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.

Acadia National Park, ME

this video is one that I took from the top of Acadia Mountain...the view was incredible!
I must say, at the risk of jinxing things, our weather has held for quite a long time. Since we've been in Maine its been great during the day, sunny or partly sunny, and in the 60s or 70s. At night it gets cold, sometimes in the 40s, but who cares....
Bar Island was different from what we thought it would be...we brought water shoes and a towel, expecting that to cross over to the island at low tide, we would be slogging through watery sand, and would get wet. When we got there it turns out that it is more like a gravel road, and trucks actually drive out there at low tide.. we didn't get at all wet. We did walk the island, which had great views of the mainland. No pictures, since I actually forgot to bring the camera. Our plan was to grab a piece of pizza for lunch at a place we passed by the other day. It smelled soooo good! Unfortunately, it was closed and instead we ate a restaurant called Rte 66. It had great 50s memorabilia, and awful food. it was the biggest waste of money, and the worst food we have had in a long time. That afternoon, there was actually a cruise ship in port, which was funny because there were so many people downtown, they were swarming the place.
We knew that Wednesday would be our last day here so anything that was really important for us to see was put on the agenda for the day. In the morning we went to the Gardens and Museum in the National Park. The Nature Center was really interesting, but the rest of it we probably could have passed on. From there we went hiking a trail along the ocean and met a really cool older couple. They were right behind us starting out on the trail so we chatted with them. A short time later they realized it was a more difficult trail than they had anticipated, and it was really too late for them to turn back. They said they'd just take it slow and steady. We met up with them again a few minutes later when we paused to look at the view. Turns out he is 79 and she is 80. Amazing what they were doing! Again we went ahead, but the trail got more vertical and challenging, so we kind of hung around waiting to see if they were ok...we joked with them, telling stories about people who push their spouse over a cliff and claim they fell. This time I asked them if they wanted company on the trail, but they said they were fine. Still, we saw them about 4 more times. That was not an easy trail! Their agility was amazing...!
After continuing on the "Loop Road" that winds through the area, we then made our way over to the smaller, non-touristy towns. Paul found a store that sells his new favorite treat- its called a Harbor Bar and its vanilla ice cream between two incredibly good chocolate chip cookies, and the whole thing is covered in chocolate. He had one a few days ago and has been on the hunt to find them again. What makes it great is the quality of the cookies. They taste like homemade...
It was approaching sunset when we reached the light house at Bass Harbor. Great timing! We had about 2 minutes to look around before I had to start taking pictures. There were about 20 other people there doing the same thing, and about 1200 mosquitos per person. I think we left before the sun had even completely set!
Today was a travel day- we are still in Maine but tomorrow we will move on to NH. We may take the time in the morning to get the oil changed on Paul's baby...um, I mean, truck..
We spent tonight trying to make some decisions on how long we want to stay in NH and VT. Our original idea was to head to Lancaster PA and the amish area before we see Jess in mid October, but, Joe and Judy Rizzo, the people who bought our boat, have invited us to join them for a couple of days of hiking the Adirondacks. It sounds like fun so we are trying to move our schedule around to be able to do that. I think Lancaster will have to wait.

Acadia National Park, ME

Saturday Sept 12- Our plan today is to hike Acadia Mountain, which is about 670 feet, but what makes it different from the Beehive is that it isn’t straight up. We had in mind to go up the side of Acadia, down the other side and walk/stoll along Valley Gorge trail which follows Somes Sound Fjord. That’s supposed to be the best place around here to spot eagles, which I would definitely love to do! After that little break, we would cut over St. Sauveur Mtn and back down to the parking lot. Going up Acadia was great. Just enough challenge without tiring us too much. The woods and rocks here remind me so much of the area where I grew up. We used to pack up a lunch and rock climb near my house, where there were acres of woods and rocks. Intermingled with the boulders were blueberry bushes, and we would pick them when it was the right time of year. This area is very similar to that, with the same type of rocks and scrubby bushes…. So, up Acadia we go. The views at the top were incredible. I have a video, but don’t think I have the bandwith to upload it. We ate lunch when we got to the top. Once we went down the other side, our plan started to fall apart a little. Instead of a path to stroll along the fjord, the Valley Gorge trail was just as much work as it was going up Acadia. So much for our little break before climbing St. Sauveur. We did take our time, stopping frequently to scan for eagles. We never did see one, but I did get a picture of an Osprey. When we got home I googled to find out what an eagle sounds like so I will be able to recognize the call better next time. St. Sauveur is about 750 ft, so in all we ascended and descended about 1500 ft, about 5 miles ….doesn’t seem like much but we were tired- it took us about 5 hours in all. I think next time we will buy the detailed hiking trails map so we’ll have a better idea of the terrain. I was glad we went up Acadia, since the view at the top of St. Sauveur was nonexistent. It was tree covered, with no view at all. Sunday we spent regrouping- did some shopping and laundry and in general took it easy. Today we felt ready for another challenge, so we biked some of the carriage roads in the park. We noticed today that the colors on the trees seem to be changing daily. I would say that everything was pretty green when we got here, and now you can definitely see that some of the leaves have started to turn. It made for very pretty scenery while we rode. In all we biked about 12 miles- and since I haven’t been on a bike in about 15 years or more, I felt pretty good about it. We’ll see what we feel like tomorrow! We stopped to eat along the way, and stopped to chat with other bikers several times. There is a restaurant on the water called the Jordon Pond House. They are known for their popovers. Of course we had to stop in- Paul had the popover, I had a brownie sundae. He said the peach ice cream was some of the best he has ever had, I say the hot fudge was some of the best I have ever had. It was worth the calories, for sure. We dropped the bikes off in Bar Harbor and walked the shore a bit looking for sea glass, without much luck. There is an island right off the coast that you can walk to at low tide. Our plan is to do that tomorrow, if the weather holds.

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!