Day Ten - Take Me to the Park!!

June 30, 2016 – Acadia National Park

Although I’m up a little after five, we don’t make it to our complimentary continental breakfast until nearly ten!  We've been busy making arrangements for our whale-watching tour on Saturday morning and for our Freefall tickets for when we get home. 

They have a lot of bread products, but there are hard-boiled eggs and apples and good decaf coffee, as well as orange and cranberry juices.  There are other food choices, too, like breakfast sandwiches and burritos.  They’re just not GF.

View from our balcony.  Poor us!

We eat and scurry to the car so we can begin exploring Acadia National Park.  Our first stop is the Visitors’ Center where we get a map and a few gifts.  If you have a senior parks pass all you need is a hang tag in which to display it and admission is free.

There is a loop road, which goes all around the park, and we follow it, stopping at every look out to keep chasing the perfect splashing wave!  You’d think we were surfers, the way we count the waves to guess which ones will be the most dramatic!

At one stop we are photographing beaver dams when a deer appears on the slope down to the pond!  At another we see a seagull eating a crab.

Stop after stop offer new and more picturesque scenes and it is just so hard to quit snapping just one more!  Eventually I have to eat the apple I saved from breakfast and shortly after Marilyn has cashews and raisins.  And so do I! 

 The loop road is one way only.  Where it joins back up with the two-way road you can begin the ascent of Cadillac Mountain, which is 1530 feet tall.  The view from the top is everything you’d expect.  You can see Bar Harbor and all the little islands, as well as the Scootic Peninsula, next door.  One of the displays says that Blue Hill is a good spot for sunset and we decide to come back for that.

Can we say low tide?

 At one of the stops we see several park employees carrying out some field work.  They are taking measurements and samples and we assume they are doing some sort of environmental monitoring.  There is a lady of Asian descent, from New Jersey, with whom we chat about the park and how clean and relatively inexpensive she finds it!  This is her first national park and she’s impressed!

Coming down the mountain we decide to go into Bar Harbor and have dinner at Jordan Pond Restaurant, which has been recommended to us by three different people!  Marilyn’s heel is acting up and we aren’t looking for any more hiking today.  We’ve done quite enough of that!  We agree to drive in, rather than either walking to Jordan’s, which is pretty close, or taking the free shuttle from our hotel.  We aren’t sure where the Village Green is and that’s where the shuttle drops off its passengers.

We find a spot pretty close to Jordan’s to leave the car and then find that Jordan’s closes at 2:00!  So much for breakfast all day!  The lady next door gives us the hours and also tells us how to find the Village Green.

We’re really hungry now and go to the Two Cats Restaurant, which is the closest place on the map.  We walk there and find that it, too, only does breakfast.  Frustrated, we go back to the car, drive back to the hotel, and have dinner there, once.  It’s a thirty second walk from our room and that’s a big plus tonight!  The special is pulled pork with polenta, fried banana peppers and brandied peaches.  We both order it and find it scrumptious!  It has a dollop of guacamole with ranch dressing mixed in that sets everything off to perfection.  Marilyn also has dessert, a homemade blueberry pie a la mode!  Abby, our waitress brings two spoons and forks;  but I’m too stuffed to have more than a token taste.

We just have time to get back to Cadillac Mountain for sunset.  There are probably three dozen people scattered along the hillside, many with tripods, and we all patiently wait and watch as the flaming ball descends to it nightly rest.  Very cool!

As the afterglow is waning, people pack up and head back down the mountain.  Marilyn saw a road that should take us back home a little quicker than our original route;  but we wind up back in Bar Harbor.  This time we pass the Village Green and there is a band concert in progress in the little band shell.  Too cute!  It might be fun to stay;  but there is no parking anywhere and we both really just want to get home to a shower and bed.  Maybe another night.  We’ll be here until July 5^th, so we should be able to work that out, if there will be another one.  After a few false starts we make it home.  Great day!  Great sunset!  Great king-sized beds!

Day Nine – A Foggy Day in Camden Town!

June 29, 2016 – It had to come some time!

Our final breakfast at the Comfort Inn and it includes cheese omelets and sausage patties along with all the other goodies.  We spent a lot of last evening repacking all our belongings AND the gifts we’ve bought along the way and now it’s time to put the FOUR suitcases in the car, along with our backpacks and the cooler and assorted miscellany.  Note – one of my suitcases is empty and will probably not come home with me!

It’s been raining off and on all morning, so we stage all the luggage on the covered porch;  but the rain quits long enough for us to load up without dodging the raindrops!  We’re off to see three lighthouses on our way to Bar Harbor, if the weather permits.

 It’s an hour and a half to the first one, Marshall Point Light House.  We pass through some little Maine towns and a lot of rain and drizzle but, amazingly, when we get to the light the rain has stopped!  There is a group of fourteen people on a mission trip who are enjoying Maine’s sights on their one free day and they are the only other people we see.  It would have been nice to have blue skies for this lovely light house;  but the haze makes an interesting effect, too, and it’s what we’ve got, so we work with it!

The second stop if Owl’s Head and is only a half hour down the road.  It is also a Coast Guard station, so we have to park and walk.  That sounded ominous until we turned the corner and there it was! It isn’t very tall and we couldn’t get inside this one, either, but that’s okay.  There is a gift shop and the proceeds all go to help maintain the state’s fifty-seven light houses.  The volunteer is another teacher!  That’s all we’ve met on this trip!  Every teacher seems to need a summer job or activity!  

St, George and the Dragon at the St. George Fire Department

 There is a small display of tourist information and we notice that there’s a winery nearby.  Onward!!  Our trusty Waze lady takes us straight to Breakwater Vineyards, named for the next light on our agenda.  We do the tasting and a little shopping.  One of their labels shows a lady and two dogs.  The lady is Jean, the owner, and the dogs are India, who is usually on the premises, and Sammy, her boyfriend! Another shows them at the beach.  We each taste four wines, and, of course, each others!  I have the Rose  Rugosa, Bees Knees Mead, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon.  Marilyn tries the semi-dry reisling, Something Sweet, Black Cap Cider and the dry riesling.  We also learn that there is something called Vinoshipper.com through which you can order on line!

Time to give the last light a shot.  It is called Rockland Breakwater Light House and when we get there it is drizzling.  We decide to sit in the car and have lunch.  It’s about three thirty and breakfast was at eight, so we’re pretty starved!  We’ve got hummus and carrots and red peppers and Irish Gold Dubliner cheese, so we won’t be deprived!  And there are still cashews and almonds and raisins, if need be! 

About the time we’ve finished, the rain clears up again and we’re off.  The light is a mile away, down a breakwater (probably could have guessed that!) and on a clear day you can probably see it.  Today – not so much.  In fact, today – not at all!  There are people who are doing the walk; but they say you really can hardly see it at all until you’re nearly on it.  We’re not doing that.  It’s late and we’ve still got another hour and a half of driving (or riding in my case!) before we get to Bar Harbor.  It is both challenging and frustrating to try to do something creative through the ever-thickening fog.  But it’s fun, too!

 Now it’s just driving.  We go through Rockland and Rockport and Camden and lots of other little towns and finally make it to the Wonder View Inn.  Our room is in the building on the top of the hill and we can see the water (right now it’s just grayness – but it will be water in the morning!)  And there are two king-sized beds and a ton of room.  Life is good! Oh!  And we have our own balcony on which to sit with coffee and watch sunrise over the ocean!

 We walk right next door to the Looking Glass Restaurant, which is part of the huge campus, and have dinner.  Marilyn has chicken piccata, which looks divine. I have the black pepper beef tips with gnocci, roasted tomatoes and crispy onions.  What a treat!  They even bring me GF bread for the garlic-infused olive oil. The restaurant has a fabulous view of the water and when the fog lifts we'll be taking advantage of their porch! The wait staff is adorable!  The busboy is forever filling our water glasses and chatting and our waitress comes running after us to return Marilyn's credit card!

Back to the manse to settle in, plan tomorrow, blog and crash!!!  Long day!