Somes Harbor, Mount Desert Island, ME

We have progressed as far east as we are going this year. We arrived at Mount Desert Island several days ago and find ourselves in a place with no internet or cell phone access unless we go into Bar Harbor, ME a 20 minute bus ride from here and sit out side the town library.

Another interesting technology is the new digital TV. In prior years with the analog TV we could always get couple of stations in this are. They may have been fuzzy but you could watch and listen. With the "new" technology if the signal is weak then the TV goes blank and our TV antenna is 60 feet in the air. We have reached a point in this harbor with its surrounding 1000 foot hills that the TV has given up and just asks us to scan for stations, which we do to no avail. We not sure we are missing much!

I am sending this to our blog via email on my ham radio transmitter. I get good contact with a ham station in Halifax about 190 miles from here.

We really love this harbor. It is almost completely surrounded by land generally populated by pine trees. We can see the occasional house on shore and looking south out of the narrow harbor entrance we can see Somes Sound which is the only fiord certainly on the East Coast of the US. When we motor to shore, we walk up a short dirt road and can catch a bus that is sponsored by LL Bean every summer here and get to almost any where on the island (with transfers) that we want to go for free.

Our cell phone has sustained some physical damage and needs replaced. Upon calling ATT we found that the nearest store is 40miles and of course we are on foot. After a number of inquires we found out about a regional bus service that will get us to the town of Ellsworth, ME. These kinds of transportation problems are interesting as most people you talk to have a car and never use public transport and are unaware of how to use it. It leaves from the local Hannovers Grocery and I had to walk over there yesterday to get the details and fortunately they had a detailed schedule. So off we go tomorrow morning early. With getting the early express bus that we have to flag down on the main road and connections we will leave our boat around 7:10 am and get to Ellsworth at around 10 am. This is not bad for what would be a 30 minute car ride.

The weather has been extremely hot for Maine and we are seeing temps in the high 80's. Summer has finally come at the end of summer.

We are heading west back to Penobscot Bay on Friday or Saturday. Our nice Kristin's husbands family live on Isleboro an Island in the middle of the bay and we will be visiting for a couple of days. After that we will start our journey south with hopes of being in the Chesapeake the middle of September if the weather cooperates.