8/4/15 Maine Coast

The Maine Coast

We left Cape Cod and headed north to the coast of Maine.  We avoided taking the RV through Boston for the same reason we avoided going through New York City, with our towed car and bike racks, we are over 55 feet long.  Additionally, just like going under bridges in a boat, we are always looking for the height limitations of bridges.  Our sailboat needed 65 feet or higher for bridges, but the RV needs 13.5 feet; some older bridges do not meet that height requirement.   

Once we were north of New Hampshire, we drove along the coast to experience what we missed when we cancelled our cruising trip to Nova Scotia in 2010 (reason for cancellation? – the boat finally sold J ).  We camped at four locations in Maine:  just south of Kennebunkport, Boothbay Harbor, Southwest Harbor (Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park), and the easternmost part of the US - Lubec, Maine.   All of the locations were beautiful….the rugged granite rocks tumbling down to the ocean in deeply cut inlets is awesome.  And the Maine people are really nice.  Most of the inlets and bays were formed during the last ice age, when glaciers scoured the coast, and then ice melting continued the task.  Many islands are the terminal moraines from these glaciers.  Bob, a retired geologist, loved it all.   

Maine Lighthouse in Fog

Weather became an issue but it did not slow us down.  For almost 2 weeks we had fog and/or rain, with an occasional lifting of the fog for a few hours in the early afternoon.  The weather is similar to the June gloom in California….the warm air collides with the very cold ocean water and forms FOG.  The plethora of lighthouses along the coast (many of which we visited) is a testament to the foggy nature of the summer Maine coast.   It was cool to cooler, - we even bought a woolen blanket in Ellsworth (LL Bean’s outlet store for you shoppers out there).  Light jackets were usually required, even during the day.  We met a lot of people who summer in Maine to get away from the hot, humid weather of the south; but this had been a cold winter (lots of now), spring and now a cool summer, even for Maine.   

Summer mansions continued to be a theme along the way.  We had seen many “cottages” in Cape Cod, most well over $1 million, which were built in the early 1900s for rich people fleeing the heat of the cities.  In Maine, these “cottages” are also found in many places:  Kennebunkport along Ocean Drive (we stopped by the George H Bush compound, but he was not home to invite us in J), and Northeast Harbor (on Mt Desert Island). One “compound”  had 5-6 mansions all belonging to the “Campbell Soup” Trust Fund kids.   Sailing and yachting are still big in both of these areas.  We even saw David Rockefeller (John D’s grandson?)  going out on his powerboat – twice.   

ME Coast, Mt Cadillac, Acadia National Park

One of our goals is to visit every National Park in the US and Canada that we had not previously visited.  Although Linda had been there before, Bob had not.  Acadia is certainly one of the gems of the US National Park System.  It takes up most of Mount Desert Island and many of the small islands around the area; it is the oldest national park east of the Mississippi River.  It became a National Park in 1919.  John D. Rockefeller financed, designed and directed the construction of a network of carriage trails throughout the park.  This included 50 miles of gravel carriage roads (with bridges too low for our RV), two stone gatehouses, all of which are in use today.  These are now fabulous hiking and biking trails, and include the Loop Road.  The views from the top of  granitic Mount Cadillac  are fab­­­­­­ulous…you can see way up and down the Maine coast on a clear day (we did get one).  There is a one way, loop road all around the park along the coast.  We stopped at the famous blowhole “Thunder Hole”, but there was not much thunder when we were there…you need an incoming tide. 

Own caught Lobster Dinner at RV

Lobsters are a mainstay of everyday life….and cooked every which way imaginable.  We had our share of lobster rolls for lunch, and even cooked lobsters at our RV for dinner one night.  We had spent a few hours one day on a lobster boat touring Southwest and Northeast Harbors.  We caught several large, hard lobsters and took three to cook at home.  Linda had to figure out how to cook 3 lobsters in her small, stackable RV cookware – she managed to squeeze them into the pot somehow.  They tasted great anyway.  It turns out that lobsters, like crabs, shed their shells, and many of the lobsters we caught still had soft shells.  We had only previously seen and eaten hard shell lobsters ….guess the soft ones, which have lots of water in them, go into soups, stews, lobster rolls, etc.   The soft ones are much less expensive than the hard ones.  Who knew?  

In hindsight, sailing a slow turning sailboat in the fog and through the thousands of closely spaced buoys and lines for lobster pots would have been a daunting task….perhaps it is better we are doing this on land rather than by sea.   The boats we have been on are constantly veering to avoid the lines and pots!   

Lobsters are not the only delicious seafood.  We had Glidden Point Oysters in Boothbay Harbor.   They are grown locally at 40 feet in very cold water, and harvested by scuba divers.  Expensive ($1.50++ each), but because the water is so cold, the oysters are “dense”; the meat fills the entire shell…delicious.  Try them if you have the opportunity.  We learned there are now over 300 “appellations” of oysters in the world.  Oysters from Apalachicola FL had previously been our favorite.  

Driving along Rt 1 has been interesting; it has not been well maintained and requires slow driving.  We passed through every small town, most packed with tourists out for a walk because the weather was not conducive to the usual beach activities.  Based on the number of tourists, you have to believe the economy is booming; however, when you talk with both the tourists and Maine residents, that does not seem to be the case.  It has been a very hot summer down south, so perhaps people are just fleeing the heat.   Our final Maine destination, Lubec, is a very small town, way “downeast”.  In fact, it is the town furthest east in the US (both on the mainland and for the entire 50 states).  Lubec is not seeing their normal influx of tourists, so it depends on where you are.  

 

Typical ME Coastal Town Waterfron

 

Communications has been surprisingly difficult.   We couldn’t believe it, but there has been very limited cell phone service for most of the last two weeks…only in the larger towns do you get good service.  We had no service in either Southwest Harbor or Lubec, Maine….and that is before we head into Canada, where our cell phone numbers will be “turned off” for a few weeks.   Thank goodness for email and the internet.

 

We’ll keep you updated on our land “voyages” as we move into Canada and then beyond.

Best regards,  

Linda and Bob Masterson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7/29/15 How it all started; FIrst stop Cape Cod

RV Ramblin’….Masterson’s Land Cruising “Voyages”

As we have been traveling the world since our retirements (Bob in 2002 and Linda in 2005) we have gotten into the habit of sending our friends and family travel updates, first on our 47 foot Beneteau sailboat for 5 years in the Caribbean, and then on various land and sailing trips.  We now have quite a few people who have requested these updates and have suggested we do a blog. 

Background:

After we finished sailing in 2010, we bought and completely remodeled a beautiful home on the Intracoastal Waterway in St. Augustine FL.  In 2014, we decided to sell it and rent for a year to explore other locations and lifestyles.  After Linda finished teaching “entrepreneurship” at Flagler College in December 2014 (she was at the C-level in 4 startups and Chairman and CEO of the last company), we spent almost 3 months traveling to and examining the possibility of becoming expats in Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador.  When we returned to the US in April 2015, we decided to become part-time expats in Panama and spend 2-3 months each winter as Panama “residents” (resident visa, not citizens).  Bob could not convince Linda to go sailboat cruising again so we decided to go “land” cruising instead.  We purchased a class A motorhome and plan to spend 9 months of the year traveling the US and 2-3 months in Panama (not in the motorhome).  Sailboat cruising was something that Bob had always wanted to do, but RVing had always been on Linda’s list, sooooo, here we go on our 3 year plan. 

Within 3 months of returning from our trip, we found an RV/motorhome that met most of our requirements (Class A 2010 36’ Tiffin Allegro Open Road diesel pusher).  It has more room in it than our 47 foot sailboat (no sails, fenders, ropes and lines, lifeboat, dingy, watermaker, wind and water equipment, charts, multiple anchors, etc) and even room for a small “wine cellar”.  Interestingly, many of the self support systems we used on the cruising sailboat are also in the RV.  These included house battery systems, inverters and control systems, generator, propane systems for refrigeration and heat, and black and grey wastewater management.  We do have a few new items to worry about such as tire wear and pressure, finding a flat spot to set up the coach, and advance campground reservations at popular locations – still easier than anchoring. 

 

Our new Home - 36' foot 2010 Tiffin Allegro Open Road RED

In that same 2.5-3 month period, we also: customized the motorhome to meet our anticipated needs; sold our powerboat; sold our land in Mexico;  trading in our all-wheel drive (not towable) Hundai for a 2015 Jeep Cherokee (towable); packing up and storing our household goods; and moving out of our rental house and into our new motorhome.  Needless to say, we were busy and most of our friends and family did not hear from us for the first 6 months of this year J.

Starting the Land Cruising “Voyage”

On July 2, we pulled out of our St. Augustine campground and headed north.  Because we had gotten such a late start on our trip, we headed directly north as quickly as possible.  Our goal this year is to go north to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, and then along the St. Lawrence Seaway to Thousand Islands and Niagara Falls, and then through the upper Michigan Peninsula and Wisconsin along the great lakes, and finally to the thousand lakes area of Minnesota.  By then it will be mid-Sept and getting cold.  We will start to head south through the central states down to the Gulf of Mexico.  From there we will visit family and friends for the holidays, including spending December in St Augustine.  After our winter trip to Panama, 2016 will be out first trip our west. 

Our first stops north were to visit friends.  We spent a whole week in Jim Thorpe, Penn (the Pocono`s) with our friends Ruth and John Sweigart.  We left the RV at John and Ruth’s and made a car trip from Penn to Port Jefferson, Long Island, NY (no one in their right mind would take an RV through New York City) to spend a few days with Jackie and Bruce Gernaey. We then spent a couple of days in Harrisville Rhode Island with our friends Jean and Denny Creapeau.  We had a great time visiting with long-time friends that we hadn’t seen in a long time.  It is remarkable how you don’t see someone for years, and it is like you saw them yesterday….these are truly good friends.

Our first “camping” stop was on Cape Cod.  Bob had worked on the cape when he worked for NOAA in the late 70s and Linda had been there in the winter when she went to college in the late 70s.  It had certainly changed some since the last time either one of us had been there.  Since we booked our campground so late, we were only able to secure a reservation far west on the peninsula near the Cape Cod Canal, so visiting almost everything was a long drive.  Provincetown was 2 hours away, but it is also the heart of Cape Cod National Seashore.  The weather was typical for the summer….foggy in the morning and then clearing; in the early morning it was so foggy we couldn’t even see the sea from the visitor center.   

Provincetown is now a very LGBT-friendly town.    We had a great meals, walked around the town with plenty of boutiques (especially really nice male clothing stores), and great restaurants and art galleries.   One of our favorite artists, Ann Packard, has her main gallery there, but we got to her Gallery too late to see any of her new work. (Of course we have NO room for anything other than absolute essentials on the RV).  We really enjoyed our visit to the Old Harbor Life Saving Station which had been moved to Provincetown from Chatham Beach; the heroic efforts of the station crew to save people from shipwrecks is an awesome history. 

 

 

 

We took our bikes on the ferry and spent a day on Martha’s Vineyard and riding our bikes around the island (the fare for a car was $90 one way).  We enjoyed two of the towns on the island but we spent most of our day in Oak Bluffs.  It is architecturally interesting in that it has over 300 colorful  “Gingerbread” cottages, mostly in the area that was originally a Methodist summer tabernacle and camp, founded in 1850.  It reminded both Bob and Linda of Ocean Grove NJ, which Linda lived near and Bob knew from his visits to his first wife’s grandparent’s home.   There was an antique carousel where you could take a ring each time you went around.  It was so old, the horses didn’t even move up and down.  All the rings are steel except for one “brass” ring that gives the winner a free ride.  Linda remembers doing that as a kid in Asbury Park, just north of Ocean Grove.  

Our final day on Cape Cod was focused on the Chatham area.  The best part of the visit was the Marconi Maritime Museum.  It showed the rich history of wireless communications on Cape Cod, and Chatham’s top-secret role in defeating the Germans during World War II.   The museum saluted Chatham Radio's crucial top-secret role during World War II. The Navy’s "Station C” located marauding German U-Boats and intercepted their Enigma-encrypted radio messages, which was a key to winning The Battle of the Atlantic.  A display featured both a real German Enigma-cypher machine and an electronic Enigma simulator, which allowed you to encrypt and decipher your own messages. The Enigma was a central figure in last year’s Oscar-nominated The Imitation Game. Other interactive exhibits, including learning Morse code and tracing a ship-to-shore telegram through all of its steps, filled the museum, which traces 100 years of wireless communications.  Bob really enjoyed this museum; he is a novice in using his new Ham Radio equipment. 

We lost two days of our planned Cape Cod visit.  Regrettably, Linda’s sister, Lori Scharnagl, lost her husband in an unexpected, massive heart attack.  We ended up driving back to NJ to be there for Lori during the memorial and funeral services.  We both loved Bud dearly and will miss him terribly. 

From Cape Cod we are now headed north to the coast of Maine prior crossing the border into Canada. Canada is a real stickler about everything when crossing by plane; this should be an “interesting” experience.  We are offloading our usual supply of wine before we cross the border and will pick it up on the way back; we don’t want to have to pay duties on cases of wine.

We’ll keep you updated on our land “voyages” in Maine and Canada and beyond.

Linda and Bob Masterson