June 1-4, 2006

Joe and I took four days to go to Acadia. Our plan was-- Day 1 to drive up the coast, and set up camp. Day 2 and 3 to bike and hike, and Day 4 to be break camp and come home. Perhaps some sight seeing and museums tossed in for good measure.

Our home base for this was a campsite at Lamoine State Park. The sites there are big and private.  Ours was right on Frenchman Bay, with a great view over to Mount Desert Island.

After setting up camp we rushed to the Visitor's Center to get entrance tickets and pick up a book on the carriage roads. Just as we got there they closed the doors,-- at 4:30, no less! That left us wondering what to do, so we decided to drive around. Turned out we could get tickets at a booth on the Loop Road. We drove the road, locating trail heads for use the next day. When it started to rain we gave up and went back to camp. Cooked supper under the new canopy Joe had the foresight to buy.

Next morning rain drops pounded the tent. I didn’t look forward to getting out, but when I did, I found it wasn’t raining much at all. What I heard on the tent was drops falling from the trees above. We headed back to the Visitor's Center to find a book about the carriage roads. With limited time to explore them, we wanted to pick ones with views. It took stops at three different places before we finally found a book that described some of the roads. Armed with that, we headed for the loop around Witch Hole Pond.

Turned out to be a good choice. Plus, about 15 minutes into the bike ride, the rain stopped, and didn’t come back again that day. This was our first ride on the carriage roads and they sure are fun. John D Rockefeller, Jr. funded their construction. They’re about 16 feet wide and surfaced with broken stone. Because horse and carriage use them in the summer, the surface can get choppy, but as early in the season as we were, they were nice and smooth for our bikes. The roads wind around mountains, and through valleys, and allow you to see parts of the island you never will in a car.

Soon after we started on the Witch Hole Pond loop we spotted two deer near the edge of the woods. We continued up a small grade to the summit of Paradise Hill, where there was a nice outlook to Frenchman Bay. We stopped for a breather and to eat some of the elk jerky I carried. While eating, we spotted another deer. She wasn’t scared of us, but did keep her distance. Later, we saw two more.

After the ride we drove to a parking spot for the loop around Eagle Lake. Ate a picnic lunch, and took off on the bikes again. This was another good ride. We came to areas of beaver activity, where there were several of their houses quite close to the carriage road. Then we came to an area of dead trees, and we got off our bikes and investigated. We found a really neat beaver dam. It was a two stage affair–first a small semicircle dam, and then a second semi-circle dam further out. Interesting to see one so close up.

Later we got a chance to rest our lungs with a mile of down hill coasting. Joe went ahead, and I don’t think he touched his breaks at all. I chickened out and used mine to slow down on the last corner. When we came to a stop we both had big grins on our faces.

Back at the edge of Eagle Lake we spotted what I believe to be a common merganser, although I’m no duck expert. She had 9 babies, and they were the cutest things. They rode on her back, and it was quite a heap of little black and white fluffy ducks. There were really too many of them to fit on her back, so some kept falling off. She just kept on paddling and when the babies realized Mom was getting away, they would take off like a bullet to catch up with her. Once one got left so far behind I didn’t think it could catch up, but man, that baby could move! It got back to her and leaped aboard. Sometimes the babies just jumped off into the water for a swim and to play with each other. Other times the babies just swam behind Mom, all in a line. It was great fun to watch their antics.

When we got back to the car we didn’t have a lot of time left, so we did a short ride out and back along the shore of Bubble Pond. This pond was notable for it’s silence. We didn’t see any animals, or birds, and didn’t hear any frogs. Just silence. Not even water bugs near shore.

On the way back to camp we took a detour around Bar Harbor to check out the boats. Saw the cruise ship, Maasdam, and the Sis W.

Back at camp I cooked steaks over a wood fire. After dark we sat around the campfire and toasted marshmallows. This would be our only rain free evening to enjoy.

Sometime in the night the rain started again, and it wouldn’t give up the rest of the trip. Just miserable weather. No more bike riding. We went to the Oceanarium in Southwest Harbor. It was kind of small, and far from glitzy, but the touch tank was a lot of fun. The lady in charge of it would scoop up various sea creatures and tell about them,-- like how the star fish throws it’s stomach out and the stomach slips into the opening of a clam shell, and then,...bye bye clam. And the sea cucumbers were weird! They were all floppy and sloppy and gooey. The horseshoe crabs were strange creatures, indeed. It was fun holding one upside down and seeing how the legs are attached to the mouth.  It waves them around, trying to grab hold of everything, to stuff in it’s mouth.

The rest of the day we used checking out antique shops and riding around trying to find museums that were open. They weren’t. Too rainy to go back to camp and cook, so we ate out. That night, as we sat inside the tent, we heard the patter of rain, INSIDE. The waterproofing was giving out. The tarps we had weren’t big enough to cover the tent, so we used them over the gear stowed in the tent, and our sleeping bags.  Now, this is camping in style!

Next morning we broke camp, which took forever in the rain, and headed home. What a mess all that wet camping gear was. Not a lot of fun taking care of it when we got home. Can’t say the trip turned out like planned, but the day of bike riding the carriage roads was certainly fun. Hope we get a chance to go again.