Travel day today and it’s pouring with rain as we bid a fond farewell to our friends. They gave us a splendid time and so good to reminisce about mutual friends.
Now we start our trip in earnest passing through south eastern Vermont, New Hampshire and into Maine. The roads are excellent. Much better than anticipated when traveled rather than viewing the twists and turns on the map.
The highways are lined with the pinks and purples of lupines, blooming in full glory right now.
Not a lot of choices for lunch and we ended up in a pizza joint in Raymond, NH. Good pizza actually.
Before we left today, our hosts reminded us that the home store for LL Bean is in Freeport. As it turned out, it was only 4 miles from our campsite and at the same exit. Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, we had no worries about shopping hours on a Sunday. Surprisingly, for such a large store ( it was larger than the average Costco and several floors), it was set in a village atmosphere with parking spread out amongst the trees. We bought a few things we thought we still ‘needed’ for our trip. Not that I couldn’t have purchased any of it online before we left home. It made a good end of the day activity and now we can say we’ve made the pilgrimage.
Settled in for the evening. Each campsite had freshly carved white pine benches and a table. Our camp host explained that a 24 inch dump of very wet snow in March 2024 felled more than 30 mature white pine trees on the property. Wood mills won’t take trees from campgrounds as most of them have nails in them that damage milling equipment. Not wanting to waste the wood, a local chain saw artist carved these benches and tables for the campsites. There are also large beautiful painted carvings all over the campground.
We took some time to get organized and back into the rhythm of camping life. Lazy dinner of wine and music followed by hotdogs (it’s our first day and we haven’t gone shopping yet because we visited friends for the first 2 days), chips, home made cookies and a pear.
Changes made for this trip
We had made further reductions in items carried including the storage footstool that we no longer needed. This means I no longer have to deal with it in my space in the back of the van, or move it from the back to the front every night. Advantage number two is that I can now put my small footstool where I need it and no longer have to stand on the seats to reach things. I can fold it up and put it away when I need to. Safer and easier.
Water and electrical connections have been moved from the rear to the side of the van where they should have been in the first place. My husband is thrilled with the new arrangement. They used to hand down from the rear of the vehicle. He no longer has to worry about knocking them off if he backs over something.
The Starlink router and power supply have also been permanently installed and out of the way with a port installed on the outside at the rear passenger side. Now all we have to do is put the satellite dish itself outside, plug it into the outside connection and align it. Easy peasy.
We are both happy campers.😂
Louise and Brian McLeod Travel Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.