Month: August 2016

Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park

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Acadia National Park is one of the country’s smallest National Parks, but it’s also one of the most visited National Parks. More than 2 million people explore Acadia each year and I think they were all there with us. While we loved the park, we didn’t love the crowds. We spent two weeks in Acadia trying to find our own little piece of Down East.

 The first thing we did was drive up Cadillac Mountain to take in the views. It was breath taking! One of the other hikers there offered to take a picture of us! She did a great job! But really, with that view…I’m not sure there could be a bad picture.

The boys got to take their time with the Junior Ranger books since we were there for two weeks. We went to a Ranger Talk where they were introduced to the different sea creatures that could be found in the area tide pools. In the photo above, Alex is holding a sea star and Nicholas is hoping he’s not asked to hold it. Ha! Nicholas isn’t the most adventurist when it comes to holding gross things that come out of the ocean.

Speaking of tidal pools…we found tons of them…but no sea stars anywhere! Bummer!! All of the pools we found had plenty of muscles and periwinkles along with seaweed and sometimes…a few crabs. But, no sea stars. The search continues…

We absolutely loved Maine’s rugged coast line!

We made it to Thunder Hole…I think we must have been there at the wrong time though, because it wasn’t very active. The tide was coming in and it was making a little bit of a thunder noise…nothing big and no water swelling up. Oh well, something to try and catch next time!

The majority of Acadia National Park is on Mount Desert Island. We drove around looking at all of the harbors. I love all of the bobbers on the buildings. The tides play a huge role in the daily lives of the Mount Desert Island inhabitants. Most of them have a boat. One of the things we noticed is that because the tides are so big, they have to anchor their boats pretty far out from the coast. So, they all have these smaller boats to get out to their bigger boat.

We went to see the Bass Harbor Lighthouse. You can’t get to a place where you can get a decent shot of it from the coast line. I guess this light house is better viewed from a boat. The lighthouse was built in 1858 and is still fully functional. Right now someone lives in it, but allows people to come take pictures with it. Which I think is really generous. Can you imagine living in a place that thousands of tourist flock to every year? There would be zero privacy.

My favorite hike in Acadia is the Bubble Rock hike. It was short, but strenuous up to the summit of Bubble Rock where you get to see a huge boulder left over from when the glaciers moved through the area.

The boys tried their hardest to push it off. It didn’t budge. Not really…we just posed for a picture. Can you imagine if that boulder actually fell? It would be devastating for everyone below it.

Look at that view! We actually managed to get this spot to ourselves for a good twenty minutes! It was amazing!! When we were leaving about ten or so people were meandering their way up. One of them was nice enough to snap a picture of the five of us at the summit sign. It was appreciated since we don’t get many shots of all of us.

One of the cool things…and something we hadn’t seen before…is the way Acadia does their trail signs by re-purposing fallen trees.

The Acadia Bridges. There are 16 or 17 of them. I guess a lot of people will spend years getting pictures of all of them. We hiked to three…I hate to say it, but I was over it after the first one. If I’m going to hike, I need the payoff. I need some amazing view at the end. An old bridge in the middle of a forest just didn’t do it for me. The Carriage Roads…sigh. Again, if I’m going to hike…I need something to look at besides a road and trees. There are close to 60 miles worth of Carriage Roads to walk on. You can’t drive on them, but you can walk, bike, or ride in a carriage. And a lot of people come back year after year to experience every one of the Carriage Roads.

I think we were expecting more. Everyone I spoke to…all of the books I read…they all made such a big to do about the Carriage Roads and the bridges. But, guys…they’re just nicely graveled paths and old (albeit neat) bridges. I don’t know… To each his own.

We drove an hour to go visit the Schoodic Peninsula area of Acadia NP and boy howdy, it was totally worth it! We found the top-secret location of the Raven’s Nest. Don’t ask the Rangers about it, they won’t tell you. I guess it’s deemed too dangerous. We went on a Sunday afternoon and had the place to ourselves as we took our time here and really soaked up the views. I bet you’re wanting to know where this magical place is. We might…just maybe…have the GPS coordinates for it. I don’t know if we should give them to y’all. I mean, what if we give them to you and y’all go and fall off the cliff? I would feel terrible! But, if you promise not to go and be boneheads and fall of the cliff, I’ll give you the coordinates.

Promise?

Ok, good. Here are the coordinates 44.352005, -68.074934.

Now go forth and enjoy the splendor that is known as the Raven’s Nest! Ha! Just please be careful and if you have little kids hold their hands.

We made it all the way out to the peninsula and played around on the rocks by the shore where we found tons of muscles and more periwinkles…but still no sea stars.

Nicholas and I had fun trying to get pictures of the waves splashing up on the rocks. It took us a few tries, but we eventually got the timing just right!

As we were leaving the Schoodic Peninsula we spotted some sea otters playing! We sat in our car by the road watching them for a few minutes. We were losing the light and the otters were moving on when we spotted a porpoise! We had such an amazing day filled with nature and wild animals! It happens to be our favorite way to spend a Sunday.

On our last night in the area we met up with another full-time RV family. They showed the boys how to go crabbing. The boys loved it! They had such a great time hanging out with kids their own age. They would catch a bucket full of crabs and then take them back to the beach to have crab races with them. When they were done all the crabs were released back into the water.

It’s so rare to find other full-time RV families that have kids the same age as ours. You can imagine how different their perspective on daily life is compared to non nomad families. So when we find another family with kiddos…it’s a treat for all of us.

This was our last sunset in Acadia. Not a bad way to end our time there. We shared a campfire with some new friends and got to swap stories about living the full-time RV life with kids.

I know y’all are wondering…yup, we had lobstah!!! And we had to have a piece of blueberry pie. I mean, we were in Maine. It would’ve been a crime against nature to not have some blueberry pie. We also had to have a whoopie pie. When in Maine, right?!

There were wild flowers everywhere! I was in flower heaven! This post is already so long though so I’ll just leave you with these two pictures!

Alright! That’s our time in the Acadia area! We already want to go back, but we want to go back when there aren’t 2 million other people getting in the way.

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016

Lobstah Rolls

Lobstah Rolls

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Are y’all ready for another recipe?!

We fell in love with Lobster Rolls while we were in Maine, but they were on the pricey side at around $16 a piece for only ¼ pound of lobster meat. Instead of paying those prices we decided to make our own. I looked on the interwebs and found several recipes, but in the end we did our own thing. Lobster rolls aren’t hard to make. There are very few ingredients because the star of the show is the mild flavor of the lobster meat. If you’re not careful you can cover up the taste of the lobster and you’ll miss the whole reason you’re making lobster rolls to begin with.

I’ve actually got a few pictures to share with you for this recipe. Nope, I’m still not going to do step by step pictures for you (I’m not Pioneer Woman), but I would like to show you a few things.

There aren’t many ingredients to this recipe. It comes together really quickly.

I found this on a place mat at a restaurant. I thought it might give you a nice visual on how to pick apart a lobster. We used leftover lobster meat we had from our Lubec, ME lobster feast. You can use whatever you can find, in fact, if you can’t find good lobster, this recipe would be just as good with crab or shrimp.

We started seeing these weird looking hot dog buns once we got to the Pennsylvania area. I think it must be a North Eastern thing. They don’t even call them hot dog buns, they call them frankfurter buns. Can you see the differences in the pictures above? Lets take a closer look.  Y’all know what hot dog buns are. We’ve all eaten way more of them than we should. There’s nothing really special about them. The frankfurter buns are a bit different. Notice how they look like slices of thick cut Texas toast? The sides are flat and cut. There’s a reason for this. These buns have changed our lives. If you can’t find these buns for this recipe, I suggest you try to cut your hot dog buns to look like them. Trust me on this.

Now do you see why frankfurter buns are essential to this recipe? You toast them! With plenty of butter…I mean, really slather that butter on! Y’all aren’t on a diet, right?

This lobster roll ruined all other lobster rolls for us. We stopped eating them out because we were always disappointed with what we got.

If you can believe it, we had leftovers.  Not much…just enough for a couple of us to enjoy it at lunch the next day. This stuff rocks on a salad!

Ok! There y’all go!! I hope you make these and love them as much as we do!

Disclaimer…we’re not professional chefs or photographers, but we’re doing our best to share our lives with you.

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016

The Easternmost Point in the US!

The Easternmost Point in the US!

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We only spent one weekend in Lubec, Maine, but we wish we’d spent a couple of weeks.

Lubec was founded in 1811 and was once the home of fishing fleets and smugglers, but is now known for being the easternmost point in the US. The area has 20 foot tides and has 96 miles of coastline…so it should come as no surprise that there were quite a few lighthouses.

Right across the International Bridge is Campobello Island, New Brunswick where you can spend time exploring Roosevelt Campobello International Park. Franklin D. Roosevelt grew up spending summers on Campobello Island and later when he had a family of his own, he took them to spend summers there. You can wander through the 34 room Roosevelt summer home. There are interpreters there to answer any questions. The boys were curious about the huge megaphone you can see in the photo on the right. When the Roosevelt’s were staying at the cottage, the megaphone would be hanging up on the porch right outside the door in the photo on the left. Eleanor would use it to call the children home. We were told her voice could be heard over a mile away.

The first thing we did when we got to Lubec was find a place to eat. We ended up at Fisherman’s Wharf. It was fantastic! The food was amazing and the service was spot on! They talked us into trying some periwinkles. We tried them and guess what…we liked them! Except Nicholas. He stalwartly refused to try one. In his defense, they do look gross.

You can’t come to Maine and not get some lobster…or lobstah!

The RV park we stayed at told us where we could go get some lobstah right from the boat! We drove half an hour to get to Little River Lobster Co in Cutler, ME and let me tell you…it was soooo worth it! We walked right out onto the dock and had our pick of lobsters that had just come in that morning. Talk about fresh seafood! We loaded our cooler up with almost 15 pounds of lobster and then put some seaweed on top of them to get them home. Did you know you can pack lobsters in seaweed? It worked beautifully! And because I know you’re curious…we got all of that lobster for around $80. Lobstah for days!!! Remember that lobster roll in one of the pics above? That one lobster roll cost around $16. We found that price to be pretty consistent throughout the area.

The lobsters were all alive and well when we made it back home and were talking to each other when we opened the cooler. Magnus was not amused. He didn’t like the noises they were making and he wasn’t fond of the smell either. He sat guarding the cooler until we took it outside. Magnus is always certain that his death is imminent. He’s also afraid of his own shadow.

Sunset RV Park has lobster gear to loan out to anyone who stays there. For free. They even came down and told us how long the lobsters needed to cook! We cooked our lobster in sea water. Jerl braved the cold weather and cold water to wade out and fill the pot. He made a few hoops and hollers while doing it. I might have had a good laugh at his expense… The day we did this it was a balmy 57° outside so you know the water was cold.

Let’s talk lobstah. Did you know that lobster used to be so plentiful that they would wash up on the shores of Maine? They could be plucked up right of the shores. In the mid-1800s lobster was selling for 8¢ apiece. The big boy you see in the photo above is on a 16 inch tray. He’s what they call a Select. He was hard shelled while the rest of the ones we got were called Chixs and they were all soft shell.

Vocabulary time!

A Chix lobster is the yougest and weigh 1 pound.

A Quarter lobster weighs 1¼ pounds.

A Select lobster is a choice lobster and weighs at least 1½ pounds.

The one we got was close to 4 pounds! What’s the difference between hard shell and soft shell? A lobster will molt about 14 times before it reaches maturity. Every time it molts it sheds its hard shell and is left with a softer shell until the shell has time to harden.

While lobster was a definite highlight of our time spent in Lubec, we also did a couple of awesome hikes!

Thanks to an Instagram friend we found out about the Bold Coast Trail. I highly recommend it! The trail wasn’t difficult and it spits you out with the view in the left photo above. We had the place to ourselves so we spent quite a bit of time taking in the scenery.

On the way to Eastport, Maine we made a little side trip to a place called Reversing Falls. There’s not a waterfall. It’s called that because you can stand there and watch the current reverse its direction with the tide. Remember those 20 foot tides I told you about? We didn’t get to see it reverse, but we did enjoy another small hike and had the place to ourselves!

Eastport, Maine is the easternmost town in the United States. We spent an afternoon there where we found another lobster roll to try. I mean…we were in Maine…we had to eat lobster, right?

We stopped by Raye’s Mustard Mill. You could try all 20 or so flavors of mustard. I think we tried them all. And then we bought more mustard than one family really needs. Looks like we’re set for a while!

The only thing we didn’t love about the Lubec, Maine area was the road getting there. It was sooo bad. It might have bumped the ALCAN out of our worst road ever spot. It was that bad! Now, having said that…we made it there fine. And we would travel that road again to go back.

There were a few flowers. The wild roses were everywhere and smelled so good! And Guys….we found fireweed!! In Maine! It’s official…Maine is a mini-Alaska!!!

We loved the Lubec area so much we’ve decided that once we’re done with the fifty state tour we could easily spend one or two months there…someday!

#easterloop2016

NH and ME State Capitol Buildings

NH and ME State Capitol Buildings

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I’m combining the New Hampshire and Maine State Capitol Building posts.

We only spent a night in New Hampshire on our way through to Maine, but don’t worry…we’re going to be doing some more things in New Hampshire on our way back down the coast.

The New Hampshire SCB was under some construction so the dome was covered. Dang. I’m sure it’s a lovely dome. I heard that it’s covered in gold leaf.

The inside was very utilitarian, but everything that was there had a meaning or purpose. There were over 200 paintings throughout the building. We didn’t take the tour at the Concord, New Hampshire State Capitol Building so unfortunately, I don’t have a ton of information on it. The door to the Senate Gallery was open so we went in to have a look. You can take a look at it in the bottom left photo. The New Hampshire Senate is the fourth smallest state Senate with only 24 members. So far, each of the New England states has had a Hall of Flags in their State Capitol Buildings. You can see some of the flags in the bottom right photo above. The flags were all in a display case.

I spotted these flowers on the corner across from the State Capitol Building and had to snap a picture. We did manage to squeeze in a pizza place in New Hampshire before we headed on down the road. I’ll let Nicholas give you all the details about that though!

 Next stop was the Maine State Capitol Building! The Maine State House was in line with the other New England Houses. Very basic, clean lines, utilitarian. We saw another Hall of Flags, but all of these flags were replicas. The real ones were at a museum.

This was the first time we saw a porch at a State Capitol Building. According to the tour guide, it’s used often when the Senate and House are in session.

There was a dome and we actually got to see it! It’s…cream colored. As the guide was walking us to the Senate Gallery, she warned us that we couldn’t touch the Senate chairs. That even the Senators weren’t allowed to touch another Senator’s chair. And she watched us like a hawk while we were in there. Jerl dared me to touch one on our way out. I may or may not have accidentally brushed against one of them. Maybe. Maybe not…

The RV park we stayed at while we were visiting Augusta, ME was right by the Kennebec River. It was beautiful and calm while we were there!

Charles had been looking forward to the seafood offered in the North Eastern states. We stopped in at a local favorite called The Red Barn where your meal comes out and is all one color. Ha! You get the three Fs at The Red Barn…fried, fresh and fast! Guys…it was so good! We got the Mixed Seafood Baskets to share. Except Nicholas who opted for a burger. And then Jerl and I got a cup of the Seafood Stew to share. Oh! And I had to try the onion rings! We thoroughly enjoyed everything we got!

We’ll be in Maine for about a month so we’ll definitely get a chance to experience more of what Maine has to offer.

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016

Montpelier, VT

Montpelier, VT

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Remember back in the Albany post how I told you I had several State Capitol Building posts to do? Montpelier is number two of four.

Vermont has the smallest State Capitol City. It’s tiny. The dome you see on the building is covered with 23.7 carat gold leaf. I had high hopes for this building. It looked so promising from the outside.

I’ve got three pictures to show you of the Vermont State Capitol Building and one of them is a picture of the floor. In the lobby, the floor is made of marble. The white tiles are from Danby, Vt and the black tiles are from Isle La Motte on Lake Champlain. All throughout the building you can see fossils from the Chazy Fossil Reef. We loved that! The boys kept watch for more fossils while we took the tour.

We took the guided tour and saw the Senate Chamber, Representatives’ Hall, and even the Governor’s Office. It was all nice and tidy…and needing some work. There wasn’t anything opulent. It was, in fact, all very modest. In the Reception Room we saw two stained glass skylights. They were both lovely.

I’m afraid that’s all I have to tell you about the Vermont State Capitol Building. After seeing the grandeur of the New York State Capitol Building…the Vermont SCB was a little disappointing. I was looking forward to the dome, but we didn’t get to see it because it’s been deemed unsafe. What a bummer.

When you think of Vermont, what comes to mind? Maple syrup and dairy, right? We found a place called Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks to explore the maple syrup making process.

You can walk around and look at where they get their maple. It all starts with the trees. They call early spring “sugarin’ time”. One tap hole can produce up to fifteen gallons of sap each season. Since it takes forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, it takes up to three trees to make a gallon of finished syrup. Once they’ve collected the sap they run it through a reverse osmosis then it goes into the machine you see above. The whole point is to get as much of the water out of the syrup as possible and bring it to a specific temperature. Interesting fact…way back when Vermonters started working with maple, they actually cooked it longer and made a sugar out of it. When the white cane sugar we all know became popular, the people of Vermont decided to start making maple syrup instead of maple sugar.

Think that stuff you pour over your pancakes every morning is maple syrup? You should check the ingredients. More often than not it’s actually corn syrup flavored to taste like maple syrup.

It’s known as creemee in Vermont, but the rest of the country knows it as soft serve ice cream. At Morse Farm they add maple syrup to their creemee and it is magical! We all got treats. Nicholas had the Maple Popcorn Sundae. He wasn’t mad about it. *wink wink*

We found the Ben & Jerry’s Factory to take care of the dairy part of what Vermont is known for. There’s a guided tour that takes you right by the factory where they’re making the ice cream. Be prepared…I snuck a shot just for y’all…

Oh dang…you can’t really see anything. *giggle* We weren’t supposed to take photos of the factory. The guide said something about corporate secrets…honestly, you can see everything you would want to see in the right picture above. I’m not sure what secrets they were worried about leaking. It looked amazingly like any other food factory floor.

They took us down to the original flavor lab. You can see it in the left photo above. This is the place where Ben & Jerry used to make all of their flavors. And yes, they said it was ok for me to grab photo of it.

At the end of the tour they give you a free scoop of the flavor of the day. For us it was Triple Caramel Chunk. Yummo! And…of course, we had to visit the scoop shop on our way out even though we’d just had some free ice cream!

I forgot to tell you about the Flavor Graveyard where you can stroll through the “graves” of the flavors that have been discontinued. It was a fun tour with a tasty ending!

We only spent a week in Vermont, but we will definitely go back! Vermont turned out to have a beautiful countryside, and is definitely a foodie’s paradise…we found some not so hidden treasures.

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016

Pizza Roundup Pendelis Pizzeria

Pizza Roundup Pendelis Pizzeria

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For my fellow pizza lovers I bring to you a post for Pendelis Pizzeria in Montreal Canada!


Pendelis is a very good pizza place with a pepperoni cut like you have never seen! They cut the pepperoni long ways instead of the usual rounds. The pepperoni is so tasty too!

When you go to Pendelis make sure to check out their pasta, because it looks excellent. My brother had the pasta and he loved it! Pendelis has more than just pizza and pasta, they also have poutine and burgers.

The staff is really nice and the food is really good. For all of that I give Pendelis Pizza a 5 star review

See you next time on…

Pizza Street!!

Montreal, Quebec

Montreal, Quebec

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While we are on our eastern state loop this year, we are taking the opportunity to explore a little bit of Canada. We took a day trip to Montreal. We’ve been in and out of Canada for the last year as we made our way to and from Alaska. This time we were nervous because we don’t speak French. Not even a little bit. Charles is taking French and he can recognize some of the words, but overall, he’s still pretty useless as a translator. We armed ourselves with a map (the only one we could find was in…French) and we programmed our car’s GPS for all of our destinations (in order) the night before. We rely on our phones for information and directions more than we probably should so it was definitely a learning experience heading to a place where we wouldn’t have our security blanket.

Our goal was to find and visit seven places. We managed to see them all! And we only got lost once…well, not really lost. We knew where we were, we just had to find our way through the maze of one way streets.

Our first stop was the Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral. I’m not going to be able to tell you much about these places…again, the info we found was mostly in French. I can tell you that this cathedral was inspired by the St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral was built at the end of the 19th century.

Since we’re talking about churches…I have a confession…my camera isn’t the quietest camera. The shutter is annoyingly loud. I could have happily shot tons of pictures in this cathedral, but it’s a working cathedral. There were people actively praying and I didn’t want to intrude. So, I got a few OK shots and just walked around soaking in the beauty. I did get a dome shot. Y’all know my love of domes.

Our second stop was Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal. The sun was not my friend here. So, you’ll have to suffer with a shoddy picture.

We almost skipped going inside because you have to pay to get in. We walked in and our mouths dropped open. Pictures don’t even begin to do it justice. There are guided tours here. We didn’t do one since we were on a schedule. We overheard a tour guide tell her group that there are so many churches in Montreal that one closes almost weekly so the churches are now run like a business to stay open. Which is why we had to pay just to go inside. Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal was built between 1824 and 1829.

Our next stop was the Old Montreal neighborhood where the streets are still cobblestone and some the buildings date back to the 17th through 19th centuries. We had a good time wandering around and people watching.

Right next to Old Montreal is Old Port. I also have a thing for harbors. I don’t get to see as many, but I always snap a few pictures when I find one.

Stop four was the Square Saint Louis. The whole neighborhood is in this same style of Victorian row houses.

Stop five was the Montreal Botanical Garden. The Botanical Garden was founded in 1931 and today is known as one of the largest in the world. It’s huge! There are around thirty thematic gardens. We walked through several of them. It took longer than I thought it would…probably because I kept stopping to take pictures of the flowers.  There were flowers of every color, shape, and size imaginable! I could have spent the entire day exploring the gardens. The day we went was a wonderfully warm, sunny day. And guys…it smelled soooo good here! I walked around just sniffing everything. I’m sure I had a stupidly ridiculous grin on my face…but how can you be anything but happy when you’re surrounded by flowers?!

One of the thematic gardens was a Chinese garden. It was under construction so the only shot I got was the one above.

By this time, we had three boys that thought they were going to wither away if we didn’t feed them soon. So, we cut our garden visit short and went in search of food. I had already picked a place to eat. You won’t be surprised to learn it was a pizza place so Nicholas could check Montreal off of his pizza list. I’ll let him fill you in on where we ate. I will say this about it…the guys working there were the nicest! Seriously, they were super nice.

Our last stop of the day was Saint Joseph’s Oratory.

The crutches and canes hanging between the pillars were left by pilgrims near the shrine of Saint Joseph. I didn’t take too many pics here. It’s a huge place with so many different levels and rooms. Some of the rooms felt very sacred (like the votive room in the right picture above), but others felt more like a tourist trap. It was odd. They even had a guide book in English you could buy. We did. It was interesting, but a little confusing as it led us all over the place. We’d never seen escalators in a church before so that was new for us.

We were tired and ready to go home. We had a great day and thoroughly enjoyed our time in Montreal!

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016