over the years, only to be replace each time.  The current bridge is actually quite recent replicating the original bridge when the latest replacement was washed away in the 1970s.  Consequently, the covered bridge is in good shape and quite impressive.

Sunday was once again very cool and drizzly so we decided to stay in the campground getting caught up on this blog and watching the Harry Potter weekend on the ABC Family channel.  It is interesting how nice it is to once again have cable TV instead of the limited reception of Canadian TV we had last week.

Monday was much the same as Sunday with Kal’s mom improving in the hospital and being moved out of ICU.  Since everyone had agreed that we would not take a flight to Birmingham so long as she continued to improve, we stayed by the phone all day, working on updating my GoggleEarth pins of campgrounds, and reading.

Tuesday began with us taking the truck into Whited Ford Truck Center by 8:30 in the morning and picking up a loner car.  Once back at the campsite, Kal gathered up the dirty clothes and I got busy cleaning the inside of the RV.  By mid afternoon, we received a phone call from Phil that her dad had now checked himself into the hospital as well.  Once again we thought seriously about catching a plane to Birmingham, but his condition was not as serious and he now had his own room at the hospital down the hall from his wife!  It would seem that he had been having symptoms during the week, probably due to the stress of the situation.  Still not knowing if we would have to make a quick trip to Alabama, we went to bed thinking of both of them, as well as, Phil and Shannon who are doing a great job dealing with the situation and keeping us and Kal’s brother, Mark, informed.

By Wednesday morning we had not heard from Whited Ford about the truck, so at 10:00 we called them and found out the truck was finished and they were doing the paperwork.  We got busy getting the RV ready to go and went to pick up our truck.  Thankfully, they did not have to drop the transmission to get to the “pipes” they needed to replace on the turbo system, which saved us about $400 in labor.  It still cost just over $1000 to get it fixed.  I sure hope we do not have to continue spending over $1000 a month in keeping this truck on the road.  In any case we got hooked up and pulled out by 12:00 heading for Bethel, Maine.  We are both wanting to continue with our plans, however, we will now be over 2 hours from an airport if we need to get to Birmingham and the place we are going to at Bethel does not have anyway to store the RV if we need to leave it for any period of time.