The Drive

Despite our planning and motivation, we had a late departure from Bar Harbor.  Our Schwintek slide would not go in correctly.  We worked with it and got in within 3 inches on the back and level on the front.  After calling an RV mobile tech, and discussing the issue over the phone, we determined it was safe to drive.  As Gilda Radner said, “It’s always something”.  So far, we have been really blessed and on schedule.  An hour or so delay is not awful.

However, driving through traffic outside of Portland and Boston, was awful!  Our motorhome is a little over 36 feet long, plus we tow our Jeep Cherokee; this makes us about the size of a semi-truck cruising through traffic.  Ed and I have both learned to drive the RV and we try to switch out every two hours to make sure we are not too tired.  This Magic Bus is a beast, and we love her. You just have to make small corrections, look down the road to point her, and stay just under the speed limit because you are pulling a lot of weight with a gas engine.

When trucks pass us on the highway, it causes a draft of wind that pushes you away from the truck.  It sounds crazy, but you have to slightly push back to maintain your lane.  Potholes and such causes oscillation throughout the bus and if you hear something fall, it’s a good idea to see what it was.  Sometimes a drawer might not have latched, or the refrigerator flies open, or the bedroom door didn’t latch, or the bunk bed doors are sliding.  Locking things down in advance is a must.

Our New Encampment:  Cape Cod Maple Park Campground & RV Park

Ed pulled into our new campground around 4:30 pm.  The plan is to be here for two nights (Monday and Tuesday, September 15th and 16th) and explore the Cape Cod area on Tuesday. We found this campsite back in 2020, when first planning this loop through the North, Northeast.  It is everything their website describes and much more.  Right now, things are quiet, because their summer is over, but I can just imagine the fun families would have here.

They have two lakes, paddle boats, canoes, a fishing area, golf carts for rent, snack bars (even one on an island), a big gift shop, cabin rentals and cranberry bogs!  The sites are spacious and shaded.  The roads are hard packed sand and surrounding us is a mixture of tall pines and hardwood trees.  If we ever had occasion to camp in Cape Cod, Massachusetts with our grandchildren and families, this would be first on our reservation list.  

Meanwhile, Back at Home

Ed and I are really starting to miss our family back home as we enter our third week of being gone.  Life goes on and our house and Athena (our outdoor cat) are in good hands.  Candice determined that poor Athena was being robbed of her food by a feral orange cat.  We know this cat…. Toby knows this cat.  Toby lives to chase that cat off our porch.  But Candice is right, Athena wasn’t getting much of her food because of the Orange Kitty. Athena is 15 years old and very skinny. I’d been meaning to trap this stray cat and have him clipped and fixed but never got around to it.

Orange Kitty’s days of stealing Athena’s food were numbered. The cat never had a chance.  Candice set up our live trap that we had from our mini-farm days.  She also set up the portable Ring-camera I use for keeping an eye on the boys upstairs, and the challenge began.  Watching the camera from our phones was entertaining. Over this past week Candice caught a baby possum (cute but relocated), a full-grown racoon, also relocated, and finally the very fat intact feral Orange Kitty! Thankfully, the Huntsville Animal Shelter explained to Candice that Orange kitty had a good chance of being adopted, if he could be tamed, into a home or adopted into a barn cat program.  There is a high demand for kitties in Huntsville.