Acadia National Park!

Acadia National Park!

Acadia National Park is not big, but it packs a lot of beauty into a small space. It gets approximately 2 million visitors a year and 1.8 million of them come between June and September. Being there in October, we managed to miss the crowds of people and shared the park with a minimal number of retirees and European travelers. When we entered the park, we decided to splurge on the $80 National Park Pass. The pass gets you into all National Parks, Wildlife Areas, Monuments and Federal Recreational lands for free. This proved to be an excellent decision as we used it a number of times on the rest of our road trip. We rolled into Acadia around 4pm and managed to squeeze in a short hike before sunset. Acadia was originally a get away for rich New Englanders (well, first it was home to various Native American tribes, but they left the land unchanged, except for shell heaps). Families such as the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Carnegies spent time in Acadia, then called Mt. Desert Island, building large houses and carriage trails through the woods. It was on these carriage trails that we hiked. An interesting history of Acadia can be found at their website: http://www.nps.gov/acad/historyculture/stories.htm After roaming around on the carriage trails, we drove to the campground and set up our tent in the dark. Mark made dinner while I started a fire. Even though it was only October 5th, the temperature dropped into the low 40's and the fire was much appreciated. We stayed by the fire until it was only coals and then headed to bed early.

Our first full day in Acadia was spent driving around the island and taking as many short hikes in different parts of the park as possible. We brought the camp stove and Mark made mac n' cheese on the beach for lunch. Yum! The water up here was much rougher and colder than the coastal waters of Connecticut. The waves would crash into the rocky shore, sending up sprays of salt water that grew increasingly higher as the tide came in. For such a small park, the terrain was quite varied. One minute you would be driving along the coast and then the next you would be plunged into a dark forest. If you kept driving, minutes later you would be deposited on a rocky outcrop at the top of a mountain with an incredible view, like the picture at the top of this post. We continued to explore until it was too dark to see. We reluctantly headed back to camp and proceeded to have a feast of fancy hot dogs grilled over an open fire. The night was cool again and the fire was a welcome addition to the evening.

The next morning we awoke to rain soaking through the seams of our supposedly waterproof tent. Not a morning person under the best of circumstances, I was poorly equipped to deal with a leaky tent before 8am. After much grumbling and a slight breakdown on my part, Mark managed to coax me into the car to go get coffee and check out Acadia through the downpour. We threw a tarp over the tent and put our non waterproof belongings in the car before heading into Bar Harbor. In town, we did a bit of shopping and then went to a coffee shop to write postcards and wait out the rain. The rain refused to stop, so we got lunch and then went to a whale museum. Finally around 2pm the sun showed it's face. We hopped in the car and raced down to the beach before the clouds came rolling back. Our plan was to do a hike that started on the beach and then worked its way up the mountain, but when we reached the trail head, we saw that it had been washed out by all the rain. There had been a fairly sizable lake just past the beach, but all the rain had caused it to overflow its banks and before our eyes all the freshwater was rushing down the beach to meet the ocean, eroding the beach along the way. Here are some photos:

We spent nearly an hour watching the beach erode. You could stand right at the edge and then step back as you saw new cracks appear in the sand, moments before another chunk would go crashing into the water. We stayed on the beach until right before sunset and made it back to the car just as the rain started up again. Not wanting to try and make dinner in the rain, we decided to head back into Bar Harbor for pizza. We got it to go and then ate it in the car. We finished the night with a few cribbage games and then crawled into our slightly soggy tent. We woke up the next morning and after checking out the weather forecast, decided that though Acadia was wonderful in nice weather, it was not as wonderful in the rain and since rain was predicted for the foreseeable future, it was time to head south again. We packed up the car, grabbed a quick breakfast of sausage and egg biscuits from the local health food store (both the eggs and sausage were from local farmers) and headed back to Tivoli to spend some more time with Devin and co.

Here are a few more pictures:

Tivoli, Portland and Norway

After two, fairly expensive, fixes the Subaru was running like a champ. We drove North, ticking off a few new states on the way. Virgina? Check. West Virgina, Maryland, Pennsylvania? Check, check and check. Since we left Charlottesville at noon, our plan was to drive until we got sleepy and then pull over at a rest stop, making it to New York the following day. Sleepy caught up with us in Pennsylvania, but all the rest stops had fairly menacing signs warning travelers that anyone caught hanging around for more than 2 hours was subject to prosecution. No matter how slim the chances of actually being caught were, we decided not to risk it and pushed on. Luckily, the first rest stop past the Pennsylvania border into New York was menacing sign-free, so we pulled over for some much needed rest. It amazed us that in a shorter amount of time than it had taken us to get out of Texas, we were able to cross through 4 states and into a 5th, and the states were only getting smaller the farther north we headed.

We woke up the next morning to more traffic than we had seen in quite a while. Welcome to New England! Since it was a Wednesday, our buddy Devin was working. We decided to check out Connecticut before heading to Tivoli. We powered across southern Connecticut in a sprint to the coast. If anyone ever feels like going on an unpleasant and unscenic drive, I recommend I-95. Fortunately, we were able to turn off of it pretty quickly, as we opted for the slower, but much more scenic Hwy 1. We found a state park on the coast and Mark got to see the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. He and Maggie went for a swim as I settled onto a large boulder and watched the gentle waves rolling into shore. The Connecticut coastline is primarily made up of the Long Island Sound, so the water is much calmer than the Atlantic we would see later on the coast of Maine. After taking an accidental detour into Rhode Island, we headed west, across northern Connecticut. The leaves were beginning to change and we passed some beautiful farms on our way back to New York. We made it to Tivoli around 9:30pm and were pleased to find out that Devin's roommate KC and her partner Owen were fans of Top Chef and were about to head down to the local pizza place to catch the show. What better way to spend our first (non-rest stop) night in New York than with friendly people, tasty pizza and our favorite reality show?

Tivoli proved to be a blast. Devin had a multitude of wonderful farmer friends. The Lower Hudson River Valley was gorgeous and our days were spent driving around, taking in the fall colors and going for short hikes. Our nights were filled with fun people and activities including a spades dress up party, a goat feed (the goat fed us, we didn't feed the goat), and drinks at the local bar. After 3 short days in Tivoli, we decided to continue north to Maine.

Tivoli to Portland is 4 hours if you take the fast route. We are generally averse to the fast route, so we took the scenic route which lead us from NY, into southern Vermont and then up through New Hampshire, before hitting southern Maine. 7.5 hours and a short detour to the Maine coast later, we rolled into Portland and the waiting arms of our friend Audrey. We first became friends with Audrey in Portland, Oregon, so seeing her in Portland, Maine was awfully exciting. Two Portlands, two coastlines, one great friendship.

Portland turned out to be different, yet quite reminiscent of the "other Portland." When we first started walking around I kept getting excited by all signs and fliers mentioning Portland. I had to keep reminding myself that we were in Portland, just not the one with which I was familiar. Though it has a population of only 40,000, it is the biggest city in Maine and it feels like a proper city. It has everything you could want from a city, just on a smaller scale. It was also awesome. We ate great food, went to the beach and walked all over town. One of Mark's E-corps friends from Austin, TX was a native Maynard (Mainian? Mainite?) and after working in Texas had moved back to Maine. We spent an evening with him and his girlfriend and became thoroughly convinced that we should move to Portland immediately. However, the call of the open road was still too strong and after 3 lovely days exploring the city and surrounding area, we headed north to Norway, to stay with 2 of my Mom's college friends. They lived in a beautiful house that was backed by a 25 acre lake and they happened to be heading out of town that weekend. They offered us a dog/house sitting job and so we settled into Norway for the next 5 days. In the area they live, all the towns are named after foreign locales. Here's a picture of a sign just up the road:

And the lake that we were babysitting. Mark went fishing every day in the canoe and we had some tasty fish dinners.

The area we were in was lovely. Norway is a super cute town with a great health food store and a couple good bookstores. It was also home to the New Balance outlet and I got some new kicks for $20! We went for a few beautiful hikes. One thing we learned about Maine is that just because a hike is short, it doesn't mean it's easy. All the hikes we took ended up taking us straight up the mountain. There were no switchbacks like we were used to in the West. Here's the view from the top of Mt. Pleasant. The mountain is quite aptly named.

After the hike, we went to the best beer bar either of us had ever been to, the Horse Brass Pub in Portland, Oregon included. We actually saw someone in Ebenezer's with a Horse Brass Pub t-shirt on. Ebenezer's had the most extensive beer list I have ever seen. They even had a bottle of aged Belgian beer for $275! We opted for some slightly cheaper beers..... Here's their website if you want to take a gander at the beer list: http://www.ebenezerspub.net/ It's definitely worth a look.

Two of Mark's and my long term goals are to visit every state and National Park in the U.S. Since we were already in Maine, it made perfect sense to keep heading north to Acadia National Park after our house sitting gig was over. On October 5th, we bid farewell to the 2 goofy, chocolate labs we had dog sat, and their wonderfully hospitable owners, Kate and Glen, and hit the road once again.