Charlotte here (finally)

Spring seems to be here in earnest in Florida. It's been in the 80's most afternoons, and flowers are blooming. Here's a picture of our "wedding" azalea - we bought it when we got married and planted it here when we moved into this house 25 1/2 years ago. (Of about 6 of them this is the only one that survived.)

We took Ruby to our mechanic today to have her checked over and probably have the roof resealed. In a few days we'll pick her up, dump the tanks and return her to the mechanic to have the tank indicators recalibrated. (The grey water tank has been "3/4 full" for months, no matter how often we drain it.) After the mechanic is finished, it will be time to wash and wax the whole RV.
We'll be leaving for Maine (Mt. Desert Island) early in May.

Charlotte here.

I can't believe it's been almost 3 months since I wrote here! We're still in Bar Harbor at Mount Desert Narrows campground, and will be for a few more weeks. Work has just settled down after about a month of being almost full and REALLY busy. Here are a few of the pictures we've taken:

We've made ourselves at home - or at least Lenny has. He decorated our site with - guess what - a pink flamingo. Only ours rotates with the wind and lets the wind twirl its tail. We also have a string of Airstream trailer lights and a string of kayaks on our awning. The best, though, is the flying pig! That one is destined to live on the roof of our house in Florida.

We have a garden, too. The marigolds cheer us up, and the tomatoes fill our tummies. They're "cherry" tomatoes, but they're yellow/orange when ripe and they're very sweet . . . and prolific. My chives and parsley and basil are healthy, too, and almost everything we eat is seasoned with one or another of them.

Early on, we had a visit from Bob and Fran. The first day they were here was rainy, so we just drove around to see what's on the island. The second day was glorious, as you can see from the picture of Bob and Lenny on Cadillac Mountain (with Bar Harbor in the background).

I'll write again soon and include some of Lenny's pictures.

Climbing Cadillac Mountain

We've been at work on Mt. Desert Island for about 5 weeks now. We've done some exploring, but yesterday was special.

I'm stiff! We climbed Cadillac Mountain yesterday. That's not so "special", but we climbed up it on the Gorge Path which was really a climb through the woods up a cascade of boulders. Thankfully, there were many stretches of stepping stones apparently installed by the CCC, but between those stretches we were on our own to climb around the boulders.

That part of the hike was like wandering through a giant terrarium. All the ground around the boulders was covered with moss and spring wildflowers. The sun shining through the trees made it magical.

Nearer the top of the mountain we were on exposed rock ledges. The trail was marked by cairns and blue paint marks, and we really had to pay attention to stay on it. The views were spectacular! We could see Bar Harbor and the islands around it, plus the surrounding hills and mountains. Unfortunately, the summit was in a cloud, but we saw the view from there when Bob and Fran were here.

On the way down on a different trail we were in the woods most of the way, but we saw many berry bushes in flower. We look forward to going back later and looking for blueberries. ;-)

Lenny's birthday

Today is Lenny's birthday, and he spent the morning fishing in the Potomac River with his friend Leon. They caught a 17-pound, 37 inch striped bass (aka Rock Fish). This afternoon they've gone to the recycle center - man stuff ;-) Paula is fixing part of the fish for Lenny's birthday supper - followed by a chocolate chip birthday cake! We're having a wonderful visit.

The first part of our trip was mostly uneventful. We abandoned our original plan and stayed at Walmart in Brunswick, GA instead of Jacksonville and Sam's Club in Lumberton, NC instead of Manning, SC. That left a very short day to reach Raleigh, where we spent lots of time with Lenny's father, his friend Montez, and Lenny's sister Sunny. Lenny also reworked the auxilliary lights on the van so we now have new lights for our towed vehicle and a better cable to connect them to the RV.

It was amazing how many motor homes and camping trailers we saw going north on I-95 in the mornings. Then about 2 PM they all disappeared - settled early for the night, I guess. It seems it's Spring up north and the snowbirds are headed home. Does that include us?????

Tomorrow we'll have a long day skirting Baltimore, Wilmington and Philadelphia, finally reaching Hatfield, PA where we'll be camping for two nights.

Getting ready for the summer

It's only 2 weeks until we'll leave for Mt. Desert Island and our summer job at Mt. Desert Narrows Camping Resort.
Lenny's been really busy preparing Ruby (our Airstream LandYacht RV) and perfecting our route. He put all new tires on her, had the roof resealed, and modified the power hookup. Over the last 2 days we've washed and waxed Ruby and then today the guys washed the van and we all waxed it.
I guess now it's time to start loading the RV with food and clothes. . . .
We'll be mostly driving up I-95, with detours to Lenny's dad and sister in Raleigh, NC, to his HS and college friend on the Potomac River in MD, and to two more of his friends near Landsdale, PA. Near the end we want to visit the homes of DeLorme and L.L.Bean ;-)

We had a nice day playing tourists in Golden, Colorado. We toured the Coors brewery - very interesting and lots of samples.

Tormorrow we head south to Texas then on to Florida.

On The Road Again...

We completed our "summer" jobs at Yellowstone today and are headed for warm Florida. It was an awesome season with lots of great hikes, backpacking, mountains, scenery, animals, and friends. We now remember why we winter in Florida - it was -4 degrees F and we had a foot of snow last week!