Well, the trip up yesterday was very easy. The flights were good from Greenville. Got up to Bangor and I had reserved a pickup truck for this trip and got up to the desk and all they have were Ford Lightning pickup trucks, which is the electric truck, not the gas truck. So I wasn’t real happy with that just because it has a 200 mile range and I was going, I, don’t know, a hundred and something miles one way up to the camp. But that was the thing they had and I needed the height of the vehicle to get down the dirt road. Plus, I have to get some credibility when meeting with the dirt road guys. Showing up in a smaller vehicle jus won’t cut it. I need a pickup truck. So that’s what I have. Drove up last night and the 200 mile range wasn’t as advertised so I don’t have a lot of range left. So this morning, first thing, I had to drive and find a supercharger or a charger in the area which, surprise surprise, there are only 2 within 30 miles and one of them is a Tesla charging station that doesn’t work for Ford vehicle charging. I ended up driving down to Calais and I’m sitting here right now at the Buick dealership plugged in and getting charged. It looks like I’m going to be here for a while probably at least an hour. At least I’m getting charged. Hopefully this charge will get me through the next couple days and back to the Bangor Airport and I won’t have to charge again. That’s the goal anyway.
Anyway, big day ahead. I haven’t spoken to the dirt guys to see if they’re going to be there today. Hopefully they will. It was raining yesterday, which was a surprise. It wasn’t supposed to be raining yesterday. Monday and Tuesday, yes, but not yesterday. But it did rain, so I’m not sure how much work they’ve been able to get done this week. The other surprising thing is it doesn’t look like this truck is four-wheel drive, which I assumed it would be, but it does not appear to be. So I’m a little afraid to take this down the new dirt road that they’re putting in after three days of rain. So, we’ll have to see how that goes. But other than checking on the road, I’ll be changing the locks, getting the rest of the tools over from the mainland. I had left a big toolbox on my neighbor’s abandoned cabin front porch that I didn’t have time to get over the first trip, so I’ll be getting those tools over and hopefully doing some arranging in the shed to make a little more room for things so that I can get some stuff out of the cabin. I kind of just threw stuff in the cabin when I was leaving last time, so it’s packed. I’m hoping, to get that organized a little bit better while I’m up here, and make sure that the roof tarp still looks okay, and also work on the solar charging to see if I could possibly get that to work. It doesn’t seem to be working at all. It never comes on, even though I have it scheduled to come on for a few hours a day to try to save the battery, it doesn’t seem to be coming on at all. So, we’ll see if we can do anything with that.
The good news is, this is prime leaf changing, leaf peeping season up here. It’s beautiful. Amazing. The place where I’m staying, I was very excited to find. It’s only about 10 minutes away from the cabin. It’s called Bear Lodge. I got here last night and the cabin was freezing cold because it’s cold here this week. It was in the 40s when I got here. And the TV doesn’t work. And the front porch light doesn’t work. And the kitchen light doesn’t work. And the bedroom light wasn’t working. So, not the best arrival. But I got the propane heater turned on that they have in the cabin. And that eventually warmed up the cabin. In fact… went to bed with it on and I woke up around one o’clock and it was like a roasty-toasty oven in the cabin so I actually turned it off and I was good for the rest of the night. When I woke up, it was cold in the cabin but it was okay. Also, strangely, in the middle of the night, the bedroom light that I couldn’t get to come on earlier, came on. I turned that off and when I got up found that we lost water, so I don’t have any water this morning. I’m not sure about how good of a find this place was after all. We’ll see.
So back to the charging of the truck. It finally finished. An hour and 35 minutes at a level 3 supercharger to charge up the truck. I got it back up to 90%. I’m driving back up to the camp now. And I’m already down to 81%. And I probably left around 10 minutes ago. Not good. But anyway, I heard from the Dirt guys and they’re going to meet me at the camp at 3 o’clock today. So that’ll be fun. And the interesting part is they’re going to meet me literally at the cabin. And take me in their side by side back to where they’ve gotten so far. They tell me it’s about a 10 minute walk from where the road ends currently. Hopefully it’s just currently and not the road ends there and that’s as far as they can go. But they’re going to pick me up in the side-by-side, which will be interesting because I’m not sure how they’re going to get across the bog, between the mainland and the island that the cabin is on. I didn’t think that a side-by-side could go across that, but I guess we will see.
Driving back up here, I’ve never seen trees so vibrant. The color is unbelievable. Bright yellows and oranges. Here’s a yellow, orange, and dark red all in one tree. It’s just amazing. And then there was another tree… Whoa, careful, wild turkeys. Wild turkeys. Big herd, big flock of wild turkeys.
…that was red. The ends of a number of the branches were red, but then the rest of the tree was green. It was really striking. Amazing. I literally have never seen the brightness of the colors in these trees. You know, maybe one or two somewhere, but they’re everywhere. It’s just amazing.
I solved the mystery of why the hand pump at the kitchen sink wasn’t pumping water. If you remember, on my first trip up here, I had replaced all the internal parts on the hand pump but could not get the pump to pump water from the lake to the kitchen sink. On this trip I had planned to go out with the rowboat and try to hook the pipe that’s down in the lake to pull it up to see if it was possibly a foot valve that’s clogged and see if I could fix that or replace that if that was the case. I went down to look to see where the pipe goes down in the lake so I could follow it out and notice that the pipe starts about six inches from the lake. The pipe is not in the water. Which kind of makes it difficult to pull lake water for the pump. So, the hope is that once I get some additional pipe with a foot valve on it and install that the pump will work like a champ. I’m not going to do that this year because I think they probably don’t want that in the lake when it’s winter and it’s frozen. When we come back in the spring or in the summer we can put the pipe on there, run it out into the lake and my guess is we’ll be golden.
One of the best things about doing this whole remote camp in Maine has been the experiences and the people that I’ve met. Just by getting out of the house and being out and about and interacting with people, has led to some amazing experiences. Today, when I was charging the truck, I was at a car dealership. And I went inside the car dealership and a guy just started talking to me. Turned out he was the owner of the dealership. He has several electric cars along with other gas powered cars. He was explaining to me the benefits and drawbacks of electric vehicles, the environmental impact, and just the utility of an electric vehicle. Although he has two himself, he is not a big fan of electric vehicles, particularly in Maine. He explained to me that the charger that I was charging the truck on was a level 3 charger, cost over $100,000 to install, and has its own power supply direct from the power lines because it’s drawing so much power. He showed me his solar inverters back in his back store room because his whole dealership is solar powered. The whole roof is covered with solar panels. We must have talked for at least 45 minutes. Nice guy. Very knowledgeable and opinionated.
I stopped by the Waite General Store to ask about getting a post office box there so that I can have things delivered up here. I spoke to Wayne. He does not look healthy so I’m a little concerned about Wayne. He was too busy today so I need to stop by tomorrow to talk to him about the postal box.
Talked to Gary and Steven with the road company. I heard from them about 2:45 to let me know they were almost to the property and that Steven would meet me out by the cabin. Gary said if I see a skinny guy with a goatee walking up to the cabin, don’t shoot him. Wasn’t planning on it but I’ll try not to. Around 3:30 I wandered over to the marshy area near the mainland to wait for Steven and I see him walk up. Since it was getting later in the afternoon and I didn’t want to be rowing the lake after dark, we arranged to meet him over by the neighbors camp where the new road dips down fairly close to the neighbors camp. So that’s what we did. First time meeting both Gary and Steven in person. Gary just loves to talk and it’s interesting stuff. It’s not just talking to talk. So he gave me the name of a building contractor, if we need one, that he highly recommends. The contractor built his house about 4 years ago. It’s a young guy in his 30’s and he felt confident that he would be able to work at our cabin location so that was good.
I’m calling it a day today. It’s not as late as I would have liked to have been working, but we just got done riding, the road. It’s wider than I expected and it’s muddier than I expected. There needs to be a lot of gravel put on the road and they’ll do that next year, probably around June. Gary is the same as he was on the phone. Nice guy. I like him a lot. His partner Steven is a nice guy too. Born and raised just north of here in Topsfield, ME. He drove me around on a side-by-side on the new road. It’s already a long road and there’s more to go. I love the road. I just hope it can get to the level of road that I’m hoping for and not the mud pit it is currently. But we’re on the schedule for next June and he’ll be back in and finish the job by top dressing with gravel, putting in some ditches on the side of the road for drainage and finishing the rest of the way to the cabin. The surprising part is that he seemed to think that they would be able to get all the way to the cabin. I don’t see how that’s possible, but if they can do it, that would be a tremendous accomplishment and a tremendous advantage for the property. We’ll see. They have done a good job finding the high ground so far and they have done this before so hopefully they are right.
We got a cable put up across the road so hopefully we won’t have too many people going down the new driveway road at this point. They were concerned about that because the off-roaders/ATVers go down there and tear up the road. Gary said he would keep an eye on the road for us. Not sure how he can do that since he’ll be working other jobs but I’ll take him at his word.
Tonight, my nephew-in-law, Austin, texted me and said, “Oh check it out, check outside tonight, because the Northern Lights are firing up.” And then he sent me some pictures a few minutes ago, and I went outside, and the pictures are the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen the Northern Lights before, and to the naked eye, it’s not nearly as impressive as it is when you take it through the camera. Still impressive. You can still see it, it’s just a faint hint of color in the sky when you’re looking at it with the naked eye, but when you use the camera, it’s just so vivid. It’s amazing. And that’s something I’ve never seen before, and I wouldn’t have ever experienced it if we hadn’t bought this place up in Maine.