Day 90 – Brrrr….42 degrees at 6:30 this morning, partly cloudy. Rob took his bike ride; the cats are getting sun on the dashboard. We turned the heat on this morning for the first time since last winter. Much more cloudy & windy than yesterday & the day before.
We remained inside until after lunch. The girls spent the morning cuddling together. Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain all day – a good day to drive to Lubec, go to the hardware store, pick up our mail which has been sent by the Florida mail forwarding service to the Lubec Post Office, check on our land, etc., in preparation for moving to the land when we leave the State Park. If things work out as planned, we’ll be staying on our land for two months; then it’ll be too cold to stay longer unless we had a real house. Big “IF” there. You never know. Those of us who are master planners are learning to play-it-by-ear. It really isn’t such a bad way to go!
Gracie enjoying the sun
Pixie
Before going to the hardware store tomorrow, Rob worked on the RV’s passenger-side, side-view mirrors. We’d noticed that from the time we’d attempted to travel on the Golden Road, the group of side-view mirrors were jiggling on bumpy roads. Rob had checked them & discovered that two screws had broken. Now that we’re settled here with access to an excellent hardware store, he’ll be going back into the Mr. Fix-It role once again & fixing the mirrors before they fall off the RV. He had to drill out the broken screws, make new holes for new ones, and tomorrow we buy the screws. (Note: If you are considering travelling for extended periods of time, you must have a Mr. Fix-It on board!)
Gracie, Luna and Pixie supervising the RV repairs
Gracie and Pixie decided the RV repairs were too dangerous and left Luna to supervise
There’s been very little activity at the campground. Today is the first day of the Fall season, where you don’t need to have a reservation to stay here in a reservable campsite. We are already in our favorite site, and we see that people are not leaving the sites they have on the water. They are yours until you leave. Occasionally people drive by to see if a site has opened up, but for the most part people are staying where they are. It has been so quiet (except for the Bald Eagles) that it feels like we’re the only ones here & that it is our land. But then, the weekend is over & it’s only Monday of a week when kids have returned to school & families are not taking vacations for awhile.
This campsite, site #4, sits on a cliff overlooking the Bay. To the left you can see fishing boats in the distance, anchored near the boat launch, and a small island off site #8, which is an excellent campsite, too. Directly in front of our view is an island across the Bay which appears small at high tide and expands to large when the tide is low – this is the land of the big tides, with as much as a 28-foot difference twice a day, every single day. Beyond the island across from us is a strip of land To the right of us is a small island which is only an island at low tide, then scanning right, more of the Bay. There is a Bald Eagle that lives on the island directly across from us. We see and/or hear him (or her) from time to time. We’ve assumed this bird is nesting & that there are other eagles in the vicinity. We plan to take a kayaking trip out to the island soon.
The Bald Eagles: Must they be so loud, LOL!!! We were in the screened tent this afternoon, reading. KY-UH, KY-UH, here comes this beautiful, perfect, adult Bald Eagle from across the Bay, sweeping towards us then veering slightly to the left. He or she was obviously upset about something. Rob leaps up, faster than I have ever seen him move, unzips the doors to the tent, and without tripping, runs (or stumbles) down the cliff to see what is going on. Then back up the cliff, I see him running head-long into the RV to get his trusty camera. Oh, the excitement.
He ran back down the cliff with the camera, (me hollering “Hurry, Hurry”), and we’re both hearing the birds screeching, and a very large bird flies by at my eye-level with its prey dangling in its talons, seaweed dangling from it. The Bald Eagle, in its splendor, flies back to the island. The large bird flies to island to the right of us and perches, with its prey, in a tree. All is quiet again. Rob climbs the cliff and he’s gotten some pictures, but we missed taking pictures of the Bald Eagle flying in.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
We settled back down in the tent. A little bit later, KY-UH, KY-UH, and here comes the great, gorgeous Bald Eagle again. How did the large bird manage to get by us to get to the rock again to grab more crabs (or whatever it was eating)? We don’t know, but he/she is chased once again by the Bald Eagle out of its territory to the island to the right of us. Rob clambers down the cliff with his camera once again.
Eventually I went inside to take a shower and Rob stayed outside to watch for more activity, sitting on a chair at the cliff. Then he came inside to shower, reporting that the unidentified large bird was still eating its dinner. We looked the birds up on the Cornell Ap & in the various birding books, thinking that the second bird might have been a Golden Eagle. Since we are not in its range here, we’re assuming what we’ve seen is a almost-full grown Bald Eagle, possibly being threatened by its parent?
The high today was 63 degrees; the wind died down towards sunset. We had Nachos for dinner, after last nights Crab & Lobster Rolls, a bit of a disappointment. The beer & wine helped, though, to make it all good.
Rob relaxing with a little maple Rye