Daily Narrative    The day began late, followed by a little showering and uploading before we began our journey back down the Maine coastline.  We took advantage of a complete reversal in the previous day's weather and walked down to look at the Bass Harbor lighthouse.  Cooler than the lighthouse, however, were the tide pools and creatures in them on the rocky shore below it.  The rest of the day was spent on the very scenic and very windy (I mean curvy, not gusty...is that spelled right?) drive down Route 1 along the Maine coast, much of which was the same drive we had taken to get up to Acadia a week and a half ago.  While it was great to be off of the interstates again, traveling two lane roads in this part of the country is a whole different story than in the west and mid-west.  In New England, one quaint little village tends to blur into the next quaint little village, sometimes making 40 miles per hour your average speed for hundreds of miles.  We did make a few stops that we did not take the time to on the way up.  The first was at the Maine Prison Showroom.  This gem of a little shop is full of wood crafts, from intricate wooden ships to very well made furniture to the lamp that now lights the front half of the bus when we have an electric hookup, all made by actual prisoners!  Better than the prison labor force, however, are the ridiculously low showroom prices.  They even claim to give the prisoners 80% of the proceeds (something we had to research before Theresa okayed the lamp purchase).  The second stop was in Bath, home of Bath Iron Works where they make some of the really big ships for the military.  The big ships are pretty interesting to look at, because they are still gray and unpainted, making them appear like oversized models.  The third stop was at the original L.L. Bean store in the outlet nightmare of Freeport, "because it was there".  We crawled on down the coast, out of Maine and across the skinny coastal chunk of New Hampshire, before calling it a wrap in Salisbury, Massachusetts.

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Daily Pictures

Brian, Theresa & the bus wake up at Bass Harbor Campground!	The Bass Harbor Light House
A lost member of Camden's painting cult	The Atlantic Ocean fills a tidal pool
A happy little starfish	A pond outside of Southwest Harbor, on Mount Desert Island
A rocky hillside along the Maine coast, this kind of terrain is responsible for stone fences throughout New England	Gold lettering on signs is used all along the Maine coast line to indicate that the expected social status of customers is high.  In the "township" of Camden, it was used on every sign
Truly a funky moose!	Brian gets an early start on Christmas shopping
Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine...	...where they make the really big boats
We stopped at the L.L. Bean store in Freeport long enough to get a new trailer for the bus	Not fiberglas, it was actually made of Bean Bootish rubber

Brian, happy to be on the road in the bus again, smiled all day

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