Day  47 – Winthrop, Maine

Well, we’re in another place you’ve never heard of.  I’ll tell you why in a little bit.  We got out of Hermon this morning about eleven, under heavy clouds and a gentle rain, after having made it through a night of thunderstorms that sounded like artillery (not that I’ve ever heard artillery).   But it was loud.  Don got up pretty early, just to watch the lightning through the windshield.  Geri followed soon after, and so did I.  Our preparations for departure were done kind of slowly, ‘cause we didn’t have a long run scheduled for today, and we didn’t want to get to our new RV Park before regulation check-in time. 

We headed down the I-95 toward Augusta, finally heading in a homeward direction for the first time this trip.  We had arranged to meet Marie somewhere near where she was performing, in Monmouth, for dinner tonight.  Unfortunately, when we called her, she had thrown her back out and was in a pretty painful condition, so we had to call off the dinner meeting.  We carried on, however, to our preordained destination, a park called Augusta-West Lakeside Campground.  An interesting thing happened on the 95 shortly before we turned off it, something we’d never seen before.  There was some road work being done on the highway up ahead, and ample notice was provided that the left lane was closed ahead.  Naturally, most of the vehicles moved over to the right lane, except for some Poo-Poo Heads who charged ahead in the left lane, knowing that they could likely squeeze in ahead of the pack and gain a few minutes.  This attitude apparently infuriated the driver in the pickup ahead of us, who we had just let in from a side road, and was towing a large trailer.  In a move to counter these interlopers, he moved his rig into the left lane and left it there, keeping pace with the right lane traffic and effectively blocking the end-runners who piled up behind him.  Don was apparently in favor of the guy’s tactics, as he maintained a position in the right lane just behind the blocker’s rig, to allow him to move back into line whenever he wanted to, but not allow anyone to move into our lane.  We all thought it was pretty cool.

So, we pulled into our new campground, got assigned to a site that had not chance of a satellite signal, a pull-through that we’ll have to back out of, in a park that has no cable.  They don’t even have a brochure to tell you about the campground!  Don was also displeased to find that our site had a water hookup that apparently didn’t have any water piped to it.  Oh, well, we carry a lot of water with us, so we’ll use that.  When we got set up, Don took me out for a walk in the woods near the park, kind of interesting, but very wet from the rains.  I don’t like to walk through wet leaves, they’re kind of icky.  But we got to do some exploring, and I got to stretch my legs. 

Touring and shopping came next.  We got into the truck and headed down to Monmouth, a few miles south.  It’s a small New England type town, lots of old homes, some fixed up, some not.  In the middle of this otherwise fairly nondescript town is a magnificent building called Cumston Hall, constructed in 1900, which contains the town library and the theater that Marie will be performing in.  Don took a photo, which I’m sure he will post.  It’s very surprising to see such an attractive structure in a modest New England town, and I’m sure that it’s a great source of civic pride. 

We retraced our route back to Winthrop, where Geri and Don did some shopping at the local supermarket.  Back at the rig, Don cooked up one of his famous chicken dishes, while Geri and I went out and socialized with some of the humans and dogs in the park.  After dinner, lacking the TV, we listened to some Sinatra on the iPhone/iPad connection, with the help of the little amplifier/speaker that Nikki got for us.  Good entertainment!  Don and I got the blog put together, and we all turned in at a fairly early hour.  We’ll be out of here in the morning, I’m sure, probably headed for somewhere in New Hampshire.  I’ll fill you in tomorrow, sleep well!