Getting Ready For the Run North

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Two days ago we hit six months on the road! We have put over 13,000 miles on the camper and have traveled through 16 states! We've progressed from Fall into Winter and on into Spring. Summer awaits and it promises to be the Summer of a lifetime with time to truly savor New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, the Gaspe' Peninsula and Quebec City. We plan to return to Maryland by the beginning of October.

We've spent the last three days at Country Aire Campground in Charlemont, Massachusetts on the edge of the Berkshires in northern Massachusetts. We're waiting for a FedEx package that should come tomorrow and organizing the camper for the summer. I grabbed a bag full of travel and nature guides from our stash in Rockville and spent yesterday sorting them and finding room in the storage drawer under the sofa. Greg spent the morning locating and fixing a leak under the bathroom sink. When you drive your house down all sorts of roads, plumbing shakes loose and needs to be tightened from time to time. Yesterday I re-organized the food and did menu planning. Greg took a bike ride, shorter than he liked, but the wind was howling and the road climbed the mountain behind the campground instead of going around it. He was back early. We did take a short walk to explore the campground and stretch our legs a bit.

The weather forecast appears to show a warming trend, so we are going to start up the coast. If the package comes early we will leave tomorrow and travel due east, spend the night on the Massachusetts coast, then work our way up New Hampshire to Maine and then through Calais, Maine into New Brunswick. I can't wait!

Wednesday, May 15, 2013-

Yesterday our package arrived at 1 pm and we left Country Aire Campground and headed due east. We arrived at Salisbury Beach State Reservation campground and were assigned a site along the Merrimack River. The park is on a peninsula and we walked along the river and then down the ocean beach to the town of Salisbury Beach and back to our site. The third side of the peninsula had a large tidal wetland.

Salisbury Beach campsite

Dunes eating benches

Tidal salt marsh along Merrimack River

 This morning after a quiet night we left for the run north. After stops at Walmart and a food store to resupply, we drove up I 95 through New Hampshire, which is very narrow here, and then into Maine. South of Portland we turned on to I 295 and drove through downtown Portland and along the harbor.

Crossing into Maine

Portland Harbor

We soon reached Freeport and the L.L. Bean headquarters and outlet. I started scouring the clothing racks and after taking one look at Greg's face, sent him to the biking building. Thank God for cellphones! By the time Greg got bored and called me, I was heading for the check-out with my deals. I found him sitting on a bench outside the biking building happily drinking a Starbucks coffee.

We visited the camping building and found a great pair of binoculars. Now we each have our own and don't have to trade off when we see something interesting. After that I realized that Greg had reached his “expiration date” for shopping, so we found our campground for the night. Cedar Haven Campground is only four miles from Freeport and just opened for the season today. In fact, the new owners were still working on the water and sewer connections when we arrived.

Even though we were parking scofflaws, Bean's still let us spend money in their store.

 Tomorrow we will drive along the coast to Acadia National Park and spend a few days there. Looking forward to some biking and just soaking up the beauty!