Catching Up

We’re in St. Andrew’s New Brunswick, and since all of our stops so far on this trip have been in places we’ve previously visited, I’ve been a bit remiss adding to this blog. So now I’ll make up for lost time.

We spent the Memorial Day weekend at Bar Harbor in Maine. Acadia National Park takes up most of Mt. Desert Island island and the blog entries from last year have a few pictures taken in the park. A highlight of any visit to Acadia National Park is lunch at Jordon Pond House, if you can find a place to park. The specialty of the house  is popovers, and if you ever need a reason to visit this park, the popovers can easily be it. I have no pictures of the popovers because we ate them before I had a chance to take a picture.

Like some other National Parks, Acadia exists largely due to the generosity of a Rockefeller (he also donated a large part of Grand Teton National Park to the NPS), once again giving proof to Mel Brooks’ famous line “It’s good to be rich.” (I may be paraphrasing here.)

One feature of Acadia are the miles of carriage roads built by Rockefeller so he and his fellow gazillionaires would have a nice place to drive their carriages and ride their horses. The NPS, with help from a volunteer organization, maintains the roads which are still only used by horses, both ridden and driven, bicyclists, and hikers. No motor vehicles are permitted.

Also worth mentioning, Penny has had lobster twice so far. Once for lunch, at a lobster pound, and once for dinner in an actual restaurant. Since I’m allergic to seafood, I had barbeque both times.

The weather over the weekend was quite nice, but we departed Bar Harbor on Tuesday in the pouring rain. I soon discovered that my “rain gear” would have better been described as “fog gear” or at best “drizzle gear”, because by the time we got on the road, I was soaked to the skin.

Our campground in St. Andrew’s is operated by the local Kiwanis, and it’s a really neat place right on Passamaquoddy Bay, which is a branch of the Bay of Fundy.  I don’t usually include images of our trailer in the blog, but I thought it might be neat to include this one. Behind the trailer and behind the two trees is a stone breakwater and behind that is the Bay. You can’t really see the Bay because of the fog. But according to the local forecast, the sun will come out, if not tomorrow, then later in the week. Tomorrow we’ll be heading further north and east and spending a few days in the Moncton, NB area where’s we’re planning to look at some rocks.

Raining Cats and…

Not much to report. While on Cape Cod we had a couple of days of rain. We had a very nice dinner with Neil Cooper, a former classmate from Fair Lawn High School, who lives in the area with his wife Peggy. They were high school sweethearts and have been married 45 years, which beats us by a bit over a year. Peggy couldn’t make it to dinner, since she had other obligations, but we had a great time with Neil.

We’re now in Scarborough Maine. And it’s raining. Not that we should be surprised about rain at this time of year along the New England Coast, but we’re at a neat places called Wild Duck Campgrounds, which is a place we stayed at last year. We’re parked in a site right along a picturesque marsh, and here’s the view out of our back window. You may notice the rain.

It’s a  good day for the local ducks. The sun is supposed to come out this afternoon, but right now I’m not too optimistic.

Kitten, the experienced traveler, has apparently adapted once again to her temporary mobile abode. I can’t say the same for Maxwell, who is fine when we’re stopped, but not too happy about the highway. When we arrived here in Scarborough, Kitten came right out of hiding and wanted to eat. This time it was Max who pulled the Cheshire cat thing, although without the smile. We couldn’t find him anywhere. We looked under the bed in the place we had found Kitten last time, and he wasn’t there. We looked under the recliners, which is a place Max seems to like, and he wasn’t there either.

We decided not to panic this time, and after about a half-hour Max came out from under one of the recliners. He apparently found a hidey hole up in the mechanical parts under the seat, where he couldn’t be seen even when we tilted the chair up to look for him.

He’s currently nestled in what appears to be his favorite den (except when we’re looking for him), which is a small space between the bed and sidewall.

An Hour of Anxiety

We’re on the road again, currently in Cape Cod. Those who actually follow our meanderings around the country will know that on our last trip we had to have Comet euthanized. (This was one of our cats, not Santa’s reindeer.) Over the winter we picked up a replacement cat. He’s an energetic, large, long-haired, goofy, friendly part Maine Coon Cat named Maxwell. (Pictures to follow).

Our other cat, Ginny (AKA Kitten) has been on all of our trips and is now a seasoned traveler. The only problem is that she doesn’t like Maxwell very much, so we anticipated having them together in the trailer might present some problems.

So, yesterday we loaded them in the trailer and drove 280 miles to Cape Cod. We set up camp and when we went into the trailer, Max was hiding under a chair, and Kitten was missing in action. Now, there aren’t a lot of places for a cat to hide in a 32 foot trailer, and we looked everywhere at least twice. There’s a storage area under the bed, and under that area, sealed off with a piece of plywood, is another area containing the hydraulics and mechanical stuff that pushes the slide, upon which the bed is mounted, in and out. We had looked under there a couple of times, but there was no Kitten.

We had just about given up and assumed that she somehow figured a way to escape from the trailer. We were about to put up posters around the campground when we decided to look under the bed a third time, This time I removed the plywood that separates the storage and mechanical areas and tucked in a corner was a little black and white cat. Apparently when the trailer was in the shop over the winter, the technician who was repairing the bedroom slide forgot to firmly reattach the plywood separator, which apparently moved enough while we were in transit to give Kitten room to climb behind it. Then it apparently moved back, sealing her in place.

Now we don’t know if she kept quiet while we were calling her name because she was punishing us for making her travel with her long-haired nemesis, or if she was just playing hide-and-seek. And she’s not talking.  So we’re fully-catted once again, and hopefully our furry traveling companions will learn to get along with each other.