Day 77 – Warm last night, it rained a little, but it didn’t help much with the humidity. 65 degrees when we got up, partly cloudy. There is no dump station here & there are no hook-ups, so we found a place where we could dump tanks & refill the fresh water tank, for a $25 fee. It’s only 3 miles north of here. We did those chores first before departing for Easton & the Amish country.
We got gas near Easton, it was slightly cheaper than elsewhere, and arrived at the Amish store just after 11 a.m. when the bread was supposed to be done. Only some loaves were up for sale, others were still baking, so we went for a drive east & south to near the Canadian border. Rob did purchase a freshly-baked donut – OMG, and I am not a donut fan! We saw several horse-drawn buggies & the scenery was beautiful. The Amish farms appeared to be busy with daily activities, groups of men in pants, shirts, suspenders, & hats working near the fields, & women in colorful, long cotton dresses with hats, all together hanging laundry & gathering crops in baskets.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
A particularly nervous horse was hooked up to a carriage at the Amish store when we returned, a lovely woman loading goods into the cart. We had our choice of wonderful, fresh-baked loaves of bread. We chose a loaf of Tomato-Basil Bread, a loaf of Onion-Cheese Bread, and another loaf of the fantastic Oat Bread. The young lady who bagged the breads was the same lady who waited on us before. She was so pretty, of course using no make-up or hair products whatsoever, and like the other Amish we’ve seen, incredibly beautiful, clear complexions with clear, healthy eyes. Should I have been Amish? Naw, I would’ve rebelled during Rumspringa or something. I mentioned this thought to Rob & he said he’d thought about Rumspringa & the Amish way of life also, when passing young men driving the horse-drawn carts, like have you experienced Rumspringa yet, and did you come back to the fold afterwards? Just observations.
It was lunch time when we returned to the RV. After driving in the car with the warm bread in the back, we were ready. We had our sandwiches & went out to the screened tent. The new neighbors, the family of four, were great. A young couple with a couple of kids, they did everything together. We lucked out. We went back inside around 4 p.m. and started chopping vegetables for a Tomato-Vegetable-Potato Stew, adding Scallops at the end of cooking. We made a huge pot & will be eating it for days. We still have more veggies left: broccoli, mushrooms, squash, corn, peppers & will cook them soon. This is the Land of Rich & Plenty up here in northern Maine. Veggies everywhere.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the other day when we were driving by the Ranger’s Station, our favorite Ranger whom we call “The Bearded Wonder” because of his thick red beard, gave us a wonderful booklet on the river & lake canoeing & kayaking launches in northern Maine. Tonight he stopped by with a book in a binder with maps & all the biking trails & roads, paved & dirt, in all of Maine – said he saw our bikes & they had a box of these books…….I invited him to join us for dinner or at least a bottle of wine, but he declined. We have met the nicest people……..
It rained some in the evening before bed, which lowered the humidity somewhat, but it was 79 degrees when we went to bed. The girls climbed aboard Rob, looking angelic (don’t believe that act for a second); I had to get a picture:
Rob relaxing with Luna and Gracie, Aroostook State Park, Presque Isle, ME