After putting the long drive to Maine behind us we relaxed into a nice rhythm for our time in and around Acadia. We arrived Wednesday afternoon and stayed at our campground outside of Bar Harbor through Monday so we had a nice long stretch of staying in one spot before heading back towards home.
Our campground was just a short walk to Hadley's Point s tiny outcropping of the island north of Bar Harbor and slightly outside the hustle and bustle of the city proper. We stayed at another private campground - our last of the trip actually that was named for the point it sat on. Overall, the campground was nice - recently renovated and larger than many of the ones we'd stayed at on our way out. But one that that really annoyed me was that we had to pay to use the showers - 50cents for 7 minutes. Here's the thing. I think we paid around $80 a night for this campground. It's not outrageous - I think the most expensive campground I can remember staying at was in Jackson Hole where we spent around $150 per night, but it's also not the cheapest. Many state parks charge only $20 or $30 a night. Sure, the extra few bucks we spent to shower didn't break the bank...but I hated the nickel and diming and the process of getting quarters etc. Outside of that, I'd recommend the campground to others coming through!
With 4.5 days to explore the island we figured we had lots to learn, do and see, so we downloaded an app Mom and Dad stumbled on an app a few years ago when they were on another trip to the national parks. It is called Guide Along and for $10 or so dollars you get access to a guided drive through the entire area. The app is really cool because it uses your location to tell you stories and depending on the routes you take, you get different stories about different things. The guide clearly tells you where to turn, "go left to see this, or stay straight to continue on and see this other thing". He tells you about trail heads and hikes, about restaurants, about the history of an area, the commerce and jobs that people hold and all sorts of interesting tid bits. You find yourself in some "off the beaten path" areas - which we love, and learn some things you likely wouldn't have picked up without listening to the guided tour. If you are road tripping somewhere I highly recommend checking to see if there is a guided tour available and paying to download it.
We nicknamed our guide Jeeves and we turned him on whenever we were driving around the island. He'd tell you one set of stories when you were driving one way and when you reversed your trip to go home, you'd get a whole new set of stories. Anyways, on Thursday, our first full day in Acadia we opted to explore the quieter side of the island. The camp hosts warned us how busy the Bar Harbor area could be and how bad parking was so we opted for "less" and went west the first day. We ended up in three cars - Mom and Dad with us, Dan and Dana on their own exploration mission and Church and Ryan (and their 3 kiddos) in a third car behind us a bit - which unfortunately meant that we didn't catch up with anyone until later the afternoon - at the brewery (obvi!).
Jeeves didn't disappoint - he pointed out the "best view for your effort" hike just a mile up on our drive so we pulled over and gave it a try. It was called Flying Mountain Trail and included an overlook of one of the Fjords that took us up up up and then we hiked back down down down all the way to the water (which the kids loved). We got a chance to put our feet in the ocean and confirm that it in fact very cold, 55 degree water, even in August. The hike was the perfect amount of effort to get us feeling like we moved our bodies and we ready for lunch. We grabbed lunch at one of the local restaurants that overlooked one of the ports - a working dock where we could see boats coming in and out and even managed to finish eating just before the rain moved in. It was timed perfectly!
One of the most sought-after things to do in Acadia is to watch the sunrise from the top of Cadillac Moutain. It's so popular that that park has moved to timed entry for Cadillac. With a combination of good planning, awareness and luck we were coordinated enough to reserve a total of 4 timed entry passes to sunrise at Cadillac during our time there. We got two for Friday morning and two for Saturday so that we could choose based on weather and hopefully have the opportunity to be the first people in the US to see the sunrise. Something about the height of the mountain and the fact that it's so far north and east, this is the first place in the US to see the sun rise each morning. The kids opted to come too - so we set our alarms for 3:30 am and while we all had to drag ourselves out of bed that morning, we were lucky enough to have the perfect viewing weather for the sunrise.
There are two different windows to try and reserve timed entry passes. You can try 90 days out from when you want to visit and then again 2 days out. We had no idea 90 days earlier that we'd luck out with one of the best weather days of our entire time in Maine - but I'm sure glad we did!
I don't do it often - Ryan does..but I gotta say, starting your day at 3:30 makes for a long day. You feel like you've lived an entire day before 9 am and truly, in some respects you have! Jamie and Zach visited this exact spot last summer so they gave us all the tips and hints. They told us to pack a big breakfast and plan to stay at the summit. The place totally emptied out within an hour of sunrise and it truly felt like we had the place to ourselves. We outdid ourselves and packed the blackstone and made a full brunch for the group all before 8 am.
After breakfast the girls, Ryan and Dan and I opted to hike back down the mountain. The most adventurous of tourists hike to the summit starting around midnight in order to make it to the top in time for the sunrise. I really wasn't feeling that idea, but promised I'd hike it back down with my honey. I was surprised when the kids wanted to join us - I figured they'd be itching for a nap and some iPad time at the camper. We paid for it with grumpy attitudes later in the day, but honestly I'm so glad we all did the hike back down. We got some great views that we'd have missed if we just stuck near the parking lot.
Friday was a big day of plans for our group. We had the Cadillac Mountain sunrise that morning and then we and a big giant group reservation for 15 at Jordan Pond for lunch. Jordan Pond is another one of the iconic "things to do when you're in Acadia" and we really lucked out when Mom was able to get our giant party of 15 all set up for lunch.
There are three things we can pretty much guarantee when we're in these big, highly visited national parks. One: The traffic and parking is going to suck and annoy us. Two: Cell service is going to suck and make coordinating through the traffic and parking very very hard. And three: Having big groups in multiple cars, with poor cell service makes staying together nearly impossible. We know this. But, we get caught off guard every time it happens and I think it's less about forgetting and more that our desire to stay a big group and include everyone trumps logic and we keep trying (forgetting that we often fail).
I got exactly ZERO pictures of our time at Jordan Pond, which was a real miss, but I'll never forget the time I gave our entire table "fake news" that we got free pop-overs for the table and convinced Mom and Dana to share the ones THEY ordered for themselves with the rest of the table. Sorry ladies! I clearly missed that whole part of the ordering :) LOLOL!
After all of the activities of the day by the time we were finished with lunch the group was ready to head back to the campground to rest and take naps. We'd been up since 3:30 in the morning and done our fill of the day's activities. We let the kids swim and play and everyone ended up in bed early that night!
Saturday was foggy, grey and threatened rain so Christine did some research to find some family fun, rain ok activities for the group and we landed on a 3 hour boat ride that would feature wildlife, lighthouse and the allure of seeing a puffin. The water was rough though and within exactly 4 minutes of leaving the dock I regretted the choice all together. I should have stayed back and saved my money and the queasy feeling I had for the rest of the afternoon. It's so hard for me to back out of things, especially when the rest of the family is going...but I know better. Even my relief band couldn't save me.
The captain did his best to keep us out of the worst of it and the guide did a decent job of making the lack of wildlife seem interesting. She spun up a "can we see the most eagles of any trip this summer" contest which she claimed we won when we spotted the twelfth eagle of the trip...but i have my doubts. The kids loved it though, which is what matters in the end. We saw some seals and a cool lighthouse (dubbed "the ugliest lighthouse in the world" because of the unique construction needed to keep it from being washed off it's foundation every year), and I got some good pictures of the coast. I'm glad we went and I'm glad we got to spend some 1 on 1 time with the Chirch family...I just could have done without the waves and sea sickness.
I'm literally KICKING myself. Somehow I missed so many group photo opportunities. I have zero photos of the entire group of 15 of us. I have zero photos of the kiddos together. No photos of Sadie/Ryan and Chrich/Ryan. No photos of Brownie + fam...and none of myself with Lindsay and Sarah. Believe it or not, this vacation was chalk full of family and friends and people we rarely see, but somehow I missed documenting it all in photos. I will say, I'm glad for the memories though! I just wish I had the photos to go along with them.
Also - I can't help Ryan's choice here. It's the only photo we have of the three of us...and this is what he gave us. I just can't.
After the boat ride (which I was happy to disembark from) we decided to stick around Bar Harbor and explore since we'd already parked and the weather was starting to clear. We walked around for a bit and stumbled on the path to the sandbar that is only walkable for a few short hours during high tide. We decided to walk across and explore. The kids found all kinds of pretty shell pieces and some beach glass but what we enjoyed the most was the rock towers we found on the other side of the sandbar. I'm guessing they were built high enough to survive high tide because there were hundreds of them!
We finished of Saturday with blueberry martini's (mom had been seeking them out the entire time we were in Maine) at one of the cute bars in downtown Bar Harbor.
Sunday was for hiking in the rain - well, it was supposed to be for biking but the rain put a damper on our plans and we pivoted...and then pivoted again...and then again...and we landed on a long 9 mile hike on one of the carriage paths. We left the girls with Mom and Dad and they did their own driving tour of the island while the rest of us adults set out for a hike. We'd planned to hike around Eagle Lake - a 6.5 mile (ish) loop but when we found a little hobbit trail that trailed off of the carriage path and into the woods we decided to be adventurous and see where it took us. At one point we saw a sign saying Jordan Pond and we immediately had high hopes of finding bathrooms, refreshements and a place to rest...but instead we ended up on the north end of Jordan Pond with no humans (or beers) in sight and found ourselves walking in the rain for the rest of the trip. It was actually very enjoyable (I was glad we didn't have the kids with us).
Mom and Dad took the kids to a few of the features we hadn't yet explored. They saw Otter Cover, Thunder Hole, Sandy Beach and a few other things.
Sunday afternoon we ended our time in Acadia with one of the coolest things we did in our time there. We took the mail boat (yes, a real thing...a boat that delivers the mail to a handful of tiny islands that have tiny towns on them) to Little Cranberry island where we had dinner at the cutest little New England-esque restaurant called Islesford Dock. We met the cutest little couple on the boat ride over (her great grandpa and 3 other families bought tracks of land on the island in the 1800's and they had been summering on the island since then and he grew up in Italy - they now summer in Maine and winter in Sicily each year). Anyways we learned all about the history of the island and some fun facts like there are 70ish year round inhabitants on the island (mostly lobster-men) and for many many years the three islands shared one teacher who taught K-12 to the kids of the islands.
The restaurant was fancy and the prefect way to spend our last evening in Maine together. We had fancy cocktails (I had a Rye drink) and ate lobster, the kids hunted for shells (note the cute little whale Abby made on the dinner table) and all around we had a lovely time. Mom made all of the reservations and plans for this one and I'm glad we got a chance to visit this lesser known area. The only thing I'd have done differently is taken an ealier mail boat and explored all three of the islands where it stopped. Each island was tiny - just a mile or two long and wide, but each featured a few little shops of local artists and some small museaums or things to see/explore.
Mom had it timed perfectly where we were able to catch the last mail boat off the island and back to Bar Harbor. It was still a little foggy so we didn't get quite the sunset views she was hoping for - but it did clear while we sat at dinner and the ride home was much more senic becase of it.
I did a terrible job of getting group pictures, but we did do this quick photoshoot as we puttered back over to the dock.
That's a wrap on our time in Maine - it reminded me of the north woods in Wisconsin. I know why people on the east coast love it - because I love the north woods too. I thought it would feel like we were at the ocean but I didn't have that feeling at all! Maybe it's because of the fog or maybe it's because we saw some of the inner islands when you'd look out toward the horizon. Or, maybe it's the lack of sandy beaches?! But that was one thing I didn't expect! I thought it would feel like we visited the ocean...but I did not.
Loved the east coast....glad we went. It was a lot of driving, and I'm not sure if we'll need to road trip it out there again...but we'll be back someday!
No comments:
Post a Comment