Camden Hills State Park

Camden Hills State Park – site 25

Here’s our site at Camden Hills State Park. We’re enjoying the corner location with neighbors only on one side and lots of trees. The only downside is that all those trees means no sun for solar power and we’ve had to break out generator a few times this week. I know it looks sunny in this photo, but trust me… that small amount of filtered sunlight doesn’t add up to much. Using the generator is not really a big deal — it’s just easier to let the sun do it’s thing and not have to think about our power needs.

Aside from the campground itself, one of the things we are really enjoying this week is the nearby town of Camden. Only a five or so minute drive way is the small, one main street town with a narrow inlet harbor and lots on interesting old buildings. We’ve gone into town a few times, including one evening when we ordered a pizza to go from the Camden House of Pizza and walked around town while waiting for it to cook.

Downtown Camden

Pizza…in Maine? I know, I know. I guess now might be a good time to fess up to the fact that while we really like Maine, we don’t really like lobster. In fact, I don’t like it even a tiny bit, and Tim is mostly indifferent about it. So even though everywhere we go there are signs for lobsters and lobster rolls, don’t expect to see any pictures of them on this blog. The pizza was really good through :)

Another day we went back into town in the early afternoon. We’ve been trying to make an effort to spend at least part of one day each week working away from the Airstream. The outing usually begins at a laundromat and ends at a coffee shop or cafe. This week it was the Camden Clothesline (a very nice laundromat with new machines, free wifi, and lots of outlets to power our devices) followed by the Camden Deli. The Deli had an amazing view of the harbor below.

Tim doing his best to concentrate on work with that view in front of him

After work we wandered around town admiring the houses, the view, and the flowers. We even unexpectedly stumbled on the Wednesday Farmers Market.

Flowers & veggies around town

The harbor view

Back at the park we had the best intentions to explore some more of the hiking trails…and then this happened.

The hole of doom

What you’re looking at is a 3-foot deep hole covered with rotten plywood and a layer of dirt that Tim fell into at the park. This very unsafe, completely unmarked, hole was located next to a water spigot. He unknowingly walked over the hole while carrying a jug filled with water in the dark. The rotten wood gave way and down he went, spraining his ankle in the process. He immediately reported the incident to the ranger on duty and the next day filled out a report.

The park managers stopped by to apologize and told us that they re-covered the hole with another piece of wood — pressure treated wood this time. What! You covered it with wood again? It’s a giant hole in the ground and you’re covering it with a layer of wood and dirt. Logic says that eventually it’s going to rot and the same thing is going to happen to someone else. Apparently there’s a shut off valve down there that they need to access at the beginning and end of the season so they can’t permanently fill it in. Well then why not use a metal man hole cover like you would find on any other manhole?!!! Tim expressed his concern about the “fix”, but I am not sure that they got it.

In any case, be careful around the water spigots at Maine state parks – you never know what dangers could be lurking beneath.

Luckily it wasn’t so bad that he needed to visit the doctor. If that was the case you can bet that we would be demanding way more than an apology. The really sucky part is that Tim now has a swollen foot and he can only get around by slowly hobbling — severely limiting our activities until it heals. Huge, huge bummer.

As bad as I felt about his limited mobility, I did go out on hike by myself yesterday. I drove up to the north end of the park and hiked up to the summit of Bald Rock. It was an easy hike with the first portion following a wide multi-use road, and the last half mile a mild scramble up a rock and root filled path to the summit. Once at the top I was greeted with an amazing view of Penobscot Bay.

Penobscot Bay

Yesterday afternoon Tim decided that he could manage well enough to go kayaking. I was pretty worried about getting the kayaks off the truck and into the water since this is something I can’t do on my own. But he insisted it would be fine (for someone who repeatedly refers to himself as lazy, he’s really not good at forced rest). Turns out it was fine, and soon we were out paddling around.

What injured foot?

This is Mengunticook Lake, a fairly large body of water located on the west side of the park. There are lots of little islands with cottages on them dotting the lake. We paddled around for awhile and peeked in at some of the cute lakeside homes.

One of the island cottages

It’s a good thing we got out when we did because today it’s rainy, cloudy, and cold out. It’s also our last day here and tomorrow we head north for a few weeks near Bar Harbor.