Category: Moving West

We left York, Maine on the afternoon of July 3rd. We had planned to drop off my car and be done with it but, unfortunately, we lost the title sometime between Thursday eve and Friday afternoon. We still dropped off the car but are still working to get a title copy to the dealer.

Ruby found many spots to chill on the way. Little did she – or we – know that the fireworks on the 4th would be the last time we would see her. Cross Lake is a beautiful place and she’s lucky to have chosen that spot for her final walk into the woods. We love you Ruby. We place some items in Patti’s garden in your honor. We’ll miss you!

We stayed in WalMart parking lot in Houlton on the 3rd. We pulled in around 9:30. Ruby checked out the grassy area behind the camper for a while. We had some dinner and turned in. Saturday morning we pulled out and I spaced out on the cat box and drove over it. I fumbled around a bit trying to figure out which gas station to gas up at. We were at a Shell station after just using up a Dunkin Donuts gift card. Pam said, “let’s use our Shell gift card” but I drove across the road to Irving. “That’s okay, we have an Irving gift card too.” Too late, I was on my way back to Shell!

We stopped in Caribou to visit Papa. They opened the window for us and we had a nice visit. I pulled the sun umbrella and a chair out of the camper because it was quite hot in the sun. Ruby roamed around the nursing home grounds. I rode my bike over to the airport and all around the parking lot. Papa seemed to perk up as we visited.

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We pulled into Cross Lake and Terry offered me a beer, as Pam had predicted, before we set about parking the camper in the best spot on the lake!
We had a lobster feed on the 4th and then we headed out on the lake in the evening for the fireworks. According to Cross Lake residents that we spoke to, that was the most boats and the most fireworks they can remember ever seeing on the lake! The moon was nearly full and we stayed out until well after nine o’clock. Lucy said, “In two hours it will be midnight!”. Benny got so tired he decided to sleep in his own bed instead of the camper.

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The next day we went into Square Lake for some lumberjacking and picnicking. Bob had a tree he wanted down. Terry, John, and I took our cues from Bob and we got the tree down without any blood or guts being spilled. There were some hijinks with gas and Bob’s chainsaw. John and Terry had Bob convinced they had put pure gas in the saw and some fine acting by John kept the ruse intact. While Bob was cutting some brush for the firepit I heard him say, “might as well run it until it blows up!”

More to come…

Happy Saturday before Father’s Day 2020. We took off from our York campsite on Friday afternoon. It was time to give our hosts a break from us.

We stopped at Hannaford’s in North Berwick, a block from the first house we owned, to pick up some supplies. We pulled into Bunganut around 5-ish. The first order of business was draining the tanks. Our spot in York is wonderful but we are basically boondocking so part of the reason for our “holiday” was to dump the tanks, hookup to some fresh water and some delicious electricity! The generator has been great but I haven’t been very diligent about stressing over the batteries. I have not adhered to the “50% rule” by any means!

the dumping went well so then it was time for our first campground hang with the new rig. On the way through to the dump station we passed our site. I went back in the opposite direction so we pulled up with the site on our right. I planned to back in. Pam got out and I started backing in, at an angle, up hill. I hadn’t gone too far before I heard a loud snap and somene yell, “awning!”. I stopped and got out and, sure enough, I had dinged the awning off a tree and she was a little “twisted” to the fore side of the camper. We talked a bit, made a few turns and twists and I got ‘er into the site eventually.

The awning is not too bad (you can check it out in the picture) but she’s going to need some attention! We have a plan for our next campground landing. Okay, gotta go jump in the lake. I’ll tell you about Ruby later…

06/22/20 – We’re back in York but I promised to tell you about Ruby. If you’ve had the chance to meet us and hang with us a bit, you’ve probably met Ruby the stray cat who managed to get an invitation into our house about 10+ years ago and has been with us ever since. Every other cat we’ve had before Ruby became a victim of Beech Ridge Road traffic, along with one of our dogs. Ruby is an outdoor cat but she’s a survivor!

When it came time to move, Ruby “came with”. Now she’s a camper cat and she’s doing well in York. She wanders a bit but never too far. The trip to Bunganut was her first real camping trip.

Initially, she stayed on the campsite. We arrived in early evening and she was cool all night. Campfire, no problem. She mostly laid around in site. When it came time for bed, she opted to stay outside. She’s done this many times in York and she’s always there the next morning or cries out loud enough in the night for one of us to wake up and let her in.

The next morning she was nowhere to be seen. We ate breakfast outside by the camper, nothing. We went for a swim and then walked around the campsite, nothing. Nowhere to be seen. We eventually ate lunch and she didn’t show up then either.

We speculated that the campers in the site below us may have catnapped her. The woman in the crew was very vocal about how she wanted a camp cat and how amazed she was that Ruby hung around. Could they have possibly taken off with her? They were really talkative the day before but today they didn’t say a word while they were packing up. Hmmmm…

We also thought someone may have thought she was a stray, she is, but, you know, she’s our stray now! She has no collar so someone could have thought that and taken her in. We were sad but, if she wound up with a nice new family, at least she’d be happy! We had pretty much written her off.

We were playing cards later on and I looked over on the hill about 40 feet away and, lo and behold, who should be climbing up the embankment but our favorite stray cat, Ruby. I walked over and said her name, she glanced in my direction but kept marching up the hill. I called her a few more times, she meowed, then marched, so I picked her up and brought her over to the campsite. She marched around a bit, took a few sniffs of her litter box and reckoned she must be home. We got her some food and she settled back in rather rapidly.

She snoozed a lot for the rest of the day but Saturday night, she slept inside the camper! Sunday, she hung around for father’s day. We took off by 11AM and got back to York around 3-ish after a stop in Alfred for some lunch.