Trains, Planes and Ford Service Centers

While traveling on our summer sojourns I try to keep a journal mainly because I found this cute journal that says Camping Journal on the front and the pages are printed with information for you to plug in the campground name, cost, facilities, who you met, activities, etc. I also take a picture of the sign for each campground and sometimes our "spot" with the idea that some day I will scrapbook the trips. My concentration this past year however has been with quilting and sewing. Now to the explain the title of this post. The first night of our trip was spent in Kansas at a campground near the interstate. We have stayed there before but didn't remember hearing trains that ran fairly frequently all night. We also had an engine light come on in the pickup. So when we reached Iowa we took it into the Ford dealer to find out why the light was on. They did some work on it and informed us that it is still under warranty.


I spent a night in a wonderful condo after attending a family reunion with my 4 wonderful sisters. The Amtrack runs through Corning and it was nostalgic for me because while growing up there I remember hearing the train in the summer when we had our windows open at night. We soon discovered that we were near an intersection where they blew the whistle several times during the night. In Richmond we had the oil changed and then traveled on to Maryland for another week. From there we traveled through Pennsylvania and spent the night near Schenectady, New York in a nice campground but also heard trains there. Thank goodness it was more distant and we only heard one or two through the night.

Driving through Vermont we saw black smoke as we drove through the mountains and finally a large explosion. So we slowly lost power but were able to pull into a small town and park near a General Store. We discovered we had no cell phone service and a kind man there let us use his cell phone to call our roadside assistance number. Then this kind man said we could park our RV on his land at the top of the hill. Well we made it and waited for the two truck to arrive. Off we went to another Ford service center and they kindly drove us to a motel for the night and picked us up the next morning. The clamp came loose on the turbo hose so they put it back together again and we were on our way.

We had reservations in Bar Harbor, Maine but within 22 miles we lost power and Frank was able to pull over to the side of the road. At least this time we had cell phone service and roadside assistance was able to send out a tow truck to tow both the pickup and RV. Back to Bangor, Maine we went (some 20 miles) after spending an hour talking to a nice policeman who had some interesting tales to tell us while waiting for the tow truck.



Here is the view from the back of our RV while staying two nights at the Ford Truck Service Center. Thank goodness Bangor has a small airport. We had only two planes that flew over in the middle of the night. We are currently spending a month near Bar Harbor, Maine and wouldn't you know it! We have the Bar Harbor Airport just across the water from our campground. But it is a very small airport with mostly small commuter planes and an occasional bi-plane landing and taking off.