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: