Spending the night in the vineyard

Camping at the Magnetic Mountain Winery in New Brunswuck--beautiful!  Our hosts travel to Ft. Myers FL every winter... a looooong trip.

 

We are members of Harvest Hosts (www.harvesthosts.com), which is a very cool organization.  They have signed up over 450 wineries and farms who are willing to host RVers for free!  All they ask is that you purchase something from the winery or farm store.  'Course, this could be dangerous because there is so much good stuff to buy!  We stayed at Magnetic Mountain and ended up buying some of their awesome wine made with fresh local blueberries, some New Brunswick maple syrup and a cranberry wine.  We spent way more than the price of an rv park site, but this is way more fun.

Camden, Maine and downeast

After a grueling rainy drive from Kennebunk to Camden and visiting a yoga buddy of Lynnae's and a nice dinner at "Fresh" in town, we settled in Camden Hills State Park for our first "real" camping night. The morning broke clear and cold and we hiked up to the top of Mount Battie for some spectacular views.

Try downloading the panoramic picture to your computer for the full effect!

We had to make a few stops along the way to today, including shopping at the Belfast Natural Food Co-op.  I thought I had fallen asleep and woken up in Santa Cruz in 1969 ... except for the prices.  For a store whose main customers seemed to be back-to-the-land'ers and hippies, I couldn't believe how expensive it was--Whole Foods on steroids!  Well, understandable I guess because all the produce and meat seemed to come from local Maine farms (where they probably play classical music for the animals when they get slaughtered). They did a good tuna salad sandwich, though!

We had a beautiful drive along Highway 1 in "downeast" Maine and finally settled for the night about 15 miles from the Canadian border, but we've lost US cell coverage and have to watch our data usage. Tomorrow we'll cross the border and continue into New Brunswick.

First Night in Maine

Leaving The Pinehills was bittersweet.  Thanks to the Green Company's Oktoberfest, we were able to give and get personal best wishes for a future well lived.  Once we settled into driving mode we remembered that we did not completely empty the freezer...hope Jane can use some blue ice.  First stop in Kennebunk, ME, proved to be easily reached before dark.  Hosts Sundie and Gary Gentry graciously let us park in their driveway and served us delicious fish burritos for dinner.  Tucker took his nose to as many squirrel tracks as his leash would allow.  Great way to begin unwinding from a very busy summer.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

After long and sad goodbyes to great friends, we are on.the road north to Kennebunk, Maine tonight and the road stretching ahead as far as we can see.

First Moving Container Jammed to Bursting!

15 Days to go!

We continue to pack and get ready to store our "stuff" and leave it all behind. I've added a new page on this blog called "Current Map" (see the tab above). We will keep this updated to track our travels on this trip. Also check out the post below showing where we went on our last trip.

Twenty two days to being homeless!

Not homeless like someone who has been evicted from their apartment or a dog taken to the shelter or an owl whose nest was in the dead tree that your neighbor had cut down. No, we are going to be homeless like migrating tern on their way from the arctic to South America looking for balmy weather, or bison wandering the prarie in search of the sweetest new grass.

We made the decision a few months ago to hit the road full time in our rv. This wasn't a spectacular change, since we have spent 11 of the past 24 months living in our fifth wheel trailer and traveling through much of the Southeast in search of warmer weather, great music, good food, friendly people and interesting places to visit--and we've found all of that in abundance. So deciding to go full time was more an acknowledgement of what was already happening--we were becoming less connected to our home neigborhood (though we are going to very much miss the wonderful friends we have made in Rebecca's Landing) and more comfortable with accepting wherever our trailer happened to be parked as "home" for as long as we were there.

So we have spent the last three months going through everything we own, deciding what to keep and what to part with. I have become a master at selling stuff on Craigslist and Ebay and have derived immense satisfaction in seeing our possessions go to new homes where they can make people happy. We have completed long-avoided tasks like going through 10,000 paper photographs to pull out 1000 to be scanned and kept. Even our beautiful home on Clam Pudding Pond will once again be shelter and inspiration year round for its new owners as it used to be for us.

So stay tuned as we finish the process of cramming most of what's left of our possessions into two steel PackRat containers which will sit in a warehouse waiting for us to find a new home some year. On October  6 we will head North (North!? More on that later) toward Cape Breton Island then Chicago, then generally South and West to winter in Arizona (or thereabouts). Subscribe to get email updates of this blog or just check in every so often and we will try to make our story interesting.