I have been calling this ARcadia the whole way here. Once I got here I discovered it is really Acadia-no R. We arrived on a kind of rainy day. The first site we had in the campground was not level, we spent forever trying to level it, then we were going to go to town and get more wood to put under the wheels, but on the way out saw a more level site and got permission to camp there.Guess the campground was going to be full all weekend, so the sites were limited. Fortunately we had reservations.
A model of Mount Desert(pronounce dessert) island, most of which is Acadia Park. But some is private and town. The town of Bar Harbor is really a garish tourist trap kind of town-, shops, gallery’s, restaurants, t shirt shops, really crowded and too busy. 2-3 cruise boats a day are stopping, so the place is packed with them during the day. A bunch of nice homes scattered around the park. A tide pool. Lots of snails and bright algae in this one. The tide is really huge here, goes down like 10 feet at low tide. So far the ocean has been really calm, does not seem like the ocean without waves.
Waves, sort of. We drove up to Cadillac summit, 1,530, the highest point on the island, and the highest point on the eastern coast. They say it is the first place on the USA that gets sun at dawn. But Bill Byson in the Appalachian trail book said that Mt Katahdin was the first- it is much higher, 6,000 or so, highest peak in Maine but farther inland. Never know what to believe. Each park we go to is the ‘most visited in the US’, each place is the best and biggest. Great views though.
View east toward the Atlantic ocean. Blackwoods campground is to the right of Otter point out there. Some fall flowers and some of the islands view.
John with a stuffed lobster. He says he has a weird look because it was a weird lobster. There are three breweries here on the island. We stopped at Atlantic, the biggest and they claim the only. They bought the smaller one, even thought they have different beer, with their own recipe, but it is now made at Atlantic. There is also a pub, Jack Russell's, that makes their own beer and they only serve it in their restaurant. We tasted it the first night here. We loved their barley wine, John bought three bottles.
The sand bar to Bar Island is under water at high tide, you can only go out there when the tide is low-only a two hour window- so we went out there for John’s low point in Maine spot. Notice the huge cruise boat in the harbor behind him.
There is only one sand beach on the island, most of New England's coast is cliffs, beaches are rare. You can see the high tide mark on this one, it is pretty crowded when it is warm out. The water never gets above 50 degrees, so not many people swim. The second is a view from the Great Head Trail we hiked.
Fall asters and fall poison ivy. I had gotten used to no poison ivy in the mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire. Guess is still grows at low altitude.
John’s great head with the Great Head sign. A twisted shot of me behind a twisted birch tree.
The sand beach and reflection, the last sun of the day on the ridge
More last sun. John doing the low point shot at the beach, he figured it looked lower there.
The almost full moon rising.
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