Old Port Portland, Eating with the Locals and RVing 101

July1 - From Scarborough, Maine
A couple of tent campers here at Wild Duck Campground mentioned that the “Old Port” section of Portland was really neat.  We decided to go take a look today.
Portland is less than 10 miles from Wild Duck so it was an easy trip.  It’s an old city having its first permanent settlers in 1633 and many old buildings dating to the 1700 and 1800s.  Some neat looking places, lots of cobblestone streets , pretty much something for everyone.  And it is considered a foodies paradise.



Going up and down the hills gave us an appetite.  We spotted a place with a line out the door named Portland Lobster Company and thought about going there.  However, having done a LOT of business traveling, I‘ve had some great luck with stopping people on the street and asking where they like to dine.  I saw two lades taking a shortcut between buildings and asked  if they were residents and where they like to have lunch?

As luck would have it we just happened to be in front of J’s Oyster.  It’s where locals go and the ladies told us the the lobster rolls were outstanding. They were right and the clam chowder was also superb.
The restaurant is situated at the end of a channel.  The boat in back of me on the left is called Barrister.  And the owners law firm is on the dock’s edge.  Not bad.




On the map that we see lots of tourists reading I spotted a place called Gorgeous Gelato.  We’ll we just had to go there. 

It was delicious.
When we got back home I had to do a few routine tasks that included changing the under-the-sink Everpure water filter that gives us great water for drinking and making coffee.  I also put in a new whole “house” water filter that traps any sediment and a variety of things you don’t want in your water.

Then there was the successful conclusion to having the Honda tested to meet the Illinois EPA standards without driving the CR-V more than a thousand miles to get the testing done.  Lucky for us, Illinois and Maine have reciprocity for automobile emissions testing.  Several weeks ago I took our car to the Honda dealer in Portland where for $24.95 I was given a two page print out that we faxed to Illinois and viola! we could then complete the renewal process.  That and $99 got us the little yellow sticker for the corner of our plates.  The sticker arrived today.  We were only one day late in getting it applied.  Whew!
Also from the campground is this picture of momma duck and her nine babies.  They make me smile every time I see them.

Stay tuned.

Father’s Day on the Coast of Maine

Today is one of those days that used to occur about three times a year when we lived in Chicago and, invariably, two of those days we were at work.  It is sunny and about 75F with light winds from the east.  A perfect day to take a drive in the country. We headed south toward Cape Elizabeth and the famous Portland Head Lighthouse.

I copied this information about the lighthouse from the web:
The city of Portland took its name from the headland where the lighthouse now stands, but Portland Head is now actually within the present boundaries of the town of Cape Elizabeth. Portland, which was known as Falmouth until 1786, was America’s sixth busiest port by the 1790s. There were no lighthouses on the coast of Maine when 74 merchants petitioned the Massachusetts government (Maine was part of Massachusetts at the time) in 1784 for a light at Portland Head, on the northeast coast of Cape Elizabeth, to mark the entrance to Portland Harbor. The deaths of two people in a 1787 shipwreck at Bangs (now Cushing) Island, near Portland Head, led to the appropriation of $750 for a lighthouse, and construction began.
The project was delayed by insufficient funds, and construction didn't progress until 1790 when Congress appropriated an additional $1,500, after the nation's lighthouses had been ceded to the federal government.
The stone lighthouse was built by local masons Jonathan Bryant and John Nichols. The original plan was for a 58-foot tower, but when it was realized that the light would be blocked from the south it was decided to make the tower 72 feet in height instead. Bryant resigned over the change, and Nichols finished the lighthouse in January 1791.
President George Washington approved the appointment of Capt. Joseph Greenleaf, a veteran of the American Revolution, as first keeper. The light went into service on January 10, 1791, with whale oil lamps showing a fixed white light. At first, Greenleaf received no salary as keeper; his payment was the right to fish and farm and to live in the keeper’s house. As early as November 1791, Greenleaf wrote that he couldn’t afford to remain keeper without financial compensation. In a June 1792 letter, he complained of many hardships. During the previous winter, he wrote, the ice on the lantern glass was often so thick that he had to melt it off. In 1793, Greenleaf was granted an annual salary of $160.
(Thank you http://www.lighthouse.cc/portlandhead/history.html)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (remember him from high school English) was fond of the lighthouse as you can see in the above photo.


But even with the lighthouse there were still shipwrecks.

Here is another view of the lighthouse for which it is claimed to be the most photographed lighthouse in the world.























The famous rock-ribbed coast of Maine.
After our trip to Cape Elizabeth we decided to visit The Lobster Shack, which was highly recommended to us.  We even found a parking place less than a block from the ocean front eatery, but a line out the door of about 50 people made us decide to come back on a week day.

Were gonna end the day with a visit to a local ice cream emporium for something special.
Stay tuned.

Wild Duck Campground in Scarborough, Maine

We made the last leg of our journey from Florida to Maine yesterday.  We pulled out of Croton Point Park in Westchester County, NY around 7:30 and some six hours and four states later we were in Scarborough, Maine.  We only traveled about 315 miles yet we were in five states:  New York>Connecticut>Massachusetts>New Hampshire>Maine.
Surprisingly the roads were not too crowded for being in the northeast/New England corner of the country.  Below is our new home for the next four months.  In exchange for a free site and electricity, we will be work camping here until October 10.  Each of us will work  four days a week for three or four hours.  Sandy will work in the office and I will help with maintenance.  Then we are off for the same three days.

Wild Duck Campground is Located in the middle of the Maine Audubon’s Scarborough Marsh.  Wildlife includes waterfowls, egrets, herons, ibises, raptors, muskrat, mink, otter, deer and moose. The marsh is the state's largest salt water marsh and can be explored by foot, kayak or canoe.

The campground is adults only and, as you might expect very tranquil.  There are only 70 sites which includes an area for tent camping.

The grounds are immaculate and well tended. And when the wind blows in the tall pines the sound reminds me of ocean waves rolling onto the beach.


Flowers add color.

This view of the marsh is what we see out of our front window.

And because “wild duck” is part of the camp’s name, it is good to see that Mother Nature is seeing that there is a new supply of duck to swim in the pond.

Stay tuned.

A few days in New York

May 31, 2011 from Croton Point Park at Croton-on-Hudson, NY
We’ve spent a few days in the Empire State so that we could go see our first grandson, Oscar, who is now nine months old.

We got to see him at Christmas and how he has changed in five months.  He is a happy and active child with lots of charm.
Oscar is the first-born child for our son, Jamison and daughter-in-law, Jane.  They live in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Harlem, NY and commute daily into Manhattan where Jamison is an associate editor at Grove/Atlantic, Inc.  http://www.groveatlantic.com/  and Jane is on the staff of the American Museum of Natural History http://www.amnh.org/ .
These two young adults stay slim with a lot of walking, including the 64 steps up to their apartment.  Speaking of walking, both days that we were in New York we took long walks around the neighborhood and were amazed at the amount of parks, community gardens and well-tended kiddie playgrounds and athletic fields we saw.  We even went past a permanent carousel in the park.

The carousel is located in Riverbank State Park alongside of the Hudson River.
We also strolled past this work-in-progress on the complete rehabilitation of the only known residence of Alexander Hamilton -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton The site is officially named Hamilton Grange National Memorial, Manhattan Sites, NY, NY.


The park we are in is about 50 miles north of Manhattan.  To get into the city we drove 2 miles to the Metra North train station at Croton-on-Hudson where we could park all day for a reasonable price and got half-prices senior tickets for a very fast and very comfortable commuter rail line trip into the city.  We caught an express train both days so each one way commute was about 35 minutes.  From the train station it was a $12 or $13 cab ride to the kids apartment.
How many of you remember a scene like this from your working days:

We sure don’t miss those trains.
Today we drove 30 miles north to Monroe, NY to stock up on groceries at Walmart and to check out a possible “escape route” from the area.  Because this is mountainous country with many winding roads we wanted to check out this route.  As it turns out, it will work for us.  Bonus:  our Illinois Tollway I-Pass works on the EZ-Pass system in the northeast and New England states. Sure beats fumbling for the wallet.
We got this view of the Hudson River which flows right past our park.

And here is a picture of where we are parked.

Thursday we head for Maine.
Stay tuned.

Monticello and Michie Tavern

Tuesday, May 24 --from Charlottesville, VA
We arrived in the rolling hills of north central Virginia yesterday afternoon and it is  truly beautiful countryside.

Today we went to see Monticello.  It is not to be missed.  As you all know the land was Jefferson’s boyhood home and as an adult he built a remarkable home on the top of a low mountain that today -– some two hundred and forty-some odd years later -- stands as a shrine to our third president.
We took one of the paid guided tours. You simply could not get an appreciation for all of the history there without a tour.  As a matter of fact, you can’t see the inside of Monticello without a ticket.  And that is good because no tax funds are used to restore or maintain the nearly 3,000 acres of the plantation’s gardens and buildings.

An abundance of flowers on the path to the visitors center.
The entire estate is one of the most impressive historical sites we have seen in our two years of travel.  The visitors center complex is so tastefully done and not at all commercial.  No junk in the gift shops, no cigarette butts, no trash anywhere -- just beautiful grounds and buildings that are  exemplary in every respect.
Rather than recite a bunch of historical data I’ll let the pictures and brief captions show you what we saw.

Monticello from the west lawn.

Thomas Jefferson designed the University of Virginia and from his north terrace he could see the construction of The Rotunda at the University of Virginia which he designed to be the architectural and academic heart of his community of scholars, or what he termed the "academical village."

Another view of the house.  There are hundreds of magnificent old trees on the property and not one of them dates back to the time of Jefferson.

Archeological research is constantly being done on the estate.  Here a group of volunteer scholars search for remnants of the original pathways around the grounds.

Vegetable gardens occupy a stretch of terraced land 1000 feet long by 80 feet wide.   Even today as was done more than 200 years ago, fresh vegetables are used in food preparation for guests.  Only now the fed guests are visitors who pay to dine in the café at the visitors center.
Along the north and south sides of his home but below grade so as not to detract from the visual beauty of the home, Jefferson designed a series of rooms that he termed “dependencies.”  These rooms housed stables, the kitchen, smoke house, wine storage, beer and cider brewing and more.

Wine cellar

This dumbwaiter in the wine cellar is directly below the dining room.

The wrought iron back of the 2.5 inch thick door to the wine cellar. Theft was a common occurrence on the plantation and keys to food and beverage storage were closely guarded.

I could not get a photo showing the entire kitchen as it was constantly filled with visitors.  But in the section at the lower left-hand edge of the photo is a row of 7 or 8  charcoal fires in grated cast-iron openings that could be regulated more precisely than a roaring fireplace.  French cuisine was regularly served to the Jeffersons and guests.

The privy.

A fresh air vent for the privy located at least 500 feet from the house.

This cistern-like structure was used to hold ice cut from a nearby river.  As soon as ice reached a thickness of one inch, slabs were cut and stored inside this cylindrical structure.  Among the many uses of ice at Monticello was the making of ice cream.

Our 3rd president is buried in a location of his choice on the grounds of Monticello.  The grave is maintained by the Jefferson family  and to this day family members may be buried there.  Of all his many notable achievements Jefferson chose just these three to be engraved on his tombstone: “Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”

Following our visit to Monticello we drove to nearby Michie Tavern (circa 1784) where we had one of the best meals in ages.  Then we took a short walk on the tavern grounds and visited this charming old log cabin made of original growth Chestnut that had only recently been moved to the tavern and now houses a gift shop (nothing from China).

It was a busy day.  Tomorrow we head north to Harrisburg PA.
Stay tuned.


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Tybee Island, GA

We spent most of the last two days getting to and from Tybee Island and enjoying some of what it has to offer. 
We went there Friday to check it out and as we were getting ready to pay our lunch bill our waiter asked us if we were going to take part in the World's Largest Water Fight that would shut down the main street from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.


Our waiter was a young man and I thought he might be exaggerating a bit when he said that thousands of people all armed with squirt guns would take part.  But at 1:30  (4 and 1/2 hours before the fun begins) people were already setting up.  We saw a pick up truck parked on the main drag on which the owner had lined the cargo bed with heavy plastic and filled the bed with water. 

This guy is carrying a huge water supply. (Photo above and below courtesy of Kate Stratman)

Here an unsuspecting dry pedestrian is about to get very wet.
We returned to Tybee to meet up with Kate and Rocky Stratman.  Kate has been a friend of Sandy’s for close to 40 years.  After dinner we drove our friends back to their hotel and all of the dust and pollen on our car was blasted away by “friendly fire”.
Saturday morning returning from our walk I came across this Corn Snake.  Non-venomous and very pretty. Look carefully in the center of the photo. At the time I took the photo I thought the snake might be poisonous so I did not want to get too close.

The park trail we walked Friday morning took us deep in the woods where we came across what remains of this moonshine still.  No samples.

We went back to Tybee Island this afternoon to take a tour of Fort Pulaski and then to have an early dinner with Kate and Rocky.

Rocky and Kate on the boardwalk.

We got lucky on our visit to Fort Pulaski as they were firing cannons today.  The park rangers warned and instructed us to fully cover our ears as the sound of the cannon going off would be really loud.  It was.

This cannon was the latest technology during the Civil War.  The inside of the barrel has a spiral groove which causes the shell to rotate thereby increasing accuracy.  This 30 pound shell contained gunpowder and could travel more than two miles.
The fort has a great 20 minute educational film in the Visitors Center that was well worth the time.
We learned that the fort took 30 years to build and about 30 minutes of Union Civil War cannon technology to breach the seven foot thick walls.

We had a great time.  Tomorrow we begin our slow journey north.

Stay tuned.