Days of Frustration & Play in Northern Vermont

Saturday July 17-22, 2021                                                          Most Recent Posts:
Moose River Campground                                            Jody Takes Me on a Tour
St. Johnsbury, Vermont                                         Keeping Busy Despite the Rain

Like the first two Saturdays of my weeks here, I began my day at the farmer’s market where I couldn’t resist another focacia bread.  Does it look like a fish to you?

   After that, I walked over to the Community Church to walk the labyrinth.

From there I headed home to pack a lunch and drove a pleasant 24 miles north to check out Lake Willoughby for kayaking and the nearby hikes.

Willoughby is a  large lake and today was a Saturday so I expected it would be full of noisy  power boats.

But what I saw in the water were all canoes, kayaks, sailboats and people.  I was very surprised as power boats are allowed but it was wonderful to enjoy the quiet. 

The setting is beautiful between the two mountains.  It looked like I imagine a small fjord.

Nice big easy boat launch as well.

The lake is right on Vermont Highway 5A and across from it is White Caps RV Park.   People were walking down in their bathing suits and crossing the road.  You can see Ruby parked on the road just beyond the campground sign.

I hadn’t brought the kayak, thinking as I did that the week-end would not be a good day and I would just check it out as a future possibility. 
So I hiked the lake trail instead.

At the bottom of these stairs,  I ran into this sign.  I’m not sure if there was a way around this nudist beach but if so, I didn’t see it.  So I just followed the trail through and found perhaps a half dozen nude men sitting around on  blankets and towels  talking.  Most people in the area were not nude.  I saw no women sans suits.  Good old liberal Vermont!

I had been above the beach in the woods looking down.  Now I was walking along the beach before climbing back up into the woods.

There was a lone back pack tent along the trail above the water.  Great site.

This was the extent of the wildlife I encountered other than the folks on the beach and they weren’t very wild.  I checked out the trail heads of two other potential hikes and filed the information away for that later date.

Back at Moose River a community buffet was under way.  Bring your own wine.
I’m not a winer, I suppose David and Carrie might have called me a whiner,  but I jumped in line with a glass of orange juice.

Yummy desserts.

Moose River is a relatively small campground and these weekly gatherings and bonfires help people to get acquainted.  Most folks are either seasonals or here for only a few days or a week at most.  I met one couple who were here for 2 weeks and no one who, like me, was here for a month.  But everyone is very welcoming.

I’ve mentioned before that Vermont is having a lot of rain.  Much of it is luckily at night but it’s interesting to watch the very shallow river rise.   It’s hard to tell in this picture unless you compare it with one in a previous post which shows the cairns no where near the water.   Here’s a video of what I hear when I sit on my patio or am in bed at night.   Fantastic!!

On to the frustrating part.  On the drive up here, I discovered two problems.  First my driver’s windshield wiper connection was rusted (thanks Florida)  and the blade would fly around and be useless on any setting other than low.  Not good in a heavy rainstorm.   It worked on the lowest setting and luckily the rain the day I arrived was light and drizzly.  But it’s something I have to look in to.

Secondly my driver’s rear tail light was not working.  No brake light, no turn signal.  This has been going since I got to New York so I hope I haven’t mentioned it before.  Anyway, I assumed it was just a bulb.  When I managed to get the light off, a story in itself, I found a sealed unit which would have to be completely replaced of course.  Still, it was just a plug in.  I’d simply have to find this part.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!   How naïve of me.

I took all the numbers I could find off of it and googled them.  It is a Peterson Part.  I had no idea how impossible it would be to find.

I called truck stops, I tried to call Winnebago.  You can’t do that any more.  I emailed them.  They said it would be 4 to 6 weeks before they could get back to me and all I wanted to do was order a part or just have them tell me where I could get it.  I tried to contact Lichtsinn RV also in Forest City Iowa who had provided parts for David many times in the past.  Nope.   Boy have things changed since David did all the work on the RV. 

Finally, I broke down and called an mobile RV tech who came out and for $80 and less than an hour’s time he jury rigged a fix for the wiper.  Hope it lasts until I get back to my main guys in Virginia.  He also took down all the tail light numbers, made lots of calls and told me he’d get back to me.

Long story short, he didn’t.  In my days of calling and researching, I had called the Napa store in town but they said nothing matched my numbers and I should go to a truck stop.  Today I went to the Napa store in St Johnsbury and took my part in.  Turns out after looking all over, they had the light but not the black ring.  The best they could do was a different looking gray ring.

I couldn’t get the black ring off of the old one so I could continue to have all black rings on the back.  So I bought two tail lights and 2 gray rings, just in case.  I had to have one of the guys at the campground with stronger fingers than I force the gray ring around the light so it would snap on.  Believe me it is not coming off.  I installed it and thankfully it worked.  I called the RV tech and told him to give up the search.  Not sure he was still searching but at least it wouldn’t cost me a ridiculous amount for him to get and install the part.

Perseverance Pays off.

Finally, this week I have a working stop, turn, tail light on the driver’s side of the RV.  I don’t like the way it looks.  I want black to match the other 3 but tough luck for me.  How in the world do people restore really old trailers and RVs??  Where do they get the parts if a simple tail light for a 2004 is this hard to find?

Back to play. Earlier in the week, I wasn’t prepared to kayak Lake Willoughby but later I  slipped over to Shadow Lake with the boat.  It’s miniscule compared to Willoughby and has cabins, known by Vermonters as “camps”,  all along one side and a few on the other shore.   It has a nice launch.

And it has LOONS!   (“You watch that side, I’ll watch this one)

(See anything good down there?)

It was a Thursday and no other boats were out.  It was a glorious day.

On the far shore I caught sight of an RV.  What a campsite.

His closest neighbor was a beaver lodge.

I wondered whether this was one of the oldest cabins on the lake.  It was among the row of cabins on the side nearest the road.

Whose is this and how did they do it?  Looks pretty incongruous to me.  Made me laugh.  Technology is everywhere.

On my way home, I stopped at Moose Look Restaurant.  The people at the campground had said they had good food when I asked for a restaurant recommendation.  I loved the outdoor table overlooking the river, just beyond the fence.

The food was fine but nothing special I didn’t think.  Perhaps I should have asked what their specialty was. 

Don’t think I realized how really big those sunglasses are.