Little House on the Go: Solon, Maine

Kennebec River from our door

Thankfully we slept at the factory after the work was completed on our Alto. The drive across the boarder to Solon was a Google measured 3 hours away, but that meant more than 4 in real life, plus a border crossing. Common sense prevailed and we stayed the night. Plus it was free. After our maiden voyage, when we drove way too long to get to our campsite, and I was asking Siri when sunset would happen, we vowed to never, ever, set up camp in the dark.

We got an early start leaving the factory, and drove through St. George, avoiding the traffic work we were stuck in the day before. Rue de President Kennedy was our road to the boarder. We got to the boarder, discussed why we came to Canada for such a short time, and again were considered crazy to drive all the way to Canada to have work done on our trailer. It's an Alto thing, the boarder agents just don't understand. We declared Sophie and showed her rabies certificate. The agent wanted to see her, I opened the hatch, and she let Sophie lick her. That's all it took and we were on our way.

Rue de President Kennedy was now Canada Rd. in the U.S. Seemed odd. Jackman was the first "big" town we passed. I thought of staying at a campground there, when I was in planning mode. Knowing nothing about this area, I asked my Altoistes friends, and a gentleman from the group suggested we drive a bit further to Solon. We are so glad we did. Jackman is a teeny tiny town just past the border. I think it's a hunting and fishing kind of town with no services, groceries, not even a Walmart! There was nothing quaint or appealing, and it was nice to drive on by.

Kennebec River

We arrived in Solon about a half hour later. While it's also a tiny town, notice I left off the teeny part, it did have a quaint feel to it. We pulled into the campground, and drove down a pine tree lined lane which led to the office. I met the owner, who had all of his reservations in an honest to god book. No computer for this fellow. There we were, a line item in this old book, complete with rubber band so the old pages wouldn't get in the way. I signed a few credit card slips and we on our way to site 7.

Our campsite 7 was on the banks of the Kennebec River and stunningly beautiful. We took advantage of the new Caravan Mover to reposition the Alto so our door faced the river. The campground was so quiet even though there were about 10 other trailers and some cabin residents there. We later learned that the campground was a great place for ATVs. They used the snowmobile trails and went for hours. So, the reason it was soooo quiet is because everyone but us was gone. We enjoyed the quiet.

There were interesting rocks at our site. They looked like someone sawed them, inserted white stuff and glued them back together. A quick note to our geologist friend, Jen Kling, and we learned that felsic magma intruded into the rocks! Which means, there were large rock deposits underground with small cracks in them and magma intruded into the rocks and cooled in the cracks. The rocks were so pretty we took two of them for the garden at home. These little beauties were moved from wherever they lived for zillions of years to the base of the tree at our campsite by someone, so we didn't feel bad taking them.

Wood carved mermaid!

A short trip to Skowhegan provided more fun. We shopped at a Chapter Eleven store and found Cheerios, coffee filters, and neosporin at crazy cheap prices. Most of the stuff was off code, but not our little gems. We paid for our treasures and noticed we got a Canadian penny in our change---worth only 75% of a penny, and how appropriate for a Chapter Eleven store. We saw a wooden carved mermaid. And ate at a superb restaurant for lunch, and had a great ice cream cone from a local shop. We shopped at George's Banana Stand. And most important of all we found Sesame Street.