Author: Bill

For the next few days we explored the Island and Acadia National Park.   Once you get out of the Bar Harbor, the roads are way less crowded.   It seems like 98% of everyone on the Island is in Bar Harbor.    We headed out toward Bass Harbor and the Lighthouse.   When we found it, there was a very small parking lot and very full, but we were lucky and someone pulled out of a spot as we were nearing them.   Wandered down to the lighthouse for a peek.   They don’t let you inside except one day around Labor Day weekend so we were out of luck.  It was a very small lighthouse and kind of plain, but it appeared to still be in use.  Most of the others aren’t used anymore from what we could tell during our visits.   Took some pics, talked to the docent for a bit, and heard we could walk down in front of it from the other side of the parking lot.  We walked over there and the path was a mud bog, so we went back to the car and left.  By then there were about 10 cars waiting to park in this small parking lot.  Held maybe 15 cars…  I was guessing the last guy in line would have a long wait.

On the map was a place called Seawall and we drove in that direction.   The coast up here is breathtaking.  When we arrived at Seawall, there wasn’t much there but a stone seawall and we kept going till Southwest  Harbor came into view.  It was another cute little village with lots of boats tethered in the harbor.   Not much in the way of beaches up here,  the coastline is very rocky.   Must be hazardous to your boat if you lose power.   

We walked around and snapped a couple pics, then off on a drive way around an inlet toward Northeast Harbor. They are not very creative with the naming up here.  On the way we found Sargent Road right along what the sign said was the only Fjord in the US,  with some spectacular ships moored there, the type we saw in Monaco the day after the Gran Prix.  Then we found the spectacular waterfront estates.   Kathy was in awe with all the trees and the inlets,  nothing like what you find in San Diego at all.

It was another picturesque village with another cute harbor full of moored boats.   Something I hadn’t mentioned yet are the scads of buoys all around the shoreline.   I am assuming they are attached to lobster pots below them, but as I had not seen anyone pulling them up,  I don’t have any empirical data to prove that.  🙂   I have not seen anything that looked like it was a commercial lobster growing area, so I am guessing all these Maine lobsters are harvested right off the rocky shore.   And there is a lot of shoreline here.

We then drove over to Seal Harbor and found a dock to park on, a perfect spot to walk the pups and take some more pics.   Some of the boats tethered here were small fishing vessels.  Very cool.   When I moved to San Diego, there was a huge tuna fishing fleet and I looked into working on them, but speaking Portuguese was a requirement so I crossed that off my list.   Now there are almost no fishing vessels there.   Kind of sad.

The following day we did Acadia National Park.   Checked out the Park Loop Road first thing in the morning.  Found some really great overlooks, then we found a beach, out in the middle of nowhere among the rocks and trees.  Truly amazing.  It was so amazing to hear waves like the ocean.  My Cuz and family are at or traditional Beach Week in South Mission Beach, so it reminded us of it.   Then more overlooks and lunch at a place I had noticed the afternoon before.  Then off to hike around Cadillac Mountain.   Not much of a mountain compared to what we spent the first couple of months on the trip around.    Pretty view from the top though.

A funny thing happened in the traffic on the top o the mountain.  Some arrogant prick cut me off so he could get a parking spot ahead of us.   But as karma works,  just as he passed a parked car, its backup lights lit and I got a spot.  I noticed a little while later he was still circling the parking lot.   Some things just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning we headed over to check out Bar Harbor and to get a lobster roll for lunch.   I popped my head into a local barber shop and asked where to find the best one he knew of.  (I was told to ask a local. Who better than the local barber, I say)  I asked him where he would go, and he said to his house, that he makes the best one.  We didn’t get an invite but he mentioned a place right up the street that he said makes a pretty good one.

We walked over and had lunch.   It was good,  I didn’t know it was a lobster salad put on a roll for twenty bucks.   Now I know.   Afterward we got the pups out of the car.. (It was cool and rainy when we got there) and after a bit, the rain stopped.  There are a lot of chatshky shops in Bar Harbor,  and there were a zillion people there on this Friday afternoon.   One store owner told Kathy it was very unusual to have so many people there.  Said it was due to a motorcycle rally or something.  Plus there was a Holland America cruise ship in the harbor, so that probably didn’t help when it offloaded another 2,000 people into downtown.

We headed down to the wharf area where I saw a lobster boat offloading its catch right into a truck via a winch on a mast.   They must have had about 200 huge plastic containers full of lobsters stacked up on the deck,  and the stack was at least 10 feet tall when I first got there.   The winch was taking two bins at a time right up to the truck bed where the truck driver just pulled them into the back.   I could not see what was going on in the back as his truck opening was even with the edge of the wharf over the water.   Wouldn’t have wanted to back that up any more as it was a good 20′ drop to the boat deck or the water.

It was very low tide, and it appears the difference from high to low tide here is quite a bit.   It looked like 10-12 feet or more.   That seems nuts to me.  It’s maybe 4 – 6 feet difference in San Diego, so I am not sure how it could be so much more here.

Arrived late Sunday afternoon after a nice drive from the seaway west on 37 to US11 to I-87 south.   We are in a campground about 15 miles south of Schroon Lake and about the same north of Lake George village.

We took off early this morning to find the old cabin we spent some time at back when we were children.  I could not find it, but I believe I found where it used to be,  but the area is all newer log cabin McMansions now.   After that we drove out to Ft. Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain.   It was a very nice day, high 70’s and not too humid.   Toured the fort and then headed down toward the King’s garden.   They had a formal garden,  not Versailles but pretty nice for Upstate NY.   And they even had a few large vegetable gardens just outside the walls of the formal garden that they used in the restaurant and at the fort for the authentic food the soldiers ate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After touring the gardens, we started looking for Mt. Defiance following a fairly odd map from the historical society.   We actually got there, but I was not sure we would.   It’s a long drive up a very bumpy paved track,  not really a road, but like a wide driveway for a couple miles.   After parking we had quite a walk up a very steep walkway.  The pups had to pull Kathy up to the top!   From there we could see many miles in each direction on Lake Champlain,  and a good view of the fort probably a mile or more off in the distance below us.

Finding places to get lunch with two pups hasn’t been easy since leaving Cali, but we did go into one restaurant in the town of Ticonderoga and they told us about a restaurant called Wind Chill Factory.   We found it a few miles out of town and ordered lunch to eat on the patio,  actually the only place to eat was outside on the patio for everyone.   Wasn’t bad,  had a decent Philly Cheese Steak sandwich, and now I can’t wait to get to Philly for a real one!

After lunch we drove down Rt 9N.  What’s the N stand for,  who knows.  It’s quite a nice road that goes along the lakes all the way down to Lake George Village.  Beautiful drive, and Bolton Landing was a surprising little town that was really nice, and had lots of tourists flitting about.   I hadn’t seen any mention of that town anywhere.   It’s right on Lake George.

 

 

We needed to add to the stores for the weekend so I headed out to find a grocery store after an unexpected 3- hour blackout.   Since it was pretty muggy by noon when it started, we got to exercise the genny to keep everything going including both A/C’s.

Not far from the campground was an Aldi’s, kind of hidden way off the road down in a hollow, not sure how I was able to spot that.   I drove down there and went to pick up a cart.   That’s where it started to get odd.   All the carts were chained together.  I had just seen two folks grab carts not 25 feet in front of me, so I figured it must get real windy here so there’s got to be a trick to undoing the chains.  I looked and couldn’t find it so I relented and went inside and asked what the trick was.   No trick she said, just put in a quarter in the handle slot and the chain opens.   What an odd thing.   Anyway I headed back toward the car to see if I could find a quarter in the cup holder or under the seats, but before I could get there, the lady in the car next to me had her door opened so I couldn’t get to mine.  I mentioned I needed to find a quarter to get a cart and she said to take her cart, then she got in her car and drove off.

Now I had a cart.  I went inside only to find it’s one of those places that hems you in with all the crates and boxes so you have to walk all the way to the back of the store first.  The food was different, everything, even the produce, was in plastic.   Nothing about the veggies left me with the impression that they were fresh.   Most of the food was Aldi’s brand,  not a lot was any name brand I had ever heard of.

I loaded what I could find and headed for the checkout.   That went OK until I got out to the car and noticed nothing was in bags.  She had just put everything in the bottom of the cart!

I am not going back to an Aldi’s anytime soon.   Probably ever.

Got it back to the coach and then headed back to find a real grocery store.  On the way out I saw a few turkeys on the side of the road,  had to stop and take a picture.  You just don’t see them wandering around the roads in San Diego.

There was a really nice grocery store almost across the street from the odd one.

I was able to find everything I needed except for fresh carrots,  I have not seen fresh carrots since we left CA.   Everything is bagged.

Friday night we had another thunder storm move thru.  Thankfully not much wind so I just made sure we were fully battened down and went back to bed.  Kathy said she couldn’t sleep, there was too much lightning and thunder.  Baxter crawled up toward us and hunkered down under the cover after one particularly loud thunder clap.

On Saturday we took a ride around the area and found a ghost bridge.   It looked like it was a fairly substantial bridge, but the entrance on both sides was boarded up and overgrown.

We also found a nice town park in Massena right on the river with lots of Canadian Geese wandering around and diving for fish in the river.   The boys just watched them and started wagging their tails when they took off and landed in the water.

 

 

 

Geez,  the weather radio just squawked with another severe thunderstorm and hail headed toward us.   This weather crap is starting to get old!

We are heading out toward Schroon Lake in the morning!

We drove another 300+ miles today and arrived at Robert Moses State Park on the St Lawrence River around 4pm EDT.

Kathy asked me to figure out how many miles we had driven so far on this trip.    It was 5,245 miles as of Robert Moses State Park campsite, we are here till Sunday, and that doesn’t count the miles we have driven in the car sightseeing.   And I just calculated we have driven it 7,875 miles since we bought it in January.   We drove about 1,500 miles on our 4-week shakedown cruise around California back in April.

We had to drive thru a tunnel that goes under the Eisenhower Lock that was marked at 13’6″.  Tunnels are always an E-ticket ride in this very wide (8’6″) and tall (12’7″) vehicle.  I think the tunnel must have been a bit taller than written up as none of the antennas hit, which when they do hit something, it’s a real attention grabber.   And it was also a surprise tunnel as the app I use to look for low bridges and tunnels did not show it.   I sent the developer a message with the coordinates so it could be added ASAP.

I know that it surprised another camper because when I was unhitching the car last night to back the coach into our spot, a guy walked up and asked me if I had gone thru the tunnel.   I guess he thought there might be another way in…   I told him I had, and he asked how tall the coach was.  I told him it was 11 inches less than it said the tunnel was.   He mentioned his 5th wheel trailer was 13’6″….   That would be a dilemma to me..  But my guess is that sign means you can fit a 13’6″ vehicle thru it.   Not sure what he concluded..  I haven’t seen him in here again,  but it’s a very large campground.  This is a beautiful park right on the river.   On our walks last night some of it looks like a well kept up golf course!

We drove around the park on Thursday afternoon.  It’s a big place indeed.   There is a beach and marina in one area, then we drove out to what appeared to be a curved bridge only to find out it’s a large dam.  I remember seeing a lot of power lines off in the distance on the way in yesterday, but they were not around this dam, so it’s not generating power.    Unfortunately there was a gate preventing us from driving on the dam, so we turned around and went east on the road only to find another much larger dam where all the electric lines started…  It was also blocked off, so we headed over to the Eisenhower Lock as I could see there was a ship coming down the river on the marine traffic app.

At the lock visitor center they have two levels of viewing decks above them, both with lots of chain link fence, presumably for security.   It’s really just to prevent you from taking good pictures.   It’s incredible that the government thinks that chain link gives them any security.    100 feet from the viewing deck is a tunnel that goes right under the lock.  Need I say more?

It’s very cool to watch the ship go thru the process.   But the odd part in the beginning was the ship drove over to one side of the entrance and appeared to be using the braille method to get into the lock.   The ship was two feet narrower than the lock itself, so it was slow going, almost imperceptible movement till it got further into the lock.   Then it started moving a bit quicker so you didn’t have to focus on a spot for a while just so you could tell it was moving.

It literally crept into the lock, taking a lot longer than I imagined it would.  I didn’t time it, but I seemed like 30+ minutes to get fully up to the forward lock doors.   There was a large red gate with a thick cable that looked like it was locked in place on the opposite side to prevent the ship from hitting the lock doors.   I bet that would be a wild ride if they did as the water on the downstream side is 42′ lower, although it didn’t appear to be that much lower to me.  They had to open that gate so the ship can inch forward to the lock doors as they cannot close the rear lock doors till it’s within a couple of feet of those front doors.   I guess they didn’t expect the ships to get that large back in the ’50s when it was built or they would have put that gate much closer to the lock doors.

Once they were finally in and the back doors were closed, the lock crew just popped the stopper so the ship would drop to the lower level.  That took all of five or ten minutes and then front doors opened, some lines were winched back onto the ship, and they were off, just in time for the next ship coming up river to get into the lock.   You can see it sitting right outside the lock in the pic of this ship heading out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We didn’t stick around to watch the second ship as the part where they inch their way in was akin to watching grass grow.   We headed out to see the local town of Massena, NY.   There was a mall not very far from the park, so we headed there first.   It was a ghost town.   Huge mall,  most of the stores looked boarded up.   Maybe this was a poor spot to put a mall.   Seemed like the middle of nowhere to me.   Then we drove into the little village.  It appeared to be a sleepy place.   Not much going on during a Thursday afternoon.

On the way back to the campground, I stopped for a pic of that second ship traversing the roadway above the tunnel.   It always amazes me when I see big ships above me, like when I was in the garden district of New Orleans and saw a large ship steaming up the Mississippi River many years ago.

 

 

Thankfully we got off to an early start to see the falls as I heard it’s incredibly crowded in the afternoons.    We opted to head for Goats Island first where you can walk to the Bridal Veil Falls and watch the Maids of the Mist nose in close inside the curves of the horseshoe.   The sound the falls makes is awesome,  I had forgotten as it’s been close to 40 years since I was last there.   This was the first time for Kathy.

We took a bunch of pics and walked all around then headed for the path to the American Falls.    Funny thing is there are no signs to get you to either falls by walking, and they are very close. All the signs are for the concessions:   Trolleys,  Cave of the Winds, Maid of the Mist, etc.   Herd the cattle this way and that for a small fee.

It was a delightful stroll over there.   It was a beautiful morning with a light breeze and maybe 70 degrees.  Not at all what I remember about August on the East Coast.  It is a beautiful pathway and bridges around the river and the rapids before you actually see the falls!

The American Falls are almost straight across, but you can get right out over them and look down, which is very cool.  Big rainbows on a sunny day!  [You could also walk out on a bridge to a tower and look back, with a beautiful view of them all, which I did for $1.25!]

Then we drove off the island and into the town of Niagara Falls.  Kathy compared it to Tijuana…  It was a bit ugly and dirty,  but she may never have been to Tijuana.  It was much cleaner than TJ.

We headed over there to see the American falls from the other side and to go onto that big overlook structure.   The whole place is very commercialized.  That overlook charged to go out there.   It was a very small fee, but why charge for that?

The campground was extremely nice, but they were the most expensive place we have camped so far, even more than Joe’s Lodge.  It had everything and was very well maintained.  What an incredible place for families with kids!!

Here are some other pics.   We head for the 1000 Islands area  tomorrow.