From Cadillac Mountain

JoAnn

Bar Harbor

9/12/13

Good evening.  Just a quick note before I fall backwards onto a mess of pillows.

We left Baddeck NS yesterday and spent 7 hours on the road to get to the Bar Harbor Campgrounds.  It was an uneventful drive except for the downpour during the first half and then contending with US 1 for the second half.  USS 1 is of course one of the original roads that circumnavigates the US.  Since this eastern leg has been long replaced by super freeway like  US95  it has fallen into disrepair.  And you feel it.  It is cracked and heaved and potholed and slow as it still passes through all the old though by now not very populated towns.  There are still sections through Main where US 1

Downtown Bar Harbor

serves the Coast while  US95 flies by a little ways inland.  So if one is looking for the coastal communities then US 1 it is. 

 I think the trailer’s black water tank shut off valve loosened up during the extended jarring and bouncing of US 1.  When I removed the cap to attach  another draining type cap,  well let us just say that what issued forth  was unexpected and not pretty.  I managed to jam the other cap back on before befouling too much of the site.  Fortunately we had been using the toilet very little and using camp facilities instead.  The black water tank (toilet) and grey water tank (sinks) shut off  valves (push/pull blade type) are the weakest point in the trailers plumbing system.  Great huh!  I won’t belabor the reader with the rigors of procedure required to “dump” ones tanks but needless to say it is never something looked forward to.  But its one of those “well if you want to be self sufficient and self contained on the road then you better know how to do it and take care of it as best as you can” or you too can have the yellowish  brown flood shoot at you when least expected. 

Pedestrian Bridge

 I guess I have put off talking about this subject until now in order to avoid “soiling” the romantic notions of the open road.  We all secretly cringe at the thought of public restrooms at gas stations, rest stops, strip malls, even campgrounds.  Some of the more particular among us try to make the best of it by taking tissue and wiping off seats, and for us men the front inside edge of the lip.  It is almost impossible not to  have your “thang” touch up against where hundreds of others have rested!  I know a lady who carries her own little bottle of anti microbial mister to public restrooms and even around campsite hookups.  I don’t laugh at her.   Most campsite hookups: water, sewer, power  are all within 4-5 feet from each other.  In some cases I have seen the sewer inlets right at the base of the water and power hook ups with all cords, hoses and tubes crossing in confusion.  However, we are thankful for and welcome the use and privacy of a toilet in one’s own RV.  But it has a price of  diligence, high maintenance and rigorous procedure.

“Enough” you say “enough.”  I agree.  It is just that it is the  one bodily function that follows us through life and is responsible for many of its “detours.”  They do not call them pit stops for nothing.  In some of the places I have been a clean pit in the ground would have been preferred.

All right enough, I’ll save more of those misadventures for future travel rants.  After all it is a subject that is always just below the surface.  “Erg!  Was that your stomach?”

I did not even get around to our mostly blunder filled day here in Acadia National Park.  Suffice it to say that the Park Rangers have a secret system of roadways that weave in and out of the regular roads that service these two very large islands and their towns, Bar harbor included.  We kept seeing the brown and white signs (Ntl. Park colors)  pointing to this road or that turn off mixed in with all the other white, green, or blue signs and saying to ourselves “We’ve been driving for hours around this island and I don’t feel like we are in the park yet!”  “How can there be an entire Island that is a park, Acadia National Park,  with towns and businesses and homes serviced by roadways without park entrances or gates to keep them separate?

where we stayed

Turns out it is an elaborate overlay of two roadway systems where one hardly ever sees the Park system as it crosses under and over the public system through very clever bridges and causeways some hidden by buffers of trees.  the Park gets the best  “wild” parts of the coastlines while the rest of us gets the normal towny , village stuff.  Not that wasn’t a lot of color and charm, architecture, culture and boaty,  yachty stuff.  But where’s  the crashing surf, the granite boulder strewn beaches, that Maine calendar stuff?   Ah that park entrance is in the parallel world that exists on this Island and must be found via the “back” ways.  

So for the entire day except for the drive up to Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the East Coast,  JoAnn and I were never “in” the park.  So it was back to the Campground and the aforementioned sewage surprise.  

Early tomorrow morning dressed in shorts, dirty t shirt, flip flops, rubber gloves and glasses I will do battle with the dreaded campground dumping station.  

Sleep come take me now.