This was somewhat of a sad day.
We decided that we wouldn’t go any further north, so Canada was not to be. It was time to start heading toward home again. We’d make some detours, but Bar Harbor would be as far east as we’d get.
We got up early and decided to eat breakfast at a restaurant. We rode our bikes to the same place we had breakfast a couple of days ago, Mainely Meats, which was immediately adjacent to the campground. Then it was quick service and good food, but today the service was ungodly slow. It took us about 20 minutes to place our order, and 40 minutes to get our food. If we hadn’t have been that hungry, we would have probably walked out. But then the delay may have been that their parking lot was the starting point of an annual run through the area which included several runners dressed in very unique outfits, making for a very interesting sight. With all that time we could decide which way we wanted to get back to Oceanside. We still had several places we wanted to see: Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame, the house where I lived in Norwich, New York, Marianne’s good friend, Nancy, in Ohio, my sister in Wisconsin and my mother in South Dakota. We poured over our maps and outlined a tentative route.
Our first stop would be Cooperstown, but we knew we couldn’t make it in a day, especially if we decided to stay off of the Interstates and the toll roads. So we relegated ourselves to the back roads of Maine and New Hampshire.
Back at the trailer we got ourselves ready to travel after having stayed in one place the longest we did on this journey, six nights. If you included the time I spent last night getting ready, this took much longer than our usual amount of time. I pumped poop, dismantled our awning lights, retracted the awning, stowed the bikes, lowered our TV antenna, and cranked up the stabilizers. This entire sequence took about 90 minutes, most of consumed by flushing the black water tank again and again, making sure it was a clean as it could be, before we got underway again.
By 10:30am we were ready to retrace our route off of Mt. Desert Island, since there’s only one way in and one way out. This was one of the few times we would actually have to retrace our route.
I was also a little concerned whether or not Wal*Mart had done a good job with my oil change, air filter change, and tire rotation. It turned out that they had, since I had no problems whatsoever.
We only drove on a little piece of Interstate between Bangor and Augusta, before we were on our beloved back roads, taking in the scenic beauty of small town America, with its lakes, streams, and cute downtown shopping areas. Trees and forests abound in this part of the country.
I discovered that our route would take us past the home of the 14th President of the United States, Franklin Pierce. Since I knew very little of this man, this would be an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with him.
But it was getting too late to make it all the way to his home before the tours ended for the day (a great reason to have wireless Internet in my truck). So late that afternoon I found a sign that pointed us in the direction of a campground just off the highway we were traveling.
Keyser Pond Campground looked very primitive, but we didn’t mind. Like many of the older parks we’ve stayed in, a large percentage of the trailers were planted there permanently, complete with their attached porches, supplemental roofs, and carports. The color of these vacation homes was becoming as dark green as the woods they were in.
The site was a back-in site, which was as wide as it was long. Unfortunately road leading into our campsite was very narrow and we had to watch out for the trees that were dispersed throughout as I backed our trailer into the site. Interestingly, I had never seen a power plug-in box five feet off of the ground as high as this one was, for what reason, I don’t know. I had to use my 30-amp extension cord in order to access it, which was also on the wrong side of the trailer. Our neighbors were some of those empty permanent trailers that were illuminated at night by the glow of their solar powered garden lights. I would not see the actual Keyser Pond until I took the dogs on their constitutional the next morning. But here, on this deserted part of the campground, I let the dogs run free.
With the advent of nightfall, we retired to the Internet and then to bed.
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