13. Acadia remembrance, and trip wrap-up

Looking back at this blog, I can see I left out a bunch of stuff we enjoyed during our stay at Acadia National Park in Maine. Just so I won't forget that week, I'll put some of that stuff here now, and dig up some of the photos. It was grand!

Wild Blueberry field with leaves and water and islands!

LEAVES: We were in Acadia during the actual "changing of the leaves" season, where we got to see the difference in colors as they got more intense DAILY. The forests were just beginning to

lose some of their green color when we drove up to Acadia, but by the end of our week there the colors had become more brilliant and spread more widely through the forests. It was magical. We got a few photos showing the colors, even though it was tough to get nice shots. We stayed out of the woods most days until it was warmer later in the day, so the brilliant sunlight usually killed some of the colors on our pics. Go see these scenes yourself, they are spectacular!

SIGHTS: We returned to Cadillac Mountain by car one day with perfect visibility, and were so glad we did! What a fantastic panorama of the whole Park, the surrounding mountains and water, and the islands lying off shore. You could easily see the town of Bar Harbor, and the cruise ship lying off-shore. 
This time up, we weren't freezing and hiding from howling wind...it was really fun. 

We spent time exploring other communities around the Park, drove the scenic parkway around Schoodic Peninsula, and visited the National Park Campground there. Nice, but not as scenic or convenient as our place at Mount Desert!

FOOD: We visited all over and ate whenever we got hungry. Our travels around the Acadia area took us to many cool places. I've already talked about the Popovers we tried at a couple of places in the Park. The other iconic food you gotta eat in Maine is LOBSTER! We had lobster rolls several places. I thought it would be a big deal, but all it consists of is lobster meat chunks spread out on a hot dog bun, with mayonnaise underneath. Sheeeesh, you'd think they invented a masterpiece. 

We ate lunch at one tiny eatery in Winter Harbor on the Schoodic Peninsula...Lynn tried our first MINI-LOBSTER ROLL. Super food, and nice folks who gave us some good sightseeing advice. This was typical of most folks we met during our time in Maine: while they were not very outgoing initially, once you engaged them in a conversation, they were delightful. 

   Our most fun mealtime came at Beal's Lobster Pier in Southwest Harbor, when we each picked out our own 1 1/2 pound lobster, then ate outside at a picnic table overlooking the harbor, making a mess with all the other folks around us. Delicious fun. Later on, we had a late supper at the Route 66 Diner in Bar Harbor. This place was loaded with kitschy 1950's and 1960's signs and artifacts...and they served lobster rolls...and Guiness! 

When not dining out, we ate in camp. Lynn froze several meals for our trip, so we had vegetable soup, Italian pasta and meatballs, and all kinds of sandwich options. By the time we left Acadia, we were ready for a big ole hamburger. This was not a starvation camping trip! 

COMA trap repair shack

MUSIC: My old friend Brewster and his sidekick Jim live near Acadia NP, so we played as much music as we could stand one night, then they invited me to attend the "Church Of the Morning After" (COMA)  the following Sunday morning. It's a rotating group of lobstermen, local residents, and other ne'er-do-wells who get together in a rundown lobster trap repair shack in Stonington, Maine, 45 minutes from our spot in Acadia. Heck yeah, I was going! It ended up being even better than picking with Brewster and Jim a few days earlier.

 Incredible collection of instrumentalists (banjo, guitars, mandolins, harmonicas, fiddle, CLARINET, percussion, etc.), singers, and spectators all in a loose circle in this beat up old workshop. Everybody just jumped in with whatever they had to play, on whatever song was called out, by whoever felt like singing one. I would have stayed forever, these are my kind of people! A couple of hours of COMA was all I could get, though, then it was over. I'm coming back...

KAYAK: We were camped on Somes Sound, so I had to get in a few paddles. My last trip was much further down the Sound, and I packed a small lunch. Nobody else in the world was on the water that day, I had it all to myself! It was a beautiful day, lots of changed-color leaves to view on each side of the Sound, and safe water to play in. I stopped for a break at a little place I dubbed Peanut Butter Peninsula, in honor of my sandwich. 

The scenery was almost too perfect to believe, so I stayed as long as I could. The outgoing tide forced me to get going again: tide swings here are between 4-6 feet, so I wanted to get out before the water level dropped down to the level of all the boulders that were just under the surface in some spots. I made it back to camp before low tide, so all ended well. 

HIKE/BIKE: Lynn and I tried some of the local trails, and found we most liked the carriage roads that go all over the Park. The Vanderbilts or Rockefellers owned all this land at one time, and built roads of crushed stone all over the place so the scenery could be viewed from horse-drawn carriages by wealthy visitors. When the land was donated to the USA as a National Park, the roads remained and are perfect for hikes & bikes. No motorized vehicles, narrow unobtrusive pathways with good surfaces, and no terrain to tear up your ankles or your bike. One day I rode my backpack bike while Lynn hiked the carriage roads near our camp, and we saw spectacular leaves and mountain scenery at every turn. The sun was out, temp was perfect, no rain...a glorious day!

CAMP: We loved our campsite at Mount Desert Campground, at the north end of Somes Sound. It is a privately-run campground, with abundant tent and RV sites, spaced out so no one is intruded on by other campers. Significantly, the BEST camp sites at this place are reserved for TENT campers! Yay, those folks usually get shuttled-off to an out-of-the-way crummy spot. Here, they got waterfront spots right on the Sound, usually on a rocky outcropping for beautiful views down on the water, and of the setting sun each evening. This camp doesn't allow RV's longer than 20 feet, so there were no monster rigs blocking out the sun either! We had a beautiful site just across the camp road from the waterfront, and enjoyed views because there was usually a vacancy in the waterfront site across from us. Nice bathroom and shower facilities were nearby, with one quirk: a charge of $1 in quarters for every 5 minutes of hot water in the shower! We quickly ran out of change, but got a bunch to use the rest of the week, because when it's cold outside, a WARM shower makes a lot of difference! 

More trip Photos here if you are so inclined!
TRIP PICS LINK