August 13, 2014 Acadia, the sequel

Wednesday August 13, 2014

 I have discovered that if I lay right in between my humans, I can clean myself without falling over.

Last night, I had trouble keeping my eyes open, so it was an early night.  Which meant it was an early morning, which is good, given our plans.  There is talk of rain in the afternoon, so we would like to hike early this morning.  It is overcast and foggy this morning so we don't expect the views that we had yesterday, but we will get over it.  Also, it gets pretty crowded so early is good.  I am ready, I am in the truck, and Spouse is... well, he is being Spouse.  We are going to Sand Beach on a 1.5 mile loop trail that is marked, and he is looking for his GPS (it is dead), a fire starter, a compass...  Really?  He settled on his food, umbrella and gortex jacket. 

To get to the trailhead, we walk across the sand channeling our inner camel.  The we climb pink granite steps and weave through a heavy forest.  The trail has a fair amount of climbing on rocks and many views of rocky ocean points.  Spouse seems to be doing ok (thanks to Ibuprofen).  The fog limits the views.  It actually reminds me of our boating years, and the times we were at one of the Channel Islands in these exact conditions.  But it is pretty nonetheless.  As we near the end of the hike, we start to see people.  Time to flee!

 

We head over to the other side of the island, known as the quiet side.  The road weaves in and out of Acadia so there are often little towns, then parkland, then more private homes and such.  It really is quite beautiful.  We are amazed at how we see such few homes in a state of disrepair.  Given the harsh winters, you would think there would be at least some dumps, but we don't see them.  We see marinas and harbors.  There are cutesy little towns with art galleries, food and of course, souvenirs.  There are forests, lakes, ponds and more harbors.  We headed for the Bass Harbor Lighthouse.  When we saw the line of cars waiting, we did a u-turn and headed back to Bar Harbor.  And it started to rain.  It was a light rain and intermittent, but it was cold, only 57.

Bar Harbor is another artsy town on a hill perched overlooking the water.  Lots of souvenirs, galleries, lobster, and tons of T-shirts.  We actually found a parking spot (I am sure it was the only one within 2 miles) and we walked around the town.  It is still trying to rain, but we step into stores or under awnings.  I would love to see this place after labor day when the crowds are gone.  When we get into the truck, it really has a hard time starting.  This started about a week ago and it is getting progressively worse.  So after a stop at Hannah, we head to the dealer, which is right across the street from a Wal-mart , thus we can get all our errands done at one time.  Food, hair cuts, pedicure... oh and they cannot look at the truck until next week.  Since that is not gonna happen, they gave us a phone number of a dealer on our route in Canada.  Hopefully, the truck doesn't die before then!  Spouse is too cheap to call into Canada.  Guess we will take our chances and just show up!

 

 

To top off the day... let's have dinner.  It is such a deal on lobster, but there are other things too!  How can we make this decision?  Spouse had a stuffed haddock and I had maple bourbon glazed scallops.  Both were excellent.  The people next to us had the lobster, that looked good too.  I don't think we could go wrong on this.  (Lobster dinner $14, twin lobsters $24 - like you would see that back home, huh!).