Phineas flew home on Sunday to hang out with Nimmy and Pa until we get home in about a week and a half. I’ve gotten a few photos from him and it sounds like he’s living his best life hanging out with baby cousin Lucas and helping Nimmy around the house. We miss him but we’re grateful for the option to give him a break. Between the long drives, the cramped space and the lack of consistent routine, camping for an extended period can be a lot.

Penelope has been hanging out with us and being such a huge help. Robert Treman state park doesn’t have any hookups, so we’ve had to break out the 55 gallon olive barrel Jake repurposed for water storage. We hadn’t used it since earlier on the trip and it needed a good cleaning. We’d had a yellow water situation back at Camden Hill state park that we never figured out, but looking inside the barrel it was clear there was a layer of yellow mineralization (or sludge, not really sure). Regardless I wasn’t going to drink water from it without bleaching it. We drove the barrel across the campground to a water spigot but after spraying and bleaching the yellow was not budging. Unfortunately we discovered that neither of us are skinny enough to fit inside the barrel to reach the bottom to scrub. Penelope to the rescue! Jake went to get Penelope into her swimsuit for the task and she rode back on the back of his bike like a little knight in shining armor. We lowered the barrel over her and she scrubbed and rinsed for a good 30 minutes until the barrel was sparking. No more yellow water!

Penelope has also been a total trooper tagging along to an oyster bar, ramen (again!) and everywhere else we want to go. Jake found a board game bar called Modern Alchemy that is basically his dream place. It’s a little bar with food and drinks and tons of tables to play board games. There is even a DnD room that can be rented to run a game. You can check out a game from their big library and play. We had a fantastic time there last night playing Apples to Apples and Sushi Go. We wanted to tackle a longer game but didn’t have time before they closed.