Today we were doing something a little different - going back 45 years to my Air Force days in Loring Air Force Base, Maine.
After breakfast, Laura did a couple loads of laundry as we were close to the machines. You have to take advantage of that sometimes. I walked to the office and paid for another day in the campground. I also had an interesting (to me) conversation with the husband and wife that own the campground. I mentioned that Laura and I managed a marina for the past 8 summers and it seemed to have a lot of similarities. This campground is very customer oriented. Much more than the past few campgrounds we've been in. For example, they don't take your credit card number when making a reservation and they give refunds if you pay, then leave early. The lady at the last campground in Gagnon Beach said they had exactly the opposite policy. If you reserved for a month then left early, too bad. Our marina policies are similar to here.
After laundry and a few odd jobs, we drove north on US Rt 1 to Presque Isle. Yes. This is the same US Rt 1 that goes all the way down to Key West, Florida. The northern end is in Fort Kent, only about 50 miles north of here.
I took several classes at the University of Maine at Presque Isle while stationed here and the college looked somewhat familiar. We also drove around Caribou where I lived for a year but couldn't find the house. Then we drove to the base which is now a commercial park. As we drove around I tried to remember when I was here and eventually drove to the building where I worked - don't know how I found it on the huge base. It was pretty overgrow. I walked around the building which formally housed the 42nd Bomb Wind - Avionics Maintenance Squadron. The base was closed by the Air Force in 1994 as part of the military reduction plan.While driving around the old base, I spotted the Loring Military Heritage Center. I stopped but it wasn't open. Later, we drove by again and there was someone there. A nice lady let us in and showed us around. It was interesting but not too many items from the time when I was there. She told us this weekend was a big open house on the old base and they were going to have a B-52 fly-over. Originally, the B-52 was supposed to land and be on display for the open house but they were worried the old runway wouldn't support the heavy plane. Bummer.
We left the base and drove over to Limestone where I also lived for awhile. Of course, not much was familiar after 45 years but it was fun anyway. We drove back on Rt 1A and stopped in a lunch at Al's Diner in Mars Hill. Laura and I both had tasty salads (trying to recover from all the fried seafood we've been eating the past couple weeks).
After lunch, we drove back to Houlton and took a little tour of the quaint town stopping at Houlton Dairy Farms for ice cream. Back to the campground we took about a 1 1/2 mile walk around the groomed trails. My knee is back to normal (or pretty close).
Tomorrow we are heading south to Bangor than east toward Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Not sure we will make it that far in one day so Laura is scoping out closer campgrounds. Maybe we'll boondock at a Walmart since it's just an overnight stop.
133 miles today (no towing) = 2,860 total trip
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