Is That A Whale? (Or should mom step away from the Twizzlers?)

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Another unspeakably beautiful day dawns and we are up and at 'em.  We have a light breakfast and putter around camp a bit.  We can sit in front of the bay and watch for breaching whales and porpoises, but they are not inclined to come close enough for us to get a good look. No matter, today is our whale watching adventure.

We decide to have lunch at camp (don't get excited; it was only sandwiches).  Of course, between Reluctant Charlie and slow moving teens, we end up late and Rob runs ahead, with a full backpack, no less.  As it turns out, lots of people are late also, so no harm done.  We board the Ada C. Lore, a Chesapeake Bay Oyster Schooner built in 1923 and find a seat.  It's supposed to be a three hour tour (I'm sorry if that put the Gilligan's Island theme into your head) so we haven't brought snacks or drinks as we were told we could.  Looking around at the picnic baskets and coolers, I wonder if the others know something we don't.

A 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour...

5 hours later....

Yes.  Yes those other folks did know something we didn't.  Apparently, those whimsical captains sometimes extend trips on the fly if there is a lot wildlife showing itself.  I look around, envious of the folks around me toasting the sunset with plastic cups of wine and cans of beer.  Also, Charlie is not amused.  

It gets significantly colder as we clear the cliffs and head into open water.  For some reason, the air smells like licorice (No, it is not the Twizzlers.  Those are cherry).  On the bright side, we do see whales, porpoises, eagles and ospreys, as promised.

Thar she blows...actually more of a slow float.

We also see this cool lighthouse called the East Quoddy Lighthouse.  The most photographed lighthouse in the world, we are informed.  That doesn't seem like much of a claim to fame, but I guess with sonar and gps and all the modern technology available to ships these days, you have to take your fame where you can get it.

The last site we see is The Old Sow.  Not the restaurant, but the thing it's named for:  the largest whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere.  It doesn't look like a big drain, like I thought it would.  Instead, it's more like a series of swirls in an unruly circle.  On the way back, we slow down to have a look at an eagle in his nest.  There is a dude on the tour with one of those cameras that has a 3 foot lens on it.  He probably has a better picture of Mr. Eagle.  However, as he is looking through that fancy camera, his toddler is busy getting entangled in the ropes of the sail.  So there. 

When we finally dock, we are all chilled but pretty excited to have seen all the whales and we're also hungry from being out on the high seas all day.  Oh, okay, we're always hungry.  So it's back to the campground for one last lobster feast.  This time, there is no lobster envy for anyone.  Tomorrow:  Nova Scotia!

Charlie gives Eastport his seal of approval.

Under The Rainbow

August 9, 2014

Rob moving the RV so it's even...JK!  It already was even.

So, once the rain clears, we are treated to a rainbow.  

It was prettier in person.

All our neighbors come out to wonder at it and that's how we meet the dude next door who tells us he started a winery down by Cape May and then sold it. He does not offer us wine.  I leave to make dinner while Rob chats him up.  First things first, though.  I pour myself a nice martini in a Red Solo Cup with plenty of ice and go to work.  One of my favorite bbq recipes is to add honey to Heinz 57 sauce.  I toss chicken thighs with the sauce while Rob gets the coals going in the wood fire we already have.  Another toy we got was a portable grate which you can stick into the ground and then adjust to any height.  It also swings around to go off-fire so you don't kill yourself getting the food off.  Why bring our own?  If you are asking that question, you've never contemplated cooking your dinner on a rusty, food encrusted hunk of metal at a public campground.

Unfortunately, the weather has other ideas and from across the bay, another threatening set of clouds approaches.  These ones look like they really mean business.  I turn on the oven, just in case, but the clouds stay obediently over the water until our chicken is done.  I also throw a few (unshucked) ears of corn directly into the fire.  Meanwhile, I make yellow rice inside the RV like a civilized person.  We eat at our picnic table, with a view of the bay and a beautiful sunset.

Another example of my fabulous GoPro skills.

The kids retreat to watch movies on their laptops and Charlie dives into his book.  After clean up, it's time for a visit to the washroom, which was very clean.  It's nice to have the bathroom in the RV, but it's REALLY small.

This photo is actual size.

As you can imagine, exhaustion takes over and we close the curtains and fall into our pillows.

Can We Move Here?

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Remember the toys I bought for our trip?  The GoPro camera was one of them.  I practiced with it.  Read the manual.  Watched the tutorial...

Me trying to turn it on.

Is it on?

I don't think it's on.

Well, there you have it.  Payback for all the times I've made fun of my mother for not understanding technology.  I have about a hundred stills just like that one.  The thing about the GoPro, in my defense, is that you can't see what you're filming until you play it back on a computer or iPhone later.  Just saying.  

Anyway, as you can see from the pix, it is an absolutely gorgeous morning on the Bay of Fundy.  I make bacon and eggs and our carb-loathing daughter makes pancakes for her brothers.  She has one of her Magic Bullet concoctions involving fruit and protein powder that people who claim they like running seem to enjoy.

We bribe Charlie into action by telling him we are going into town for lunch.  We neglect the part about the almost two mile, hilly walk we are taking to get there.  By the halfway point, he is not amused.  He bucks up a little when we get into Eastport, ME.  It's a picturesque little town with a harbor and shops and restaurants.  Because it's low tide and the Bay of Fundy has 30 foot tides, the piers all look absurdly high off the water.  After a quick survey of the waterfront, we head up to lunch.  

These are the smiles of girls who just ordered a lobster salad and a fish taco.

Charlie goes bold with a lobster pizza and french fries.  Peter and Rob copy our orders.  Now it's time for me to have food envy.  The lobster portion on the salad is stingy.  Of course, now that I've been spoiled by 2 pounders, I guess anything is going to seem paltry.  

After lunch, we wander around town, poking in and out of shops filled with nautical paintings and weathervanes.  After briefly considering one for the top of the RV, we decide to head home and pick up some groceries for dinner on the way (yes, I know we just ate, but that's how we do).  Mary and I spy a cafe and our Stabucks deprivation kicks in.  We peel off from the boys but are disappointed to find its hours are 10-2 on Saturdays.  Really?  Don't people go out here?  How do they stay awake? The sign in the window adds insult to injury:  Winner! Best Coffee on the Bay, 2014.  

We meet back up with the boys and, on a whim, decide to sign up for a whale watching trip the next day.  Peter speeds back without us, his teenage patience for family time nearing its end.  It starts to rain, and he ends up stuck outside the locked RV till we get back, but still happier than he would have been with us.  

At the grocery store, a man with no teeth informs the veterans outside, who are collecting money for the VFW, that Mary and I are "eye candy."  They ignore him, but he finds us inside the store and continues his pitch.  I ignore him also.  The last thing we hear is him telling the checker that his wife gets mad when he tells her she's "eye candy."  I think he could probably use some new material.

Dinner is a whole other story which I will continue next time.  

Hello, Eastport!

Friday, August 8, 2014

We start off the morning with cereal all around so we can leave--or "bug out" as I had come to think of it--early.  The term is a military one for packing up quickly and leaving a location.  Oh, MASH!  The things I learned from you.  Between securing all our stuff (more about that later), sweeping out the RV, and emptying the dreaded black/gray water, these mornings had the feel of a military operation.  At 7:30, our neighbors sit in their outdoor 'cocktail lounge' smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.  Rob gives them our firewood because you're not supposed to bring out-of-state wood to campgrounds.  Something trivial about non-native bugs crossing state borders and decimating forests.  They are bewildered.  After all, it's Friday and the party's just starting.

Our route takes us through Southern New Hampshire which is very old-fashioned beachy.  We pass fish shacks and boat stores and tons of fast food places.  We finally get up the courage to stop for gas when we see a huge Getty station looming on our right (no awkward over-the-lines left--YAY!).  There's a BK sharing the parking lot and although no one in our family is a fan of it anymore, we decide to grab a quick lunch so we can get back on the road without stopping again.  If you have never ordered a salad at a rural fast food place, you should.  It's worth it just for the look of total incomprehension on the server's face.  You want a what?  Is that even on the menu?  Needless to say, Mary and I eat our grilled chicken 'Caesar Salad' with grim determination and Peter does not fare much better with his 'buffalo wings.'  We should have stuck with the burgers like Rob and Charlie.  After all, it isn't called Salad King.

After a long slog on Route 1, catching glimpses of water here and there, we arrive in Eastport around 6:30 PM.  Once again, Google Maps has lied to us.  The check in building is also the onsite restaurant called, The Old Sow.  In my opinion, this is a terrible name for a restaurant, but no one is asking my opinion.  They are all busy salivating over the menu which features freshly caught seafood like lobster and haddock.  Also, something called Lobster Strudel which sounds all kinds of awesome.  Under the description is this bit of hubris:  We are the only place that has this and it is well worth the wait.  What a statement!  I guess it's well worth the $18 price, as well.

Peter and Charlie being cooperative at set up.

We decide to set up quickly and then eat.  As we approach our site, a chorus of 'wows' issues from the back of the RV.  Spread before us is the magnificent  Bay of Fundy at low tide.  It should smell, well, low tide-y, but it smells incredible.  It's like nothing I had ever smelled before.  Almost citrusy.  I know that's weird, but it's true.

The view from our RV.

Dinner is amazing.  Charlie and Mary have serious cases of Lobster Envy, having ordered other dishes.  The owner comes out to greet us and ask about our dinner.  He's also the lobsterman who caught the two-pounders before us that morning.  How's that for fresh?  After waddling back to our RV, Rob makes a campfire and we hang a bit until these little hoppy bugs on our feet send us back inside.  One last look at the bay, coming into high tide now, reveals a group of black-headed seals slipping across in front of us, presumably to head out to the big water for the night.  We tuck in for the night and fall asleep to the sound of breaching whales and lapping water.  Heaven.

And Away We Go...VERY SLOWLY

Thursday, August 7, 2014

All of my great new toys plus minimal amounts of clothes are mounded in our living room, which I've designated our staging area.  After poring through blogs and manuals for weeks, I noticed a few items were mentioned repeatedly by the pros.  Collapsible kitchenware like measuring cups, bowls and storage containers were chief among these.  My "kitchen" had many, many drawers and cabinets but they were very tiny ones.

RVing For Dummies recommended buying a large cutting board with rubber feet, which was a total workhorse as it doubled as extra counter space, as well as a serving piece.  

Anyway, all this stuff is still sitting in the living room at 8 AM and my early bird husband's pacing around, trying to get us motivated for packing the Sequoia.  There is ALOT of stuff.  We are finally (mostly) packed up by 9 AM and he goes ahead of the kids and me to the rental place in Sussex.  Ostensibly to take care of the paper work, but I think he's nervous and wants some time alone to get oriented without all of us looking over his shoulder.  By the time we get there, the orientation has begun and we have the good fortune to arrive at the fun part:  the toilet tutorial.  Probably many of you have never had the pleasure of standing in a 3x3 foot space with a total stranger explaining the difference between gray water and black water and the dangers of clogging the sewage system of your moving home.  You should be thankful for that.

After our tour, most of which we promptly forget, we finish packing up and get on the road.  Most of you have probably not had the pleasure of maneuvering a 32 foot behemoth over a narrow and bumpy road, either.  It wakes you up, I'll say that.  Helpful quote from fifteen year old daughter:  "Dad, they wouldn't just give an RV to anyone if it wasn't okay to drive."  Well, we don't have any statistics on that, so we just go with it.  

Our plan is to stop at a Walmart because that's what ALL the pros suggested, siting ample parking, many locations near highways, and their particular friendliness to those who drive the big rigs.  Some will even let you park overnight in a pinch, which is not something we are remotely interested in. It's bad enough I had to download the Walmart app onto my phone.  

We need to stock our fridge with the essentials:  bottled water because you can't really drink the stuff coming out of the faucet; sandwich fixings for lunch so we wouldn't have to stop again; Twizzlers because it's a road trip and that's just how we do.

It takes almost double the time to arrive at our destination.  We aren't sure why, unless Google Maps bases their estimates on the average time of a sporty little two door, and not a lumbering house on wheels.  At any rate, we pull into our first campground, Sunset View Farm in Monson, Mass just in time to view that sunset.  I throw together a dinner from our Walmart trip, which includes frozen strip steaks that are just as nasty as they sound.  A nice Bombay Sapphire martini takes care of any lingering aftertastes, however.  The kids content themselves with Oreos and we all go to bed early.

And So It Begins...

It all started with the idea of a family trip out west, Brady Bunch style.  Ghost towns, burro rides into the Grand Canyon, preferably in a 1972 Ford Wagoneer with faux wood paneling and a nausea-inducing 'back-back' as we used to call it.  The 'back-back' was a set of pop up seats that faced one another and were situated just behind the rear window, where pre-regulation unfiltered exhaust poured in with abandon.  But my husband, Rob, had something bigger in mind; way bigger.

I should have seen it coming.  One day, driving along the highway on our annual summer pilgrimage to Bethel, ME, we passed an RV dealership.

 "Wonder what that's like,"  he tossed casually to me as I tried to nap.

"What what's like?"  I shifted my position so I could see out the window.

"RVing.  I think it would be fun to take a western trip in one."

"Do you?"  I answered and he dropped the topic, but I knew not for long.

We've been together for twenty-eight years, long enough for me to recognize that glint in his eye and hear that lilt in his tone when he's on the edge of a Big Idea.  Small Ideas are easy.  They are the kind of thing I call someone else up to do:  painting the porch furniture; lowering our Verizon bill; etc.  Big Ideas involve time, commitment, and usually way more money than either of us imagined.

Over the course of the year, the conversation regarding a trip out west continued at regular intervals.  The impending graduation of our oldest son lent an air of urgency to our trip.  It might be our last family trip ever.  So I got on board, so to speak.