Acadia Revisited (06-20-13)

When we went on the road 4 years ago, one of our first destinations was Acadia National Park.  Well, 4 years later, we’re back! 

I specifically wanted to hike the Beehive trail again because I remember feeling pretty nervous the first time, but I’ve done a lot of hiking since then and I wanted to see how it would feel.

At 1.6 miles round trip, it was shorter than I remember, but it was still a little nerve-wracking. In this picture you can see two people climbing up the cliff side.

In many places there were handrails and/or iron-rung ladders

But not every spot that I felt needed handrails actually had them. 

Of course, once we got to the top, the views were amazing, and worth a few minutes of anxiety:

 

So, I enjoyed the Beehive again, but it doesn’t come close to my favorite trail, Picacho Peak, in Arizona.

That hike didn’t take very long, and we didn’t want to overdo it our first day hiking after a long winter, so we toured the rest of the park by truck, enjoying the sounds and smells of the ocean while we ate our lunch. I wish we could move Maine further south.  It would be a pretty perfect place to live!

There aren’t very many long hiking trails in Acadia, so if you want to hike for more than a mile or so, you have to put trails together.  We bought the trail map so we could do that. 

The trail we pieced together was about 7 miles long, but we were feeling pretty good, so we figured it would be worth it, to make it to the top of Penobscot Mountain.

Once again, the day was perfect and the views were amazing:

Unfortunately, after hiking to the top of Penobscot Mountain, we found out the trail we wanted to take to complete our loop (Jordan Cliffs Trail) was closed due to nesting Peregrine Falcons. 

We took a different way, but ended up hiking down the other side of Penobscot Mountain, which meant that to get back, we had no choice but to hike back up and over the hill ( we could have taken the carriage road but it would have added 3 miles to our trek.).

In  the end, it was an 8.5 mile hike with 2000 feet of elevation gain.



  I guess it’s no surprise that we decided to take it easy the following day, and drove into Bar Harbor to check out the shops and restaurants.  The day was so beautiful we ate lunch outside with a view of the harbor.




One of the fun things to do in Acadia is ride bikes along the miles and miles of carriage roads in the park, and we were so optimistic that we’d do that, we took the bikes off the rack and put them in the truck so we could go biking at the drop of a hat.  Didn’t happen.  Yesterday we were really too tired, and it started sprinkling later in the day. We figured we’d go home, get some stuff done around the house, then set out this morning with the bikes.  It might have worked, but we woke up this morning to the sound of rain beating on the roof. 


So, instead, Paul is cleaning the “nose” of the trailer, and I am writing my blog.  If it clears up this afternoon, we may go for a bike ride or a short hike, but early tomorrow morning we cross the Canadian border, so we have to make sure we have everything ready.


The only internet connection we’ll have in Canada for the next two months will be whatever we can get at campgrounds and coffee shops. I am downloading maps onto my ipad that I can use offline and our laptop has some mapping software so hopefully that will help. We added Canada to Paul’s cell phone, but service might be pretty spotty.

Yellowstone- Our Last Few Days (07-09-12)

When we first arrived in Yellowstone 3 weeks ago, we sat down and made a list of things we’d like to see and do.  A few days ago we revisited the list, tweaked it, and put together a shorter list of things that we wanted to make sure to do before we leave on July 10th.
We went back to the Old Faithful area to see if we could catch some of the other spectacular geysers as they erupted.  Old Faithful is popular, not because it’s the best or biggest, but because it’s predictable. We decided to dedicate one more day trying to see some more spewing, and we were pretty successful.  In fact, 3 of the geysers we managed to see put Old Faithful to shame!!  Especially Beehive.  Beehive and Grand are two of the tallest active geysers in North America.  We first witnessed Grand’s eruption, at around 10 in the morning:

We were lucky with that one that we didn’t have to wait more than 30 minutes.  The next eruption we wanted to see was Beehive, but it’s not known for it’s predictability. It can be anywhere from 11-18 hours between eruptions. We stood around for a while, then debated whether we should wait, when one of the Geyser Geezers (people who are addicted to watching the geysers spew) told us that no matter how long we had to wait, it would be worth it.  So, wait we did- for almost 2 hours, but the time passed by very quickly because we were chatting with a couple from New Jersey that we met.


Beehive Geyser

 Beehive has a “Tell”.  About 10-20 minutes before it erupts, a smaller nearby geyser, appropriately called Beehive Indicator erupts. Finally, at 12:35, Beehive let loose.  Now that’s a geyser! 
The water erupted with incredible force.  You could hear and see the power behind the eruption- I think partly because we were a lot closer to the action.  In fact, with the wind shifting every few seconds, we got quite wet.

That same day we managed to see Great Fountain geyser erupt as well.  This geyser pretty much exploded into the air.  It’s very difficult to capture all the action, even with video.

We’ve made a last minute push to see as much wildlife as we can, so once again we got up at 5:30 and headed out the door. This time, instead of Lamar Valley, we went to the closer Hayden Valley, to look for wolves and grizzlies.  Because of the rain, the fog was pretty thick and didn’t lift until we had been standing around for an hour or so.  We were with a bunch of people, some who had scopes, and we all chatted, so it was fun. 



Bison swimming across the river

   We ended up seeing a Bald Eagle (no picture- he flew too fast) and several bison who decided to swim across the river.








We all had our scopes and binoculars trained far into the distance, where the local wolf den is.  Eventually, the alpha female came into view, along with two pups.  I have to take the word of the people with scopes that there were pups- all I saw was a blob of fur, they were so far away (in fairness, they did let us look through the scopes, but it didn’t help much).

Later in the morning we went for a (boring) hike and came across some black bear tracks that were old, but still very visible.

On the way home we checked out the river rapids where the fish jump during spawning, but didn’t see any jump.  What we did see was another Bald Eagle.  This time I managed to snap a few shots as he flew over.

We did end up taking the boat out on the lake a total of three times, exploring new areas every time. We found a few thermal areas where the water temperature is considerably warmer than the rest of the lake.  This is overflow from a hot spring, and the water was about 85 degrees in that area.

The wildlife was plentiful- I took this picture of a grizzly from the truck as we drove by.

Bison like to take dirt baths.  This was along one of the trails we hiked.

This black bear was about 200 feet from the road, just minding his own business while we all took his picture.

I mostly took this picture because it shows just how huge bison are.  This guy is taller than the car. Hard to believe people approach them, thinking they are “tame”.  Two weeks ago someone was gored and landed in the hospital because he didn’t move out of the way of a bison. He just assumed that since the animal approached him, that he was used to being around people.

As we were leaving the park we got one more chance to enjoy the wildlife, although since we were towing and they kept crossing the road in front of us, I am not sure the word “enjoy” is appropriate.

The day before we left, we had our most incredible wildlife show, but I am going to put that in another post….more soon…..

Acadia National Park, ME

September 10, Traveling from Portland ME to Acadia, we decided to take the scenic route- Rte 1, which pretty much follows along the ocean. Along the coast of Maine there are a lot of small, picturesque towns with small harbors. They were too small to accommodate the Everest, so we didn’t stop. Instead, we stopped at Moose Point State Park, which is right on the water, walked around for a bit, and had lunch. We stopped later at Fort Point State park just to stop for a bit. If I had had my camera out I would have been able to get a picture of a fox. September 11th, we started the day by watching a history channel special about Sept 11. After an hour or so we shut it off. I was feeling sucked in- it’s the type of show that once you start watching, it goes on all day. Very interesting information, but too much. We had read literature about Acadia last night, and I had made a preliminary list of what looked interesting to us, but we decided to start off by heading to the visitor center to get oriented. I am glad we did. We got the map of hiking trails and general information about the park. More importantly, we watched one of those short videos that showcases the park. Ordinarily I don’t like those videos but the Ranger suggested we watch it, so we did. Interesting to find out that Acadia is the only National Park that is solely made up of donated lands. In the early 1900s, several wealthy individuals started buying up land in order to turn it over to the government. John Rockefeller Jr. donated and built miles of carriage roads in the park, with the stipulation that no motorized vehicles be allowed on them. We plan to rent bikes for a day to tour some of the carriage roads- I want to rent a bicycle built for two, but when I suggested it, Paul looked at me sideways…. The most important thing the movie pointed out is that Acadia is not a park of “superlatives”. There is nothing here that is the “best, biggest, loudest….” or anything “est”. Its pointless to run around looking for “the” thing to do. This is more of a place to be absorbed and experienced. My friend Sue said it too…the park looks like all of the rest of the Maine coast, its all beautiful. That realigned my thinking back to where it needed to be. The whole point of this trip is to absorb and experience things, not to run from one thing to another. After spending the last week eating, sitting and eating, I was anxious to get moving again, so I picked a trail to hike that was in the “strenuous” section of the trail guide. We drove up Cadillac Mountain first, which is the highest point on the east coast. The View was AMAZING. Impossible to capture it in a picture. Maybe someday I will learn how to stitch pictures together to form a panoramic, but not now. There was a Hawk Watch set up, so we talked to the ranger for a bit, but he said the wind was wrong to see hawks that day. It needs to be a Northwest wind. Maybe we’ll go back another day, but I am more interested in going through the fiord where eagles are routinely spotted. So, it’s on to Beehive trail. Now, had I thought about the shape of a beehive, or actually looked up at Beehive trail, I would not have climbed it. I am really glad I didn’t look because right now I really feel like I accomplished something! The pictures will give an idea of what it was like…but it was, at times, straight up. No guardrail, only rocks, an iron handhold, or a pathway about 3 feet wide, sometimes less. Twice I had to stop and regroup mentally. I was ok looking down if I looked off into the distance, but not if I looked straight down. Once we got to the top, the view was worth it!! When we got to the bottom and looked around, Paul pointed out a "hill" and I said there was no way I would climb that one-the one we had just done was high enough. He laughed because he was pointing out Beehive and I had already climbed it... Today my muscles want something that isn’t a hill- so we’ll see whats out there!