Finally stopped raining about an hour ago. That's not to say it couldn't start right back up again, but after two and a half days of pretty much continuous rain, heavy at times, it is nice to not hear it landing on the roof of the trailer.

    It has certainly slowed my activity way down these last couple of days. I did get out yesterday afternoon for a while when it eased off for a little bit. Drove up to the town of Old Town again after a women I contra danced with on Friday night told me where the new Old Town Canoe factory and store were located. Turns out that it wasn't very far from where I was the first time up, less than an 1/8th of a mile or so.

   They have a real nice retail store at the front of their factory now, so it was fun to go in and poke around for a while. The store was big enough to have at least one of every type boat they make displayed in it, and since they joined up with the plastic kayak manufacture a couple years ago, there are a lot of different models now. Still no luck with the 18 1/2 foot Penobscot, the women there was able to confirm that they stopped making it because they weren't selling enough of them. My promise to buy at least 5 if they would just start making them again didn't seem to impress her to much either. Guess all my friends will just have to go on line and find a good used one like I did.

    They do have one new canoe model out that was just beautiful to look at. It is called the KORU and comes in various lay ups of fiberglass and Kevlar. They had one Kevlar model in the store that had a gloss red finish with highlights of the golden Kevlar shineing through that was just stunning. At 17'-5" long and 48 pounds for the Kevlar boat it should be fast and easy to paddle. Of course, all of that beauty comes with a price tag well north of $3,500, but it should be able to compete with any Bell or Wenona boat out there.

    Wandered down the river on the way back to Bangor, but it doesn't take long to do the 25+ miles back to the trailer. Spent last evening watching movies, reading and playing on the computer.

    It was raining hard this morning so there was no hurry to get up and get moving. Spent the morning reading the funnies and catching up on the news. By 3:00 though I was going a little stir crazy. Looked up the address of the local Mall in Bangor and drove over there just for something to do and as a way to get out and walk a little bit. A couple complete trips around the inside of the mall netted me a good couple of miles of walking so I was ready to go do something else after that. There is a 10 screen movie theatre right next door so I ended up going and seeing the 'Boys Night Out' movie 'Looper's'. Actually more interesting and better done than is usual for this type of film. It actually had a plot, decent acting and just enough gratuitous sex and violence to be a good guys night out movie.

    Once back at the trailer it was time for a little dinner and a chance to watch a couple episodes of The Big Bang Theory on DVD. Picked up the 5th season DVDs a couple of weeks ago and have been watching a couple nearly every day. They still crack me up even if I have seen some of them 2 or more times each.

   Am hoping for a nicer day tomorrow, or at least one where it isn't raining quite as hard. Would like to get some laundry done in the next day or two and it would be nice if it wouldn't rain on it after it was all washed.

    Also need to go over to the AAA office and pick up a couple of maps and a campground guide for the Boston and DC area's. Thought I had a copy of all that area... but evidently not. Have been trying to figure out where to stay the week after next and then a couple weeks after that. Would like to go to a weekend dance in Charlottsville, Virginia, but so far there don't seem to be any places to camp, near to where the dance is. It will all come together at some point though, it always does anyway.

   Yuck!!! It's raining here again. Started late this morning and it sounds like it won't really clear off again until sometime on Monday or Tuesday. Oh well, guess I'll just have to make the best of it anyway.

    Was up much earlier this morning than a 2 a.m. bed time last night warranted. Not sure what that was all about, but by 8:30 I was up and bouncing around the trailer. Took off late this morning and headed down to the town of Rockland to see the Maine Light House Museum and then visit a few real light house's in that vicinity. Got to the museum okay and really enjoyed walking around it for a couple of hours. They have one of the best collections of old light house light's, including many Fresnel lenses, that I've ever seen in one place. By the way, I got it wrong a day or two ago when I was talking about the sizes, (Orders), that they come in; stating that they went from 1st order to 10th, with 1st being the smallest and 10th being the biggest. There are actually only 6 orders, sizes, of lenses, 1st through 6th, with a 1st order lens being about as big as a lantern and a 6th order being more than 6 feet tall and weighing more than 4 tons.

     By the time I got out of the museum and had some lunch it was raining pretty good. Still decided to walk the nearly mile of granite causeway out to the north jetty entrance light at the Rockland Harbor. A very nice 'light House' looking light right at the end of the jetty, but unfortunately there is no real way to get a decent picture of it while standing on the causeway. It would of been much easier to get a good picture of it from a boat just off the end of the jetty. Oh well!

    By the time I finished walking out and then back it was raining pretty good, plus it was nearly 4:30 already, so I pointed the truck towards home and headed back up the highway in the rain. Actually took about 2 1/2 hrs to make it back to the trailer, even though it was only about 80 miles away. Lots of back roads and smaller highways to traverse.

    Made it back in time to grab a bite to eat, change clothes, grab my tennis shoes and head north to the contra dance up in the town of Alton. Nearly missed the dance hall as the address on the notice was not actually where it was being held. Lucky for me I had actually read the dance notice so I knew the name of the building, Happy Acres Dance Hall, and recognized it when I drove past.

   Not a bad dance by any means, but not all that great of one either. The caller, Bill Olsen, and band, T-Acadia, were pretty decent, but more than 75% of the people there were brand new beginners. Since there were only about 40 dancers to begin with that made it hard to do anything but the simplest dances.

    I usually don't mind new dancers, after all they may be the next really good dancer in a couple of weeks or so, but it was a little bit too much for me tonight. I think it might of been that I was tired to begin with, but all the bouncing and hopping and mis-timing that newbies do just burned me out early.  It will be so nice when I can dance another weekend dance with people that really know how to dance.

    Right now though it's time to read a little bit and then go hit the sack. I talked to one women at the dance tonight who lives in the village of Old Town and she told me where the new Old Town Canoe factory is and that they have a company store there that should be open on most days. So I think I'll run up there again tomorrow and see what I kind find out.

   Have already made one post today, but wanted to load these photo's up that I took in Vermont and post them before I forgot about them.

Best of Vermont.

3 days after leaving Colorado and I'm already in Vermont. Seemed like a good idea to go tour the original Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory and then have a 'Cherry Garcia' cone out on their patio.

Visited the waterfront area in Burlington Vermont one afternoon. This is the north entrance light to the harbor on Lake Champlain.

  

Spent one day visiting the Shelburne Museum over in the town of Shelburne. Most of it is comprised of old building they have saved and relocated to the museum grounds, as well as lots of old stuff to go in them. This is the original Colchester Reef Light House that they moved when it was going to be torn down in order to build a new house.

Another view.

  

The original 3rd order Fresnel lens that was in the light house. The 'order' refers to size of the light from 1 to 10. #1 being the smallest light and #10 being more than 6 feet tall. I just think this one is beautiful.

       

The original train station for the town of Shelburne.

This is the last steamship to ply Lake Champlain. The 'Ticondaroga' was powered by a steam driven 'walking beam' engine. The triangular thing on top is the actual walking beam. Steam was fed into a single large cylinder which produced an up and down motion that was then turned into a circular motion by an excentric crank that was part of the walking beam. This then drove a pair of side paddle wheels. They transported the boat nearly two miles from Lake Champlain on special railroad tracks they laid during the winter as the ground had to be frozen in order for it to support the great weight of the boat.

An interior view of the 'Grand Salon' on the 2nd deck. Lovely woodwork and other appointments. The sky light structure above the staircase was called the 'turtle back' because of its shape.

A view down one of the passageways.

This covered wooden bridge use to be the main entrance to the museum, it being wide enough to have two separate lanes of traffic. But times have changed, vehicles are now much bigger and heavier so they created a new entrance and this just went back to being a pleasant spot to be.

 

    Spent the day dealing with deferred maintenance around the trailer today. First on the list was packing up and taking the trailer next door where the guys there jacked the bumper back in place and re-welded a couple of the seams that had broken. They also put a couple small pieces of new metal on as reinforcing. They did a decent job and it looks pretty good, and the best part is that it only cost $56. Of course once I got it back over to the RV campground and got it all set back up I took a little better look at it and noticed a whole bunch of places where it still needed additional work done if it is going to support everything I have hanging on it right now. Can't blame the fix-it guys for not doing it as I was the one to tell them what to do. Will have to rethink what I want to do about it now, as it might take a lot of money to fix it up the way it needs to be. I'm thinking that I'll go to 'Plan B' and put the generator in the back of the truck for right now and leave everything off of the bike rack.  I may have to wait until next summer when I can drop by my brother-in-law's place in Nebraska and ask him what he thinks will be my best option; weld more backing plates on or get a whole new, stronger steel bumper. In the meantime though I'm glad it is back together enough to go down the road with out worrying to much about it falling off anymore.

    Also got the scissor jack up in front welded on this morning, so there is no longer a worry about it falling off any more either. As I was sorting things out in the back of the truck I also found a spray can full of roof sealant that I had bought a couple weeks ago so I spent a few minutes and climbed up on the roof and sprayed that around the front vent and the sky light over the tub, two places that seem to keep leaking no matter what I do. I'm thinking this stuff ought to do the trick though... and if it doesn't I'll go out and get a couple more cans of it.

   Talked to one of my friends back in Colorado this afternoon. Cell phones are just an amazing device. How did we ever get along with out them and why did I protest so long and hard before finally giving in and getting one? Sounds like it is starting to cool down back there now... even a bit of snow in the mountains already. Am a little sad that I'll be missing this time of the year again up in the mountains. Perhaps in a year or two aI'll stick around long enough to do some hunting again with my family. In the mean time my friend caught me up on the condition of another one of my friends, George. He is the one who suffered a collapsed lung a couple of weeks ago and ended up in the hospital a couple of times because of it.

    The last time I had talked to him he was telling me how they had pumped 'Talc' into his chest cavity, no that's not a mis-print, in order to 'glue' the exterior part of his lung to the walls of his chest. Seemed kind of an odd thing to do to me, and how does one even figure out that talc is the stuff to use in the first place? Anyway; it seems to have worked as he is doing much better now. Still having problems walking any distance with out running out of oxygen, but that is still better than not needing any more oxygen at all. So Yay!

    These are the last photo's from the Grand Canyon trip, you were all probably growing as tired of them as I was loading them up anyway. Will post additional photo's and videos of the trip if any real good stuff comes in. Otherwise it is time to move on to more recent stuff again. So here is the 11th day of our trip.

Our last day on the river and Walker has us up before dawn so we can beat some of the heat later on when we hit Lake Mead.

 

Nearly all packed and ready to go.

We decided it might be nicer to have our group photo shot here on the river rather than in some parking lot somewhere. Of course with this many people it's pretty much like herding cats. Can't decide if Marty was helping things or not. He is 6'-8" tall if any of you are wondering. (Oh... and he doesn't play basketball either!)

We finally got everyone settled, so here is the group.

Only thing left is for a couple of us to push off and climb aboard.

One nice thing about this time of day, and I use the term day loosely, is that the light is always beautiful on the high cliffs.

 

Ben spent a bit of time entertaining us with excerpts from his recently accepted master's thesis. He had written about his own hardship in reconciling his love of the river and being a boatman with his families Mormon religion. It was an interesting premise and I hope to read the whole thing one of these days.

Relaxing a bit on the boat.

One of the Native American Tribes, I believe it is maybe the Hopi's, have constructed this see through lookout on part of their reservation.

A closer look at the lookout. If you look closely you'll note that there doesn't appear to be anyone out walking on the see through part at the moment.






 

Time to get off the boats one last time. What a wonderful trip we had, what a great bunch of people to do it with. Memories have been made that will last a life time. As we board the bus for our trip back to Las Vegas it is a bitter sweet moment, a time to reflect on what I have just experienced, regret that it can't go on forever and happy to think that it is now time to move on to new adventures. Isn't life grand!



 

 

 

    A fun day today even though it did involve getting up at the unearthly hour of 6:00 a.m.  Had to be up and on my way early because of a  need to be in Bar Harbor by 9:00 in order to get a ticket and a seat on the Light House Cruise that they do there.

   Made it there in plenty of time of course, and there was still a bit of room left on the boat even though a huge cruise ship was in port and there were nearly 200 people from it already signed up to go. The boat we were on, a 110'+ jet powered catamaran had plenty of room on it, so no big deal.

   Cloudy and a bit cold out on the water, especially when the boat is travelling almost 25 knots straight into a 20 knot breeze and it is spitting rain drops and sleet at you. Once again though, it was also a good thing as it kept all but the most die-hard people off the front deck, so it was easy to have a good view at any time. The wind did kick up some serious waves at times, in the more exposed parts of the trip. But the catermaran really rode nicely through them. It didn't keep a few people from losing their breakfast over the side though. I just stayed out of the overheated enclosed cabin and up wind of anyone who looked like they were going to lose it.

    We were out for a bit more than 4 hours and did maybe 40-50 miles in a big loop. We took in 5 different light houses and an old 'Life Saving Service' station. Saw 'summer cottages', (damn big mansions), of some rich and famous folks including; Martha Stewart, a couple Rockefeller's, a Ford or two and the guy who owns the Campbell Soup company, among others.

    Looks like I got a few decent pictures of the light houses, even though the grey light is horrible for taking pictures. Will get a few posted in a day or two after they are downloaded and sorted out.

    Need to be up again tomorrow morning, but not quite as early this time. Will have to hook the trailer up and drag it over to the place next door so they can weld my bumper back together again. Kind of a hassle, but it will be nice to have it all put back together again. Then I can get the generator and bike rack put back on, as well as straighten out the back of the truck. It will be really nice to finally get the trailers spare tire out of the bedroom and back into the truck where it belongs. For now though it's time to go to bed.

    Today was a day of rest for me... just didn't want to climb back in the truck again and drive another 100+ miles today... so I didn't. Slept in a bit this morning instead and then putzed about the trailer for most of the morning. Got some new clothes hooks mounted on the wall and finally got my polar fleece jackets and vests all hung up. With any luck I won't be needing them much, but it's nice to know they are there if needed.

    Also got the last of my bags from this summer unpacked and all the stuff in them put away. I was getting tired of having to move it from the bed to the couch to the seat and back to the bed. The main problem was that some of the stuff lives in the back of the truck most of the time, and it's full of my bike rack and chairs until I get the bumper welded back together. So it's a bit of a mess also. The good news is that the bumper will get fixed on Thursday morning. Talked to the guys at the RV shop next door and they took a look at it yesterday afternoon while I was at the coast. No problem welding it up, and maybe even adding some extra support pieces, I'll just need to take it over there is all.

    Other than that the only other thing I did was go out and do some grocery shopping and take a short walk. Still a bit cool outside, but it was sure a beautiful autumn day here in Maine.

    Will be getting up early tomorrow and heading out to Bar Harbor. They have a 3-4 hour light house cruise that takes off at 9:30 in the morning. A bit early for me... but I can do it if I need to. Hope to spend the day over there in that area and then pick up a couple live lobsters to cook once I'm back at the trailer. Looking forward to a nice day out.

     Here are pictures from our 10th day on the Grand Canyon River Trip.

Early morning sun on the river cliffs.

The cooks have been up since before light getting breakfast ready. I think it was pancakes, bacon and eggs and assorted other goodies.

This early in the morning the life jacket actually feels good because of the extra warmth it gives.

More cliffs from the lava flows are showing up here and there along the river.

In places where the lava rock has broken apart you get some really interesting shapes. What I like is how the barrel cactus seems to be able to grow right out of the rock.

We had several large flocks of sea birds flying around us for several days. I think they must of been passing through on one of their migrations. One of the people on the trip knew what they were, but I forgot. About the size of a pigeon they were light underneath and dark slate blue/grey on top. They were beutiful as they twisted and turned in flight.

 

Pumpkin Spring, a sacred site to the Hopi. You can see where it got it's americanized name from.

The view from the top. This was not a hot spring like you would find in Yellowstone. It does evidently have lots of dissolved minerals in it though, which is how it built up it's outer rim as they percipitated out of solution.

Several people used our stop as a reason to get wet and have a little fun. This is Alex.

Alex in mid air... upside down.

Love the hair.

Doug, Deb and Alex. I like their shadow on the water.

 

 

Here we have Jillian trying to fly.

Back on the boat. From L to R, F to B we have Helen, Jill, Donna, Tom then Ginny, Marty, Maggie and Paul, Ben and Jillian are in the very back.

A small barrel cactus I found that still had some of it's fruit pods left on.

Walker took us on a short hike after lunch to this rock where people have left heart shaped rocks over the years. When we got there though someone had thrown all the rocks away... We soon located most of them and replaced them again. This is John and Caroline. It was their anniversary today so I took a few shots of them and some of the other couples.

Aren't they cute!

 

Tom and Donna

Dennis and Jan

Jim and Patty

Some of the girls... Jan, Jodie, Donna, Deb, Ruth, Patty and Caroline

A nice barrel cactus.

Our 2nd hike of the day was up another side canyon with waterfalls on it. Here we have Maggie and Caroline cooling down.

Helen.

Donna. Just Chillin!

An upper waterfall. Donna, Tom, Fino, Jim, Deb and Bill

Me.

A small gecko kind of critter.

Don't we all look happy here?

Camp for the night.

Our last camp site for the trip and it's one of the best. Lots of sand and great views all around.

 

My feet started to look like tiger paws from the boat shoes I wore and suntan marks from them.

 On a more somber note: I found out today that the husband of a good friend of mine, she and I have known each other for almost 40 years, passed away last night of complications from brain cancer. I had only met Bob a couple of times but really liked him a lot, not only because of who he was, but also because of what he meant to my friend Jan. You could see that there was a lot of love and mutual respect in their relationship even though they had only been together a very short time. I grieve for Bob and for my friend Jan. I hope she will do okay in the coming days and weeks and that she will realize that there are many of us out here, even if we are far away, who will be thinking of her tonight and for many days and nights to follow.