Mount Desert Island ~ The Rocky Coast!

 

This morning, I expected to be socked in to a thick blanket of fog. It was dead quiet outside. I peeked around the blinds and did see a couple of tent campers moving around their tents. One guy held his hand face up and sort of looked up to see if it was raining. It wasn’t from what I could tell. I’m glad we have a truck camper. It isn’t too pleasant to pack everything when it is in a soggy state.

We got out of bed and had breakfast. Headed for the dump station to empty our holding tanks and fill-up with fresh water. Next stop was to the registration office to checkout. Before entering, I noticed a sign with today’s weather forecast. “Severe weather warning for later in the day, 90% chance of thunder storms with heavy wind”. It wasn’t raining or extremely foggy and we decided to explore the quiet side of the Island as long as the weather wasn’t a problem.

Bass Harbor Head Light

Sieur de Monts was our first stop after leaving Blackwoods Campground. Here we walked the Wild Gardens of Acadia at the Nature Center. Abbe Museum was here also, but we wanted to explore the outside as long as the weather held up and we bypassed this attraction. The Hull Visitor Center was next. We tried last night, but we missed the five o’clock closing. I wanted to get an Acadia National Park hiking stick pin. My collection of these pins is coming along very well. My hiking stick has about 16 inches of these pins on two sides. The stick was given to me by my grandson Sawyer a couple of years ago, when he was around nine years old. It isn’t an exotic species of wood. It’s plain old dog wood that came from our property. At the time, we were trying to make whistles with the dog wood. I started carving and first thing you know it was my prize walking stick.

Back to the quiet side of Mount Desert Island, the Bar Harbor side is full of tourists but the South West part of the Island is dotted with little towns, and coves. One gets to see the real coast of Down east Maine. I would say once you cross Somes Sound you are on the so called quiet side. Route 102 brought us down to South West Harbor. We stopped to get a few pictures of the boats anchored in the harbor. We walk up the highway a short distance to a pickup truck with fresh fish for sale. Helen bought some haddock. This vender did a good business this morning. He had several people stop for his products.

Sailing in the fog!

I turned off on RTE 102A which followed the coast line. A place called Seawall Picnic Area caught our attention and we walked the rocky shore line looking at rock shapes for our collection. The fog was still heavy off shore and we could hear boats moving up and down but we couldn’t actually see them. I managed to shoot a couple of pictures and still wound up with two souvenir rocks.

Seawall Campground came up and I drove in just to see if it was better than Blackwoods. I would say it’s about the same (heavily wooded sites with paved roads and the same type of restrooms). It would be an option, if we ever come this way again.

So far this weekend was working as I was hoping. The long adventure trip to Alaska wasn’t an isolated adventure. We were experiencing the same feelings of discovering new places, meeting people, sharing our experiences and generally having a good time.

Navigating the Rocky Coast

When you see pictures of the Maine coast, you are nearly always brought to this next spot that we discovered. It’s called “Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse”. It is not a well-marked road. What you do see is several signs that have (No RV’s). The road is very narrow and at the end is a parking lot that is small and hard to navigate. Our truck camper did very well, I backed into a spot and we were off… down the trail to the most scenic view of the “Rocky Coast of Maine”

Do You Think She Is Practicing Surfing?

The trail ends at a long set of wooden stairs down to the rocky ledge. The ledge is a little intimidating at first (at least for this baby boomer). It was best for me to shoulder my camera and have both hands available to maneuver over, around and up onto the beautifully colored rocks. Once I was out there, I felt safe and started to take those pictures I craved for. I was panning around with the camera and there I spotted Helen making her way out to take a look for herself. I couldn’t help take a few shots of her climbing the rocks. It gave scale to the outcroppings.  “Oh” I forgot to mention that the main reason for walking out here was also to shoot the Bass Harbor Headlight. This was not to be as I hoped. The light house was completely covered with construction staging and a green safety mesh. (Not the perfect ambiance for a light house). The pictures of the rocky coast will suffice. That’s what adventure is all about…the unpredictable!

The rest of the Island had a few more scenic coves, such as Duck Cove, Goose Cove and Seal Cove Pond. We passed Hall Quarry on this quiet side of Mount Desert Island. The quarry had samples of the polished Granite in several colors. The slabs were in the five by ten foot size. Priceless!

The Green Fence?

The weather was still holding up for us and we were back on the mainland heading for home. Most of the trip home was uneventful. We stopped in South Paris, Maine to check out the new Casino. It was only a mile out of our way. To our surprise the parking lot was full to capacity. I did manage to find a spot and we dashed into the Casino. Every slot machine was taken except for six or so. We donated a few coins and left. The first thing we heard on the radio was that emergency warning sound with the following automated voice saying…severe thunder storm warning with heavy winds and possible down trees and power lines for Lancaster, Lunenburg, Colebrook and Pittsburg, NH…  Take cover! It was just starting to drizzle and it was now night time and dark. I drove with caution and made it to Bethel, Maine before it really started to rain heavily. You know when your wipers are on high and you still can’t see anything. I slowed down to 20 miles per hour. The camper was still rock steady. It was windy, but not severe…yet! The New Hampshire border came up fairly fast and now we were only 20 miles or so from home. The lighting started. At first it seemed to be at a distance and then it was all around us. Down to 10 miles per hour, the traffic was light, but when a car did drive by it was hard to, or I should say impossible to see the road. The next twenty minutes was rough!  The town of Gorham soon was before us and the worst of the storm was behind us. We both had a sigh of relief. Our home town six miles up the road was the end of this adventure full weekend. The truck camper had lived up to its reputation of giving us adventure and fun for the weekend. I can’t wait to see where “Boomers on the move” will take us next.

That is what we saw and did

Acadia National Park ~ Bar Harbor, Maine

Several weeks have passed since our arrival from our summer travels to the North West. We had such a wonderful experience on this journey that I had to either pinch myself, or go on another small road trip to prove to myself that it actually happened. I elected to take a long weekend trip.

We had gone to Acadia National Park in the early seventies, but at that time it wasn’t a wonderful experience. On that trip we were pulling a travel trailer with my two year old Super Cheyenne Chevy pickup. About halfway across the state of Maine, the truck started to surge and loose power on the hills. To make a long story a little shorter, the fore and aft rocking motion of pulling the trailer dislodged some rust from the gas tank and plugged the carburetor gas filter. I had to get help from a garage, but in the end it sort of ruined the vacation.

This trip across Maine byways was completely different. The big Super Duty F-250 ran superbly, as it did on the North West trip to Alaska. We left Berlin around 8:30 AM, with the sun shining and the temperature around 72 degrees. In about a half hour, the New Hampshire border was behind us and route 2 had little traffic to contend with. When traveling west to east in Maine, there are several small towns that route 2 bisects. It is always fun to see the changes in these towns, or lack of changes from previous trips. In the Bethel area, for instance, one can see many old specialties saw mills that produced everything from grade stakes, dowels and even wooden clothespins.  Many of these businesses have seen better days, but a few have survived in these changing times.

Impressive Bridge!

Lewiston is the first metropolis on our destination to the rocky coast. This city along with its twin city of Auburn across the Androscoggin River always seems to be bustling with activities, whether it is shoppers, construction of new buildings, malls or roads. This town has come a long way from being a textile manufacturing city along the river. Our journey would briefly send us across town to head North on the Interstate to Augusta. From the bypass ramp around Augusta, Rte 3  slowly changed into more of a coastal and farm land topography. It wasn’t until we actually reached Belfast that we saw salt water. From Belfast, heading North on Route 3 is now Siamese with the famous route US One. You really get the down east feeling from here onto the National Park. In Bucksport, you come around the corner and see these massive concrete columns very similar to the National Monument in Washington, DC. These columns are capped in a pyramid shaped silver metal cover that reflects light. It looks just like the “eye” on a dollar bill in your wallet. The columns actually are the support for the new bridge, which brings you unto Turners Island and onward towards Ellsworth. The bridge is located next to the historical “Fort Knox”. We didn’t stop to visit on this day, but we will surely return for a future blog post someday.

Cadillac Mountain ~ Spectacular! 

Ellsworth was a little confusing to me. The GPS did give me a direction, but it was easy to miss a turn and be heading askew from our destination. Soon we were in Trenton, the final stop at the visitor center for locations and availability to some campgrounds. Most had availability, but we wanted to stay in the Acadia NP. The lady called Blackwood’s Campground and they had what we wanted.

A short ride over the bridge and we were on Mount Desert Island (the home of Acadia National Park and the only National Park on the East Coast).

Once you enter the park, you immediately notice everything prim and proper as with nearly all National Parks. There is a loop road that we would have loved to take to Blackwoods, but there were height restrictions and they did not meet our truck camper height. We followed route 3 to the campground and checked in. Here again our senior pass saved us money. (Entrance fees to the park, 50% savings at the campground we welcomed).

Fog Drifting Over Bald Porcupine Island 

The weather was perfect for this day and with the prediction of possible stormy weather and fog for tomorrow we made a decision to head for Cadillac Mountain. What a view! The road wines around from the west side to east side around a spruce-fir forest. The road rises; tree roots underfoot give way to lichen-splotched granite. Here one sees several types of outcropping rocks. The predominant being pink granite. The granite rock begins as molten magma that intruded into older, overlying rock. As it cooled, it hardened and crystallized. It is peppered with flecks of black hornblende and quartz crystal. Pink feldspar gives this granite its pink hue. The above description of Cadillac Mountain Granite comes from the National Park Service.

Pink Granite Texture! 

Once we arrived at the top of Cadillac, we parked and hiked the perimeter of the mountain to take in the vistas. To the East, "Bald Porcupine Island" with its breakwater jetty was visible. The fog started to roll in over the Island and made a dramatic picture opportunity. To the north, Bar Island was visible. It was high tide and they say that one can walk over the Island at low tide. We wouldn’t be here long enough to try this hike. To the West, we could see Eagle Lake and Bubble Pond with the haze starting to gain hold of the area. The sun was still strong enough, that we thought we might get sun burned, with the slight cool breeze coming off of the ocean. To the South, we could see the Park Loop Road Causeway crossing Otter Cove. To the North, we saw Bar Harbor with a four mast Schooner anchored in the harbor along with several other ships and boats of every kind.

Sunset at Bar Harbor Looking West

Our stay on top of Cadillac was a star for today’s activities. We slowly descended the mountain and stopped at every overlook to shoot those memorable pictures that we so often look at during the long winter months.

Bar Harbor was next on the agenda. The town was built with horses and buggies in mind. The streets are narrow and parking is at a premium. They do have RV parking with bus shuttles around the island. Being in our truck camper, we found a regular parking spot on the street. Another advantage for truck campers! Parking on the corner of Ledgelawn Ave. and Mt Desert St., we had only a couple of blocks to be in the thick of the downtown district. Walking towards to town pier hoping to get a view of the sunset, yes, I know the sun sets in the west. I still might get an unusual shot of Bar Harbor. I did! While there on the pier, an old timer said to us “you know hundreds of people come down here every night and never notice the sunsets. I come here nearly every night to watch the sunset.” We headed up towards the restaurants and shops only to watch him ride by on his big red Harley!

Four Mast Schooner

Stomachs were now telling us to find a place to eat. There are dozens of good eateries to choose from. A couple of streets over, we found a restaurant and had dinner. If I remember, it was sometime after 8 pm when we headed for Blackwoods Campground. It was very dark as we reached our B12 campsite. It would be our first time to energize our rear docking lights to back in to the spot. I gave Helen a white led flashlight and a red headband light. I shutoff the headlights not blind the rest of the campsites and carefully followed Helen’s direction. It was a tight spot, but the docking lights and Helen made our first dark night encampment a breeze.

We settled in and were in bed sometimes after nine pm.

That is what we did and saw