Today is Friday, May 25, 2012 and we have finally arrived in Maine after spending a night and a day at Camp Cummins in Scarborough our coach is finally running smoothly. YEA!!
We left Vermont via a 40 mile detour to get us to the Massachusetts Turnpike. The Green Hills of Vermont gave way to the Berkshires of Massachusetts. I didn’t see much of a difference in the vegetation, but there were sure a lot more resort getaways along the highway in Mass. Anyway, we were still limping at that point and on top of that it was raining. The rain gave us an excuse to go slower, as far as other motorists were concerned. We opted to take the detour so we could take the turnpike where other vehicles would be able to pass us. It worked pretty well. Our Silverleaf calculated our average speed at about 38mph. We stayed one night at Wild Duck Campground in Scarborough, Me. A very nice, adults only, campground smack in the middle of a wetlands. I think most of this part of Maine is a wetlands tho’. There’s water just about everywhere. Rob called Con-Way, the shipper of the part we needed, and found it had made it to Pennsylvania. We were assured it would arrive on schedule on Thursday. We checked in with Cummins and found out where they wanted us to park. Very casual affair…we weren’t listed in their computer as having an apt, but were quickly added. We thought we would show up on Wednesday hoping they could start tearing our coach apart so as to be ready for installation on Thursday and then we could go. It sort of worked out that way. We parked Wed afternoon and Rob called Con-Way again for an update. We were told that the part was in Scarborough and should be delivered within the hour. As we were relaying this information to the service mgr the Con-Way truck appeared with our part. So, after consulting with our technician (another Rob), we left to have dinner at d’Millo’s floating restaurant in Portland. Rob was to be working on the coach until closing at 11:00 p.m. He worked on it long enough to determine that he would need to jack the rear end of the coach up to be able to drop the radiator. Of course, he couldn’t start on that because the slides needed to be in and we had left, leaving them out. He promised to start again at 7 a.m. on Thursday. Both of us were up at 5:30 so we could get showered and dressed and get everything ready for the coach to be jacked up. We’re thinking to drop the radiator he would need to jack it up at least four feet. I was wondering if the coach was going to bend in the middle. It took all day and the coach was only jacked up about 1 ½ feet, but the work got done. After taking a test drive around the block a couple of times to make sure everything got put back together correctly we were off. It was late afternoon, but we decided to head for our next destination a day early with a late check-in. We ran into a fog bank, otherwise it would just been dusk when we arrived, about 8:00. We’re not in Trenton, Maine, just outside of Bar Harbor. Had lunch at the harbor today and took a “nature tour” boat ride around the harbor, in the fog. Reminds us of a boat ride we took in Alaska…pine trees growing to the water’s edge, very rocky coastline, same varieties of birds, and cold. Tomorrow sun is promised. 

The coach at Camp Cummins. Two jacks on each side.

Wild Duck Campground. Coaches are in the trees. Wetlands is all around.

This is what the Maine coast looks like.

                                Apparently there are moose in Bennington. Painted moose were all around the town, much like the angels in LA and cows in Chicago.