Bangor, Maine (May 11): Our trip to Maine was complicated in many ways. My sister-in-law, Karen, being the family travel planner, arrangements for her son’s graduation from U. Maine had been made well in advance – long before we had even started looking for an RV. Given our difficulties in arranging accommodations in State College for Elisabeth’s graduation, we had decided to book our non-refundable hotel with the rest of the family for the evening before and night of Jake’s graduation, figuring that the cost of leaving the RV at a campsite, if necessary, would be small compared to the inconvenience of not having a hotel room if needed.
As the date approached, however, we realized that there was an additional problem – Rumple. After several discussion about the room, RV sites, and the dog, we found that the hotel would not allow Rumple in the room, but did have a place for us to park the RV. We decided our best option was to park the RV at the hotel and leave Rumple in the RV at times when he could not be with us.
As it is more than a 4 hour drive from the Normandy Farm campground to Bangor, we decided to leave on Thursday to be sure we would arrive on Friday night, to be on time for the graduation ceremony on Saturday. We scheduled our RV service appointment on Monday. However, Chuck also realized that we needed our standard maintenance of the truck mechanisms. To make a long story short, he made an appointment at a truck service station for 7 a.m. on Friday and at the RV service center on Monday. With all this in mind, we decided to arrive Thursday night and then stay in Bangor until at least Tuesday p.m. in case the servicing could not be done in one day, and to make sure I had internet and phone service to remotely attend a Ph.D. exam at Penn State.
This meant that we needed 3 places to stay in Bangor – a place near the truck service center on Thursday night, our hotel with the family for the graduation, and a place where we could stay with the dog in case we did not have the RV on Monday night.
For Friday night we got permission from the truck service station to camp in their parking lot. The RV is designed to live off the grid using propane and a gas generator. With our propane out of service, we had only the generator, which is quite noisy. Since the freezer was still quite full of La Cantina left-overs, as well as home-made pesto, we wanted to keep things cold, but we also did not want to run the generator at night. Fortunately, the truck service center asked us to park beside their office, which had both an electrical outlet (which we used) and a water hose (which we did not use). As a result, this was almost as comfortable as a campsite, although we could not use the slide. It was a bit spooky to be parked with the trucks and no-one else. Apparently it spooked the night watchman as well, as no-one had told him that someone would be staying in the camper. He saw me enter the camper after walking Rumple, and thought someone was breaking in.
All of the mechanics of the truck were in good shape, and we were soon able to leave for the Hampton Inn. With the RV in the parking lot, we did not have an electrical option. However, the hotel kindly offered to let us put food in their freezer. The fridge food fit nicely into the room fridge. Rumple got some extra blankets to sleep in the RV without heat – fortunately it was not very cold.
Chuck’s father and brother arrived in time for supper, and we took our graduating nephew Jake out to dinner. Like us, Jake likes to have left-overs and our steak dinner was more than ample. Unfortunately, Jake put his “doggy bag” on a chair when he got home, and one of his 2 dogs thought it was his.
When we got back to the hotel, Karen, her friend Ed and Jake’s sister Jill had arrived and we spent some family time together with Chuck’s father. The next morning, we all met for breakfast and then the most immediate family went off to graduation activities with limited attendance. Chuck and I hung out with Rumple until the ceremony was about to begin.
After weeks of cold rain, the weather cleared up for graduation. It was a perfect day. The graduation speakers were, in my opinion, better than usual. (As a faculty member I get to go to quite of few graduations.) I particularly like the keynote speakers, who were recent U. Maine graduates and local entrepreneurs.
They spoke about their personal journey in finding their own path and what was important to them – much better than many 
speeches I have heard from famous people. Whether one is there as a faculty member, parent or relative, with several hundred students going up individually to get their degrees, graduation ceremonies are both tedious and joyous. The birding binoculars at least gave us a chance to spot our favorite graduate in the crowd. When it was all over, we went into Bangor to celebrate.
During my evening walk with Rumple I discovered something interesting – the lampposts in the hotel parking lot had electrical outlets. We could have plugged in the RV after all. I initially thought that this was so that electric cars could recharge overnight, but Chuck’s father had a better explanation. In Maine’s cold winters, many drivers use block heaters for their engines. My father used to manufacture these devices, which are also common in Canada, and this makes perfect sense to me. However, since the food was already transferred to the hotel, there was no need to plug in the RV.
In the morning, Chuck’s father and brother left for home, while Jill, who still had three exams, left for U. New Hampshire. The rest of us went for breakfast before leaving the hotel. The weather had returned to rain, and was nasty.
Our new accommodations at a Howard Johnson’s close to Bangor airport were spacious and clean, but not as nice as the Hampton Inn. Although they had room to park the RV, they did not have space for our freezer goods in their fridge – instead we put on the generator. However, being able to have the dog in the room for a great benefit as the weather had turned cold, windy and rainy. And the price was certainly right.
The microwave in the room was fine for heating up yet more La Cantina leftovers and we decided to venture out to the supermarket and then hunker down for the evening.
At the RV service place the next day, the mechanics checked out our problems. They confirmed we would need a new bedroom fan (sorry – it takes a week to get one in) but the propane worked perfectly. The mechanic thought there might have been some dirt in the mechanism that had caused the problem. We returned to the hotel and switched the fridge to propane.
Jake had decided to live in a travel trailer RV for the summer near Bar Harbor. He picked up a used one at a good price, and had brought it home on Sunday. So we went off to his house to see the RV and take him out to dinner again.
Jake’s hobby is stripping down and rebuilding old vehicles and boats. He has a large pickup truck which he entirely rebuilt, suitable for towing the RV. When we got to his house, we were not too surprised to find that he had already started ripping up the insides of his RV to replace the flooring and carpets. It was a real lesson to us to see how leakage around the slides had damaged the adjacent floors and wall. We certainly could not have done this ourselves, but Jake has the know-how.
A discussion with Jake also confirmed Chuck’s suspicion that we should have done an oil change on the generator quite some time ago. Perhaps “I can do it” attitude inspired Chuck because the next morning, while I was remotely attending a Ph.D. defense, he went to the car parts store across the street, bought the required supplies and changed the oil himself. I had foretold an oily mess, but it all went well.
With the weather having become quite pleasant, we decided to go into Bangor for the afternoon, and do the river walk along the banks of the Kenduskeag River. This took us from one end of the town,, where the Kenduskeag meets the Penobscot, through downtown Bangor, and then out to the other edge, where it is mostly whitewater.
Jake had told us that it had been cold and rainy for weeks before our arrival. The river was certainly high and the current was impressive. Tides as high as 12 feet reach Bangor, and the end of our walk was just after high tide, so the water going through was really moving. We were surprised to learn that every April there is a canoe, kayak and whatever race down the river into Bangor – it looked much too perilous for people who are not whitewater experts, with lots of rapids and a number of small waterfalls. To date they have not had any serious accidents, but we were not tempted to put this event on our calendar – perhaps as spectators, but certainly not as participants.
We decided to stay one additional night at the hotel to ensure that Chuck had internet for a work meeting in the morning. As well, we needed to decide where we were going next. Although our original intention had been to tour the Canadian Maritime provinces, there was a possibility that we would have to go to Toronto, and we did not want to head out until we were sure whether we would be heading east or west.
For various reasons, my brother Donald had been handling most of the logistics of handling my mother’s estate since September. However, one of the remaining tasks, organizing an estate sale to sell off her belongings, was wearing on him and I wanted to help. We finally found someone who could manage the sale for us in the required time frame and Tuesday evening we decided that I should return to Toronto to work with the agent.
So, Wednesday morning I packed up while Chuck held his work meeting, and we headed back towards Boston. We are not sure when the agent will want me in Toronto, but there is plenty to see and do along the south shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, and meanwhile we will be within a day’s drive of Toronto.