Owls Head and more Lobstahs....

Our morning began with a difficult to start Model A, but Olive ran well and we were off to Owls Head Transportation Museum and a real Downeast Lobster Bake.

We made a stop for a few essentials along the way and that was were really began to have problems with the car.  The car just would not start with out a push from the men.  She didn't want to keep running for quite a bit, but finally started and the trouble was attributed to junk in the carburetor.

We arrived at the Museum about 10:45 and were treated to seeing a 1886 Mercedes Motorwagen replica started and run.  They have many beautiful automobiles and airplanes, all in running condition.  We were treated to a ride in a 1918 Model T and a 1911 Cadillac.  So much fun!

Lunch was a catered Lobster Bake with all the trimmings.  Delicious 1.5 pound lobsters, corn on the cob, boiled potatoes, cole slaw, mussels, corn bread, and blueberry cake were enjoyed by our group.

After lunch, a few of our club members were adventurous and went for a ride in an antique airplane.  

Soon it was time to leave and it was decided to change the carburetor and see if the car would start easier.  That seemed to do the trick, until we stopped at the Owls Head Lighthouse.  We were still having trouble starting the car, but it ran fairly well.

The Owls Head Light is one of the few lighthouses that you can go up in.  The views were fabulous!  The day was clear and sunny and we could see 40 miles across the bay - all the way to Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park.

We finally got the car started, backfiring and sputtering a bit, but once it got going, seemed to be fine. We arrived at our hotel about 4:30 and it became a major tech session.  

More on that in the next installment... Time to get going on the day!  We are off to Bar Harbor for 2 nights.

Portland and Ducks...

Tuesday morning, we headed to Portland with overcast skies.  We encountered a few sprinkles as we drove the backroads of Maine.  This is where our trip began to become really interesting!  Olive decided that she had a bit of dyspepsia.  She became a bit difficult to start, but ran well.

Upon arriving in Portland, we found a centrally located parking garage and left the cars to explore on foot.

Our first order of business was lunch.  Some of our group went to Five Guys and enjoyed burgers with all the trimmings.  The some of us were after that delectable lobstah!  We ended up at a great waterside restaurant, Portland Lobster Company.  Lobster rolls for most, with a hot dog or two for others.

After lunch, we headed for the Duck Boat Tour.  Most of the tour was over land as we traveled the streets of Portland, enjoying a very humorous history lesson from our guide.  Then it was a splash into the Atlantic for a tour of the bay.

We then went to the Longfellow House and Museum.  Wonderful house, as it is full of all the furniture that the family owned.  The house never was sold to another family and was given to the state upon the death of his sister.  She left the house as a memorial to her brother for the state to maintain.

After our tour, we made our way back to the garage to pick up the cars and head for Freeport for the evening.  The car was difficult to start at each stop, but was still going.

Upon arrival in Freeport, our group decided to go on to the hotel, but John and I went over to the Harraseeket Inn to enjoy a concert being given in honor of MAFCA by the Community Band.  It was here that I was able to reconnect with a high school friend, who I had not seen in 41 years!  She plays the French Horn in the band.  After the concert, John went back to the hotel to participate in a conference call and I went to supper with my girlfriend.  We had a great time and agreed to see each other the next day at the Owls Head Transportation Museum.

Touring Kennebunkport

Monday began with a gathering of the membership for a breakfast buffet in the main dining room of both hotels.  The food was wonderful and the company was even better!

Mr. Peter Brown, Maine Pine Tree As, was our host.  What a delightful and funny presentation he made.  We received a wonderful education on the language of "Mainiacs."  Of course, we didn't want to stick out like sore thumbs, so it will be lobstah or spiders as the locals say, and clam chowdah to mention a couple.

After breakfast, we were off on our adventure of the day.  We started out by adding another member to our group.  So, we are now John and Happy Begg, Danny and Cheryl Austin, John and Twila Cockerill, Tom and Sherry Mack, Mike and Stephanie Petty, and Mr. John Leydon.

Our drive started with a scenic coastline drive past the home of the George and Barbara Bush out on Walker's Point.  270˚ views of beautiful Atlantic ocean and Maine coastline - what a sight to wake up to each day!

Then we were off to the Seashore Trolley Museum.  Such a fun place for all who love trolleys.  The history of the trolleys was quite interesting.  I was surprised to learn that the trolley companies ran the lines 7 days a week.  Sunday was a very slow day, so the companies built parks and the trolleys would circle the parks, let passengers on and off at the parks to enjoy picnics and other leisurely activities.  These were the beginnings of our amusements parks of today.  Several 6 Flag Amusement parks got their beginnings from these trolley parks.

Maine or Bust!

We spent two days on the road driving to Maine in our modern truck, pulling a trailer with Miss Olive aboard.  Saturday morning we started out early, 5:00 AM, and headed to the other side of Columbia and breakfast with the rest of our traveling companions in Blythewood, SC.  We enjoyed a great Southern breakfast at the Cracker Barrel along our first of many interstate highways to Maine.

By 7, we were underway and our first rendezvous place with another couple would be in Winchester, Virginia. But, first we had to drive the 450 miles through the mountains of North Carolina and most of Virginia.  We made several stops for gas, as we quickly learned that these trucks do not get the same gas mileage pulling trailers with Model As attached as they do without.  Before getting to Winchester, we stopped at Berky's Truck Stop for what we thought would be a quick lunch.  Not so quick, but quite interesting...  As you can see the restaurant at Berky's was called "The Pedal Car Diner."  It's decor was unusual, in that there were lots of pedal cars hung from the ceiling and mounted to the walls.  But what made this particular stop interesting was the goings on with the wait staff.  We watched as Graduation balloons were brought in and set up at a back table, but the most interesting of all was the wedding gown that arrived shortly thereafter.  I didn't get a look at the gown, but others in our group did and I'm told it was quite the item, with lots of bling!

We finally arrived in Winchester, several hours later than we had hoped.  But our friends were there waiting for us in the appointed parking lot.  One of the trucks was a real nice rig, it was set up to carry a car on its bed, but was also pulling an enclosed trailer.  The fellows quickly unhitched the trailer and loaded our friends A on the truck.  It was a matter of 15 minutes to load the A and reattach the trailer, then we were back on the road headed for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Most of us stayed a a tiny boutique style hotel in Enola and enjoyed a great supper in a local tavern.  The place was nothing to look at on the outside, but served great food.

Sunday morning, we met again for breakfast and were back on the road at 6:50.  We were determined to make Kennebunkport as close to 4:00 PM as possible.  We decided it was going to be comfort/gas stops only, with crackers eaten while driving.  It worked out quite well, as we arrived at the parking facility at 4:13!  Pretty good, considering we had travelled about 1200 miles in two days, with 4 trucks hauling 5 Model As and one modern car as a chase vehicle.

ckers eaten while driving.  It worked out quite well, as we arrived at the parking facility at 4:13!  Pretty good, considering we had travelled about 1200 miles in two days, with 4 trucks hauling 5 Model As and one modern car as a chase vehicle.


After settling the trailers and off loading the As, we were on our way to our respective hotels.  Most of us are staying at The Colony.  The Colony is a lovely old New England hotel on the coastline of southern Maine, in Kennebunkport.  Our accommodations are in the Carriage House area in a beautiful old renovated home.  Our room, which is connecting with the Austins.  The Pettys and the Cockerills are in the main hotel.  We were greeted at the registration desk with a lovely glass of Champagne!  What a great way to begin our adventure in Maine!

We began our stay at The Colony with a complimentary glass of champagne and quickly made reservations for dinner on "The Porch."  Many of us enjoyed our first lobster of the week.  My intent is to eat as much lobster as possible during the week!

Getting ready to roll

The Town Sedan is now ready to roll along the beautiful rugged coastline of Maine.  The 2015 MAFCA National Tour kicks off on Monday, June 8 from the Colony Hotel and the Nonamtum Resorts in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Meet Miss Olive Oil

We have spent the better part of the last month getting her ready for the journey.  Really, it all began last Christmas, when Santa left four new tires for her under the Christmas tree.  Before the new tires could be mounted, the wheels would need to be sent to the powder coaters for sandblasting and a new coat of yellow paint.  This proved to be a bit more difficult than we thought.  John found the powder coater he wanted to do the work, but finding the correct shade of yellow for the wheels proved to be a bit more difficult.  As there has not been a Pantone chart for the different Model A colors this task had John contacting powder coat companies near and far, a powder coat company in Oregon was contacted for color chips, because they "do a lot of Model A work."  Finally, after a couple of months of color chip samples arriving, we found the perfect match.  Wouldn't you know it was named "Yellow Wheel?"  

With the Pantone for "Yellow Wheel" in hand, the wheels were delivered to the shop for sandblasting and a fresh coat of yellow paint.  Once the wheels were stripped, it was discovered that some restoration work had previously been done to the wheels with "Bondo" to smooth out old surface rust pitting.  Not an insurmountable problem, the areas were once again smoothed using a permanent material that would bond with the metal and painted with the new paint.  Today, the wheels look beautiful and are the perfect shade of yellow.

We decided to take the car on a bit of a shake down drive, as our local club was driving down to Rivers Bridge State Park, about 100 miles from our house.  It would be a good test for the new tires and to check if we needed to do anything else before our great adventure in Maine.

We met up with friends at the end of our street and we were off to meet up with the rest of the club members in Gaston, SC.  We made it about 7 miles from the house, driving down a big hill, when we heard the distinctive ping, ping, ping of a hubcap being airborne and bouncing along the pavement, then through the blackberry brambles, and into the creek at the bottom of the drop off along the roadside.  Well, that hubcap was history!  Unfortunate, but not something we were going to go hunting for.

The drive to Rivers Bridge was uneventful for us, but not for another club member.  We made a short stop for a roadside tech session and a new fan belt was installed.  We made a planned stop in Denmark, SC for a visit to the Mennonite Bakery and enjoyed delicious fresh doughnuts and a stroll along the town streets.  We went into the art gallery of artist Jim Harrison, a very talented painter of South Carolina scenery.  I just couldn't pass up a framed print of an old country barn with the Carolina block C and Gamecock on its roof.  

Our next stop was to the town of Olar (Pronounced Ōh-luh, as in cola), population of less than 300.    The town of Olar has a special connection with Ford Motor Co. because of Henry Ford’s relationship with C.F. Rizer, an Olar native, in the early 1900s.  Rizer’s business in the early 1900s included general merchandise and farm supplies. He added another building in 1912 that provided different departments for the goods he carried, and included a store for his buggies, wagons and harnesses.  When the automobile became a reality the next year, Rizer had the first and largest supply and sales of any dealer in South Carolina. His business required 15 clerks to handle the merchandise and auto trade.  In 1914, Henry Ford, not having the capital to expand, called Rizer asking if he had any money to spare. With full confidence in the automobile industry, he lent $25,000 to Ford. That year, Ford sold half a million cars, and the industry was on the way.  The same year, Rizer Auto Co., as it was known, received the largest single shipment of cars in Bamberg County. It took a train with one-half mile of 64 box cars, each bearing four Ford automobiles, to bring the vehicles from Detroit to Olar. The 256 cars arrived in Olar in March, and the last one sold in November. These cars had to be assembled and put together for a contract price of $15 a car.  In July 1920, Rizer placed a full-page ad for “Rizer Auto Company of Olar,” advertising his intention to discontinue activity in all other lines.  Rizer was able to outsell other dealers because he had sufficient capital to sell on credit. Ford awarded Rizer the exclusive franchise to sell Fords in Bamberg, Barnwell, Colleton, Hampton and Allendale counties. Rizer would put his salesmen on the road in the five-county area and the cars would sell quickly. It was not uncommon to sell as many as 10 cars a day.

After arriving at Rivers Bridge State park, we enjoyed our picnic lunch and a history lesson from the park ranger, but it was soon time to head back to Columbia in our A's.  We arrived back home with no issues about 5:30 PM.  It had been a long, but fun day in the A's with our friends.

We did learn some valuable information about Miss Olive.  Her new tires certainly made for a much more comfortable ride, but a front end alignment was needed, along with a bit of a tune up and brake adjustment.  All of which has been done, along with a quick trip to Smith & Jones for a few extra parts for, you know - just in case!

Friday evening, we will load her on the trailer for the trip north...