We occasionally make the claim that our Triumphs are for driving, not
simply admiring. Well, this is a report about a drive.
Last night Sharon and I returned from a 6-day camping trip to Mt.
Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. It was an intense and
generally delightful six days.
I had always wanted to drive the Spitfire there, so on a whim we
decided to try it for this portion of our fall vacation. The plan
was that if we could fit all the necessary (or almost necessary) gear
into the car's nooks, we'd do it. Otherwise we'd take the Caravan.
Last summer I had made a Spitfire luggage rack which we never got the
chance to try. So this past Saturday it got pressed into service as
the loading commenced. The luggage rack took the stove, a plastic
crate of kitchen gear, two folding camp chairs, and the tent. The
trunk got the packs (for hiking), the duffels of clothes, the boots,
and a large tarp for rain protection. The interior got the
thermoelectric fridge, the sleeping bags and pads, some electrical
stuff such as a work light to illuminate our campsite, and my laptop
computer. Sharon wanted the popcorn air-popper, but when I said no
she pre-popped bags of popcorn which took more space than the popper
would have taken. Yes, taking the computer was a silly but I'll
explain it in a moment.
About 1PM Saturday we set out northeast up the coast (what in Maine
would be called "downeast"), arrived at the campground about 7PM,
shortly after dark. The Spitfire made the trip with no trouble other
than to scrape the ground whenever we hit a particularly rough
stretch of road. I learned to watch the road very carefully.
Then the campground owner warned us that rain was expected. We knew
that, but what none of the weathercasts had said was that this was
the remains of some minor tropical storm, not your everyday overcast.
Sunday was very wet and windy. The offical reading in Ellsworth was
2.89 inches of rain, great for carriage road walks but not for
motoring top-down. The Spitfire didn't mind the weather though and
we didn't get wet at the campsite. The sun never came out, and we
discovered that those little red-brown ants at the campsite liked to
bite! They were aggressive little devils. Just one more intense
thing to remember about this trip.
We spent early Monday hiking the Perpendicular Trail over Mt.
Mansell. Since we'd finished by late afternoon, I motored us over
the Mt. Cadillac. We'd hiked it many times but never driven it, so
the Spitfire was put to the task. The little car loved the trip, and
lo! the sun was shining up there. Well, at somewhere around 1200 ft
elevation we had driven up through the cloud layer, you see. We
parked the car in the lot at the top and walked around with all the
other folks. As we were walking back to the car, we noticed a couple
checking it out. When we approached, they asked "Is this yours?" It
seems they were Triumph people too, with a TR3, an early Spitfire,
and a Morris Minor back home in Pennsylvania. (He said his Triumphs
could have made the run up the mountain but the Morris couldn't.)
They looked envious that we'd had the gumption to make the whole trip
from Boston, let alone the run up Cadillac, in the Spitfire. The way
the conversation turned out I never thought to ask him his name or
whether he was on the Triumphs email list. Silly me. I suppose he
can't respond if he is because they're probably not home yet. We
talked Triumphs for a while then went off on our separate ways. By
the time we drove down the mountain, the cloud/fog bank had come in
from the ocean and merged both the water and the land into a sea of
white, with a few mountains poking their heads up and the sun
backlighting a taller cloud farther off to the west. An absolutely
stunning site.
Back at the campsite that night, we put the computer to use. This
campground had cable TV service at the sites, and my computer has a
TV tuner. So we watched the Monday Night Football game in the tent.
We also watched some of the baseball playoffs on Tuesday. Decadent
yes, but fun.
The next day was beautiful, sunny and cool, great for hiking. We
dropped the car's top and set out for the Parkman Mt. turnout, spent
the day hiking over Parkman, Gilmore, Sargent, and back over Parkman,
with a side trip to Bald Peak. It was warm sun, cool breeze, the
occasional hawk winging southward in advance of winter. At the
bottom, a brace of park rangers doing tree-maintanence asked about
the car. Then we motored back over to and up and down Cadillac with
the top down, then around the entire Park Loop Road, 35 mph in 3rd,
cold breeze, the smell of spruce and salt air, gulls laughing, and
Celtic music playing quietly in the tapedeck. It was priceless.
Wednesday was overcast with rain possible for the afternoon and
predicted for Thursday. Since packing all that gear was a 2-hour
operation I didn't want to do in the rain, we decided to head home
that day after a short hike. After loading and finding that our gear
occupied more space than it had earlier in the week, we drove over to
Jordan Pond. As we were parking, a guy got out of the car next to us
and said with a strong English accent "This was made in Coventry.
That's where I'm from!" It seems he had worked for Rover. He
rattled off the names of a bunch of Triumphs he admired such as the
Dolomite Sprint, and lamented the managament decisions that had
killed off the industry such as the fear of building more performance
cars just as the VW Golf GTI came out and proved the viability of the
market, the decision to build TR7's in Liverpool, etc. Then he asked
about the mechanicals, which engine, what carburator, etc. It seems
he was thoroughly delighted to find one of his old babies in use here
in the colonies! For us it was the second Triumph-moment in three
days.
We finally made the trip home. It took a bit under six hours, could
have been done faster but we weren't in a hurry. We hit a bit of
rain in southern Maine that lasted the rest of the way. The car ran
superbly but would have been happier if I could have found a Sunoco
station so it could drink Ultra. That .020 overbore engine with the
'76 high compression head doesn't like junk gas. The final tally was
721 miles, 20 gallons of gas, a zillion memories. Next trip we'll
leave the laptop home though.
--
Jim Muller
jimmuller@pop.rcn.com
'80 Spitfire, '70 GT6+
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