A summary of my time in Acadia

It has been mentioned that I have been back from vacation for two weeks now and I still haven't updated my blog.

I guess I'm just overwhelmed. I took about 380 photos, and I have no idea how to narrow it down. Also, most of those pictures are of landscapes and granite carriage road bridges- not exactly the most exciting to the viewer/reader.

So here's a really lame summary:

Saturday- headed up to Acadia. We stopped along the way in Freeport to go to the Maine Highland Games. It was kind of interesting. We didn't stick around for too long as we still had a few more hours of driving, but we heard some bagpipes and watched some athletics. We both agreed that we wished there had been commentary during the sports as we really didn't know what we were watching or what the point was of it.
Got to the campground in the late afternoon, set up, made dinner, and then went to one of the evening ranger programs. I remember going to these all the time when I was a kid. It was kind of interesting, but we were cold, so we left a bit early to go back to the site to put on warmer clothing.

Sunday- decided to climb Cadillac Mountain. Cadillac really kicked my butt. And my knee. For the past 5+ years I've had a knee that hurts when I go hiking. It was fine on the way up, but the hike down sucked! Then even walking around camp really hurt.

Monday- woke up with my knee still hurting. Going for another hike was not going to be an option. However, it turns out that biking wasn't causing me pain, so we decided to hit the carriage roads for a bit. Went for about 9 miles.


By the evening my knee was feeling a bit better, so we went for a walk around Bar Harbor and did a little bit of shopping. However, both the yarn store and the scrapbook store were closed, so we'll have to come back. :)

Tuesday- we had planned to go for another bike ride, but on our way out it started to rain. Blech. Change in plans. Instead we went into Bar Harbor so I could go to the yarn store and the scrapbooking store. Yes, these are important things to do. Found a cafe where we could get online for a bit, so at least we were out of the rain and we got an internet fix for an hour or two. We then headed back to camp for reading and napping. I guess doing nothing all day is tiring. :)
In the evening it was time to go back to Bar Harbor so that we could go to Bar Island. We had looked at the tide schedule for the week and figured that this would be the best day to go. The rain had stopped, so we decided to go ahead with our plans. Then it was time for dinner in town. We were actually pretty good during this vacation with not spending lots of money at restaurants.

Wednesday- Time for another bike ride! We started off doing a loop that was about 8 miles, and then decided to do another 5 miles after that. And as if that wasn't enough exercise, we went for a hike.

This time we decided to hike the North and South Bubbles. Both of these are really short hikes, but they are a tad steep so are fairly strenuous. We did lengthen the hike a bit by coming down an alternate route. And we're very glad that we didn't climb up that way- lots of bouldering.

Thursday- Started the morning off with a carriage ride. The driver wasn't the best, but it was still a pleasant time. While we were out we even passed by one of the Rockefellers. Nice to see that they still make it up to the island.
After the carriage ride we went for more biking. It was our goal to see all of the bridges, and there were some we hadn't seen yet. Guess we overdid it a bit the day before- we were exhausted! We had thought about doing another hike, but we just didn't have it in us. We were beat. We did go over to Thunder Hole, but got there at the wrong time so it wasn't that exciting.

Just a random photo here of our dinner. This is pizza crust, cooked on the campfire. Looks like a certain country, huh?





Friday- Time for another hike. This time it was the Beehive. It was here that I discovered that I kind of have a fear of heights. Well, make that a fear of cliffs. I realized I'm ok with heights when on balconies, roller coasters, or other places where I am more or less secure, but on the ride of a cliff? Yeah, not so much my thing. I was very glad when we got to the top! We came down via a different route, but we had planned to do that anyway. When we got to the bottom and saw how many people were climbing the Beehive, we were glad we had gone earlier so that we would be able to go at our own pace.
After our hike we headed back to Thunder Hole. The tide was coming in, so it was supposed to be getting to its "peak" time. The waves were certainly better, but still nto that impressive. We decided it's probably best during a storm. We asked some ranger sand they agreed. One of them even commented that he had come out in a hurricane and it was fabulous!
We then stopped at the beach just long enough for me to run in and get wet. Beaches just aren't Chris' thing. At this point I was tired and wanted to go back to camp, but figured I had to at least go in, so I did and then we went back to camp.


Saturday- Time to head home. It was great not having to take down and set up camp every night like we did last summer. However, that's not to say that the day was without drama. When we were about 30 minutes from home Chris quickly pulled over three lanes and stopped the car. We were out of gas. Blech. About 40 minutes later AAA arrived. And wouldn't' you know it? There was a gas station less than a mile from where we had stopped.