we took a trip: part 2
Picking up where I left off on Part 1, after a fantastic, albeit short, visit to Portland, we hit the road and headed downeast (i.e. northeast) to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park (both located on Mount Desert Island). This was the pace of our trip. We spent a fairly short amount of time at each stop, which I don’t necessarily recommend. We could’ve easily spent a few days in Portland, a week or so in Acadia, and four to five days in Boston. However, when you’re short on vacation time and don’t want to spend a ton on lodging, that’s a little unreasonable. So against everyone’s advice to not pack too much in, we… well… packed too much in. You do what you’ve gotta do. Onward.
This is the adorable tourist town of Bar Harbor. See? I can use the words “adorable” and “tourist” in the same sentence.
Bar Harbor is just outside the park and operates as a hub for the massive amounts of people who visit this place every year. The park is incredibly beautiful and serene, but definitely attracts the masses. I was a little blindsided by this. I knew it would be “busy season” but didn’t really get how that would translate in terms of crowds and congestion. I could go into a monologue on being an introvert and how I generally enjoy anything more if it involves less people, but I won’t. Long story short, seeing all these people in the place I was hoping would be a sort of retreat from the world, caused me to pause and evaluate how little love I have for people, and it encouraged me to have more grace. Instead of being annoyed that I couldn’t get a photograph of the amazing views without people and their neon shirts creeping into the frame, it was good to step back from myself and realize that everyone there, just like me, wanted to see the vastness of a beautiful, natural place, which is indeed a credit to the God who made it. Humility and reality check for sure.
The first thing we did was EAT (obvi) at Jordan Pond House, located inside the park on the edge of a lake. They have outdoor lawn seating where you can drink your lemonade and enjoy a few popovers and clam chowder – which we gladly did, followed by a 3.5 mile hike around the pond.
I have learned, since taking this photo, not to pose this way as it is horribly unflattering to the knees. Yikes. And I’m not including the outtake shot of me all but falling in the water as I quickly stepped/balanced on these rocks to get from my camera to David in time for the shutter to drop. Embarrassing!
After lunch and our hike, we checked in to our bed & breakfast (first timers!) and then headed out again to catch sunset from the mountaintops. Thankfully for me, you can drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain, where you can witness the following unreal scenery.
That’s fog. A thick, fluffy blanket of clouds creeping into the harbor below, with little pieces stretching out and hugging the islands in Frenchman Bay. It was surreal. Of course, the photos don’t even come close to what this looked like in person. I’m both sorry and thankful to tell you that. Part of me wishes things like this could be captured and brought home to put on my wall, but most of finds it wonderful that nature, in all its glory, can’t be contained by a tiny person with a camera. The next two photos are panoramas, which I can’t do justice on my blog because of the limited width. If you right-click on them, choose “View Image”, and make your browser window bigger you can see them in more detail.
We ended day two with a lobster dinner and a cold beer, as most days in New England ought to end.
The next day we experienced the rain in Maine. It poured. Almost all day. This was our only full day on the island, which was kind of a bummer. Our plans were to bike the carriage roads – a series of crushed gravel trails. We were told we couldn’t get out of our rental agreement on the bikes so we just decided to go for it since we had our raincoats and are generally stouthearted people who don’t mind getting a little wet. Um. We got soaked, and got a LOT of stares from everyone in Bar Harbor as we headed out of town on our bikes. It certainly solved the problem of the crowds though, because we didn’t see a soul during our entire three hour ride in the rain. Again, you do what you’ve got to do and then tell yourself you’re hardcore because of it.
Part of the reason we went ahead and biked was that the alternative was to drive around and see the prettiest parts of the island. This would mostly be for the views, which were kind of non-existent considering the fog and general grayness of everything in sight. We did venture to the quieter side of the island for the afternoon and had lunch at Thurston’s lobster shack – right on the water. (It’s that yellow-flap-covered building).
Even though the rain seemed to be ruining some of the vacation-type things we wanted to do, it did feel quintessentially coastal and New England-y. Very “Message in a Bottle.”
Confession: I totally posed for this picture and asked David to take it because ironically, I didn’t feel like I had any candid ones of myself. Super cool.
We had much better weather the day we had to leave (of course), so we stayed as long as possible before driving back to Boston.
I’m including this picture because you hear people say places are crowded but don’t get a good visual. So this is what I’m referring to when I say it was “crowded”. This is one of the popular spots to stop along the loop road that drives through the park. Cars pulled over all along the road, overflowing from the small parking lot designated for this attraction, and people just spilling down on the rocks.
They are handy for a few things though, like getting a real, full, non-cropped picture of you with your better half. 🙂 Part 3 coming soon!
