We went to the campground office for bread and came back with . . .

September 27, 2012

We went to the campground office for bread and came back with . . .

My day started at around 7am when Tom came back from the wash house. It was 63 degrees in the trailer and 53 degrees outside. It was so nice.

Showers taken and scrambled eggs for breakfast, we gathered our things to go to Acadia National Park. We were on the road by 10am. But first, before the Park we tried for two of the geocaches that were close to us. We found them without any trouble. I think they were meant to be easy. These were our first two caches in Maine. One of the spots was very interesting. It was a nice place by a pond or lake; very peaceful. One could spend a lot of time there just being.

Then we headed south on Route 3 toward the Park. Then the van died. Dead. No go. Tom coasted it to the side of the road and it stopped right in the middle of someone's driveway. If the berm weren't sand and small stones I think it would have coasted past the driveway.

We had gas; and the battery worked the starter very well, but the engine would not start. We called AAA. We had a flatbed pull up within about an hour. The driver took us to a Chevy dealership (which we agreed to when we talked with the operator at Maine’s AAA) about 10 miles in the other direction. We past the campground on the way to the dealership. This is the first time that I got to ride in the cab of a flatbed and I hope it’s the last. And this was all before noon.

Because it was lunch time they weren’t going to look at the van right away and they had something else going when they came back from lunch so “it would be two or three o’clock until someone could look at it.” They nicely offered some options, one of which was to take us across the street to a place at which we could get lunch. Since we wanted to be around when they found out what was wrong with the van we accepted their offer. The Courtesy Shuttle took us across the street. It was a very busy highway and we were thankful for their offer.

Lunch was reasonable but we didn’t want to spend the time there waiting. I called back across the street and asked it the shuttle could come get us when it was free. After a while it came.

The lounge at the dealership was a much nicer place to wait, and wait we did for over an hour. As soon as I disappeared into the restroom they came to tell Tom that we needed a new fuel pump. Can you say $800 plus? But, as Tom said several times today, if it was going to happen it was better on this road than on the interstate highways pulling the trailer. Indeed. So they offered to drive us around to where the van was in the shop so that we could get out of it what we needed. We did and then they drove us back to the campground.

But we were still left with only one slice of bread. We decided that we would walk up, -  yes, up - to the campground store and buy a loaf of bread. We had nothing else to do.

We asked about the bread and they didn’t have any. They don’t sell bread. She offered to buy us a loaf when she was out tonight and send it by our site with someone who works with her and who is our neighbor. That was settled. We started to talk about our day and we told her about the van. She asked, “And they didn’t offer you a loaner car?” We said that they didn’t and she said, “I’ll call them. I don’t mind.”

I will tell you that her husband didn’t have a chance once she made up her mind that she wanted to marry him. She talked the dealership into giving us a loaner car because we were only here for 2 days (a slight exaggeration) and we were on our way to see the Park when the van stopped working. Then she said, “Now we have to get you there” and picked up the phone and called someone. We found out that it was her husband and she asked him to take us back to the dealership. He did. He even stayed around to make sure there were no hitches for us to get the loaner car.

I’m not sure how all this came down but we were supposed to talk with Dave. But we were talking with Dana who worked with us about the van and I heard him saying “Deb must have called.” And “We don’t usually give out loaner cars except to people who buy their cars from us. But in this case we want visitors to Maine to think of us as a friendly place.”   Well, it certainly is . . . if you have the right connections.

So we went to the campground office for bread and came back with a 2011 Chevy Impala to use until they fix the van. Can’t beat that!

On the way back to the campground we stopped off at Walmart to buy bread and a mouse trap. We were able to find both. The trap is set in the storage area under the sofa. I haven’t heard our hitch-hiker running around tonight yet.

It is almost bed time. We are ready to crawl in now but it is a bit early yet. Tomorrow we try again to go to the island. Because the high tide is a bit later tomorrow we have a chance to hear the Thunder Hole. A thunderous bang only occurs as the tide is coming in on windy days. Tomorrow should be a good day for it. We will try again.

It is 9:18pm; it is 65 degrees inside the trailer and 46 degrees outside. Brrrrr!