We set out around 9ish on Saturday morning, did a caravan along up 95 and then 195 and stopped a bit after Portland for much at Days Crab Meat and Lobster for lunch. Good food; the sandwiches were extremely authentic (lobster roll, crab roll) but a bit on the small side; we wound up ordering a second round after the first round had been consumed. Reed did a bunch of the driving on the way up, also Ethan.
The rental place that Amy picked out is not far from Echo Lake, in the western section of Mount Desert Island, which is a bit quieter and more residential. The street that we are on has the remains of an old stone quarry, so there are big chunks of cut stone sitting around on the sides of the road and visible through the underbrush.
The house is terrific; as usual Amy picked out a nice one. The kitchen is well equipped and has nice stove and work area; there is a deck with a gas grill, large washer and dryer, etc. A good selection overall.
There is a small pond out in the front of the house (assume it used to be a quarry pit), but not really all that swimmable (too reedy/weedy for my tastes), but the kids were not to be deterred; they splashed around in it for a bit and Ethan swam.
Meanwhile the rest of of us walked over to locate a cut-over path off the quarry road that led to the Acadia Mountain trail. We did eventually manage to locate it and did a short hike up towards the mountain, but came back after around a half hour so as to have dinner.
Amy prepared the meal: pork stew (made previously and brought up in the car), greens, and rice.
Sunday we decided to start off with a mostly local hike: we drove over to explore Beech Mountain. Nice weather: cool, sunny, a few floating clouds. A few photos from the way up:
At the top of the mountain we were in luck: there was a park service ranger there to open up the old fire tower. We got a chance to walk up to the very top, chat with the ranger, and take in the view.
She told us that this particular fire tower was active up until the 1970s, at which point other more sophisticated technologies took over. In the center of the top floor of the fire tower was an Osborne Fire Finder, fun to look at.
On the way back down we split up into two groups; Carey and Joanie did a somewhat more direct downhill, and Amy + kids + I did a longer loop to the south. Drove home for lunch after that.
In the afternoon we decided to head over to Echo Lake for a swim. That was actually a lot of fun -- water was cool but not freezing, and there was a nice sandy beach. First time I can recall ever swimming inside a national park...
For dinner we did grilled stuff: sausages, chicken, eggplants, leeks, tomatoes, and mushrooms, and I had made a batch of tabouleh earlier that morning (made especially yummy with fresh cherry tomatoes from Dad and Joanie's garden).
On Monday morning we decided to have a kayak/canoe session, so we headed over to a rental place that Amy had found up at the north end of Long Pond. We rented a canoe and four single kayaks. A slightly weird rental place in that the boats are located across the main road from the water, so after you rent your equipment you have to carry/truck it down to the dock yourself. No matter, we were fairly quickly on our way.
Long Pond is a nice big lake, somewhat more developed in the northern half and less so down in the south. There are houses along the water, but they are not too close together, and there is still a lot of vegetation, so it still feels like a pond in the countryside. I started out in the canoe with Joanie, and everyone else took kayaks. Predictably, the younger generation zoomed off on their own right from the start-- we didn't see much of them until later. About halfway down the lake I switched places with my dad.
Photos:
Occasionally we would see patches of these interesting multi-colored reeds -- don't recall seeing them before:
Lots of cedar trees on the lake's edge:
We headed back afterward and had lunch around noon at the house.
Amy and I zoomed off for a bike ride a little later in the afternoon. We started at the Parkman Mountain parking area and then rode around on the carriage trails for an hour or so. That section of the park has a fair amount of ups and downs, so we got some good exercise. Photos:
We had a bit more down time at the house after then, and then we split up into a bunch of groups to focus on our various pursuits: Amy drove down to the south part of the island to hike, then my dad and Joanie dropped off the kids and me at Echo Lake for swimming and also went to find a hiking spot.
Interesting mix of people at Echo Lake -- lots of Americans, but I also heard French, German, and Russian. We had a nice long swim, then eventually got collected again by Amy.
Joanie and Carey cooked dinner (meatballs, greens, and pasta with home-made pesto). After dinner we had a spirited game of cards, "King" (this is the game that Andrew taught us after learning it from his Brazilian friends).
Tuesday was our sailing day. We drove in to South Harbor and had breakfast at the Common Good Soup Kitchen. They have an interesting setup -- in the summer time they run a breakfast cafe type operation where you are served a basic breakfast (oatmeal, popovers, coffee) and then all of the proceeds are donated to the soup kitchen to run charity programs during the off season. Popovers were quite good, I had a couple:
Not huge amounts of wind at first, but the breeze did eventually pick up and give us enough oomph to make our way around the harbor, over to Little Cranberry island, back around Sutton Island, and back to the dock. Photos:
Hoisting the sail:
Under way:
An enormous boat coming past us up from Seal Cove -- Carl told us that it belonged to the person who owns the H.E.B. grocery chain in Texas of all places. My dad tells me that this particular mast/sail setup is a "ketch".
Carl also pointed out a collection of boats moored up together, these were so-called "International One Design" racing boats (there was a race here this past summer, as well).
Lunch after the sailing expedition at "Eat a Pita", which was good (sandwiches heavy on the vegetables). After that we headed home, then a bit before three we decided to head back for another bout of hiking and biking. This time around the kids and my dad were on bikes, and Joanie + Amy + I headed out on foot. The plan was for the hikers to do a circular hike around Eagle Lake, and for the bikers to just zoom around on the carriage roads, eventually meeting back up at the parking lot. This seemed to work well for the first half of the walk or so, but then at the south side of the lake the trail degenerated completely, leaving us clambering over big stones and boulders the entire way (very annoying). Photo:
This set the timetable back quite a bit for the hikers, so the contingent on bikes had to wait around for quite a bit in the parking lot unfortunately. We did eventually get connected back up around 5:45, then zoomed back to the house, got cleaned up, and headed off to dinner.
The restaurant was "Xanthus", part of the Claremont Hotel. Food was quite good; we all ordered fish (salmon, halibut, swordfish) and I had a salad with grilled octopus for an appetizer, very tasty indeed. Wait staff at the restaurant leaned heavily towards young people from overseas (probably on H2B visas), reminded me a lot of our trip to Yellowstone a few years back.
Wednesday: cloudy and overcast, but the forecast didn't call for rain, so we decided to have another hiking day. Younger generation had been grumbling about all of the early starts, so we got going a good deal later this time, maybe around 10:10 or so. We decided to drive to the Sand Beach parking lot on the east side of the island and try out the hiking over there. We packed sandwiches for lunch and piled into the cars.
After the previous day's boulder-filled extravaganza Joanie decided that she wanted something that was a bit more on the level, so she announced that she would be doing the Ocean Path trail-- runs along the coast, no clambering required. We all walked the first part of the trail together... view from Ocean Path:
At the Gorham Mtn trail the rest of the gang peeled off and headed up into the hills. Signs from the trail:
The Gorham trail was nice -- up onto a saddle, then basically followed the ridge line to the north, with nice views to the east and south. We eventually bumped into "The Beehive", a sort of dome-shaped rocky outcropping, so the kids went off to hike that while Amy and I hiked up to "The Bowl". Carey came with us that far, then headed back down to connect up with Joanie again.
Here we are at the Bowl, where we stopped for lunch (and were eventually joined by the kids). The water looked swimmable, if you had the right attire (and in fact there was a family with kids that arrived shortly after we did, and they hopped right in).
At that point Amy headed back down towards the Sand Beach lot, while the kids and I headed north again on the trail to Champlain Mountain. View back down looking at the Bowl from the trail:
Atop Champlain Mountain:
At that point the kids decided that they wanted to try going down the so-called "Precipice Trail" (which looked insanely steep to me) to the east, so we separated up again; I headed north to descend on the ridge trail, then cut over to the so-called "Orange and Black" trail. View of Bar Harbor to the north:
At that point it was a bit of a muddle: I got to the Precipice trail head and could not find the kids, so I assumed that they had arrived there before me (turns out that I was ahead of them). I got on the bus (there is a free shuttle) back down to Sand Beach, where I met up again with Amy. The kids eventually straggled in. Photo of Sand Beach:
We finally all met in the parking lot, then it was back home to showers, laundry, and a dinner of broccoli and takeout pizza (yum).
On Thursday Amy and I zoomed off shortly after breakfast and went for a bike ride -- we did the "Around the Mountain" loop trail, which is an especially nice route, since there is a section of the trail that is very high up (great views to the north and west). Photos:
Later that day we headed out on a group hike. Starting from the Lower Hadlock Pond parking lot, we hiked northeast -- Amy/Carey/Joanie on one of the carriage roads, and the kids and I took one of the hiking trails. We opted for the "hike over the top of everything" strategy, picking our trails to take us over the summits of Parkman mtn, Gilmore peak, and then finally Sargent mtn -- lovely day for a hike. Photos:
On our way up:
Summit of Parkman mountain, first of three:
Reed taking in the view:
View to the south:
Gilmore peak:
... and up to the top of Sargent mountain:
Panorama shot looking east up to the summit of Sargent:
I had to hustle a bit to keep up with the kids, but thankfully I didn't get completely left in the dust. We did run a bit short on water -- it was a good deal warmer than I had expected, so we were all pretty thirsty by the time we made it back to rendezvous at the car.
On Friday we decided to be a little less organized, more time for lolling around the house. One small hike in the morning-- my dad and I hiked Acadia mountain (not far from our house). Can't quite recall what Amy and Joanie were doing, I believe one of the trails closer to the water. Photos:
In the early afternoon we decided we would wait for low tide and make our way over to Bar Island, which is just north of Bar Harbor. There is a sort of land bridge that is exposed only at low tide, kind of fun. Bar Island itself is not really all that interesting, you can mainly hike around and get views back to the south of Bar Harbor. We could see a big cruise ship docked off to the side-- as would be expected, the Bar Harborians have a sort of love-hate relationship with the big boats, but they do seem to turn up periodically. Photos:
Another thing we did that afternoon was to explore some of the other parts of the old stone quarry near our house. Some of the old/rusting machines that they had lying around were pretty interesting, including an old steam engine and an enormous decomposing tractor/lift/engine thing. From the dates and writing it looked as thought it had been active around the turn of the century (1900). Some parts looking very sophisticated, others oddly primitive (wooden wheels, for example). Photos:
We had a comprehensive "clean out the leftovers" dinner that evening, as would be expected.
Sat was a travel day -- we made the long drive back down, traffic not too horrendous. We had a very nice stopover in Portsmouth to visit with my cousin Sam and his wife Nikki, and with their daughter Charlie, who is a lot of fun (she has no shyness about interacting with strange adult relatives as far as I could tell).
All in all, a fine trip -- loads of exercise and outdoor activity, and with good weather for just about the entire time.
