We arrived at the Holden Family Campground in Holden, just outside of Bangor, on Friday afternoon around 4:30 pm after evacuating from Lubec, Maine and the landfall of Hurricane Lee.
We found our site and got ready to set up. Discovered one of Nomad’s tires had gone flat as we pulled into the campground or site. Not sure if I ran over something or what happened. Worse than that; when we tried to open the large, living room slide-out it wouldn’t move. Nothing but a click from where I think the motor is located, but that’s on the opposite side and between the inside floor and the underbelly chloroplast lining. I have no desire to start cutting away the underbelly when I don’t know where to cut.
We finished getting the electric, water and sewer connected. Found out our neighbors on both sides were also fleeing Hurricane Lee, as I suspect most of the other guests were as well.
The next day, Saturday, will be Cindy’s birthday but since there’s no way we’ll be going out during the storm (and most places are going to be closed because of the Hurricane anyway) we had to run out for her birthday dinner Friday night. We found a nice place nearby called Mason’s Brewery. It was extremely busy and we had a 15 minute wait to be seated but the wait was worth it. Cindy had a delicious grilled chicken sandwich and I had a tasty Philly Cheesesteak and while the atmosphere wasn’t romantic, per se, we enjoyed ourselves. It was like the calm before the storm and we appreciated the time.
When we got back to the campsite it hadn’t gotten dark yet (though the sky was red, see the photos) so I tried plugging into the truck to see if perhaps the Coach batteries on Nomad were still not strong enough to run the slide-out but that wouldn’t move it either. I thought I remembered there being a reset button for the slide-outs squirreled away inside one of the hidden compartments near our desk. But, after unscrewing the panels on each side, I could find no such button. Damn!
After watching weather shows most of the night and tracking Hurricane Lee, we finally went to bed. I was awakened at 3 am Saturday by the first rain from the outer bands of Lee and it kept raining constantly until early Sunday morning. We had sustained winds of 20-30 mph and gusts of 40 to 50 mph even though we were further inland from the eye. We did do a little rocking and rolling, but nothing too bad. As we watched the weather reports we saw that where we had been was getting hammered, and it was even worse down in the area of Acadia National Park where we would have been Saturday on our original route/schedule. So we were extremely glad that we decided to move further inland to avoid the higher winds and waves and the harder rain.
Because, you know, if I wanted to ride out hurricanes I’d just stay in Florida. Never expected one to chase us to the Northeast!
Thanks for following The Wandering Wetheringtons.
The sky is beautiful!!! But yes, the fact you had to deal with a hurricane is crazy!
It WAS an experience! 🙂