Leaf Peeping - Day 2 - Bar Harbor and Acadia NP

5am wake up calls are not a welcome thing on vacation.  I happened to have already been awake because a squirrel was scurrying around on the roof of the cabin at our campsite in the middle of the night and I freaked myself out.  Instead of a squirrel running around and gathering food, the sound, in my mind was The Bar Harbor KOA Campground Killer.  He slowly stalks campsites with unsuspecting female guests, scraping his knife up and down the cabin walls around and around again, so that they wake up and are able to fully realize the terror of their situation before they meet their gruesome end.

That is literally the place I went to in my head when I first heard the squirrel.  Then after I had listened long enough to know that it was definitely a squirrel (or mice or bats. My time in Martinique came in surprisingly handy here...) I had scared myself and my heart was racing so fast I couldn't go back to sleep.  I just tried to read but I couldn't even do that.  So when jet-lagged Christi starred stirring around 4:50 in the other part of the cabin, it was a relief.  She had had weird dreams and I had imagined a serial killer, so we were both starting the day in a bizarre headspace.

We were going to get up at 5am anyway to partake in the quintessential Acadia National Park event: watching the sunrise on Cadillac Mountain.  It is one of the first places in the US that the sun peeks over the horizon and we wanted to be there to greet it.  We got ready for a day in the park, grabbed water, food and blankets (sounds like we were retreating to a bomb shelter!) and got in the car in the pitch dark of the campground to go into the park and up the mountain.  We got there as the sky was turning from inky indigo to cerulean, to cyan, to a yellowish line right on the horizon.  There were also at least 70 other people there with professional cameras and telescopes already at 5:30am.  Christi and I split off to have a little quiet time to ourselves.  I decided that watching this sunrise would be church for me - it was a Sunday morning after all.  I found a little rocky outcropping on the downward slope of the mountain and climbed down to it.  I felt myself sufficiently tucked away, wrapped myself in the blanket, and put my headphones in.

I had made a special playlist for this event.  I had songs for pre-dawn, the breaking of the sun over the horizon, and the gradual rise.  There was one that I would play specially at the moment of the sunrise (6:28am that day).  In a small attempt to recreate this a little bit for my readers, I will ask that you play this song...



while you look at my small reaches towards a Glory so great as what I witnessed that morning:

It was a very beautiful moment up there on that mountain.  I will treasure everything about it for as long as my mind can hold on to it.  It pointed me upwards and wiped away any residual fear or bad feelings from the night before.

So after the sun rose, we had about two hours to kill until we could start our plans for the rest of the day.  We wanted to rent bikes and the shop didn't open until 9.  So we left the park, went into town, bought some hot drinks, and sat on a little cliff overlooking the harbor.  There was a cruise ship in port and we watched as the first shuttle boats brought passengers into the town.  We talked for a little while, then went to a cafe recommended to us.  In a gesture of Divine Providence, we were seated at the 70's rock trivia table.  There were lots of tables in the cafe, only about 4 had photos and trivia questions embedded into the surface, and only ONE had a music theme.  You really do go before us in all things, don't You.  Christi had to put up with me quizzing myself for at least 20 minutes until our food came and sufficiently distracted me.  A gesture of Divine Providence for her, perhaps.

After a warming and hearty breakfast (Christi had eggs benedict with Lobster claws, WHAT?), we went to the bike store and took off to bike as much of Acadia as our legs would allow.  We biked from the store into the Park and into a network of Carriage Roads that don't allow cars or any motorized vehicles.  The fall colors were just starting to show.  We did a few loops around ponds and smaller bodies of water, no significant climbs except one, which left me in serious doubt of my physical prowess.  Next, we were going down a gentle slope and looked to see Jordan Pond to our left.  The beautiful blue-green water beckoned to us. We yelled down to some people walking along its edge and asked where we could find the trail.  We decided to ditch the bikes for a while and do the three mile hike around the pond.  We decided we should jump in despite the chilly 50 degree water temperature.  

Sadly, when we descended and found the trailhead we also found signs prohibiting swimming because the pond is part of the public water supply.  It took everything we had not to jump in anyway. You're welcome, Maine tap water drinkers.  It was a great hike and a good break from the bike seat for my bum.

We were at the very southern tip of the bike paths and near the southernmost part of Mt. Desert Island, so we headed back north and decided to get the car to come back and see a few other parts of the park that the carriage roads didn't link to.  P.S. A big thank you to John D. Rockefeller for building these roads.  He built them for his wife and banned cars from them so that she could take out her carriage undisturbed on them.  Your foresight and consideration and excellent use of that endless stream of money you lived on continually pay dividends in my life in so many places.  Williamsburg, DC, and now Maine!

We had a great bike ride back to the store.  By early afternoon, Bar Harbor was completely overrun with people from the cruise ship and other vacationers.  We got in the car, smiling and sunburnt, and headed out to drive the Park Loop road.   Our first stop was Sandy Beach.  Now, I know what you're thinking: that's kind of a lame name.  Other East Coast beaches have names like Hilton Head, Corolla, Kitty Hawk, Singing Beach, Point Pleasant, etc.  But I think that after all these rocks the settlers were so excited to have this nice sand, they probably thought it was a great name so that people could know they could have a soft landing here.  It's a small, beautiful cove with a swimming beach, and I waded into the cold water up to my waist.  I almost did the full plunge but I had no way to dry off or change clothes and we still had quite a few things left to do, so plunge I did not.  Logistically, that was the right decision but my heart wasn't in it.  The warm sun on my legs felt amazing as my heart pumped worriedly to bring them back up to a normal temperature after the wading.  

Next stop was Thunder Hole.  This is a particular rock formation where you can sometimes hear a loud thunderous (duh!) boom as the waves crash in if you hit the tide right.  We did not, but it was lovely all the same.  

After we finished at Thunder Hole, we drove the rest of the Park Loop, marveling at the beautiful scenery and enjoying the salty air wafting into the car.  We parked again in Bar Harbor when we finished the loop and browsed in some of the stores.  I got blueberry soft serve ice cream which was a complete game changer in my quest to avoid all fruit flavored ice creams.  I figured, Maine is obsessed with its blueberries since all their artisan food products, needlepoints, sweatshirts and even jewelry sport a blueberry theme, so I should probably sample something blueberry, to pay homage.  I have a fairly strict rule that ice cream and fruit should not be incorporated homogeneously, but I make exceptions for this in cases of small batch production.  A few examples: coconut ice cream on Grand Anse des Salines, Martinique by a little lady who serves you the ice cream DIRECTLY FROM HER HAND CRANK ICE CREAM MAKER.  You don't say no to that.  Ever.  My cousin Laura's peach ice cream she makes at the family beach week sometimes.  The strawberry ice cream from the strawberry fields of Gloucester, VA at a farm with big chunks of fresh strawberries in it.  Oh yes, there are exceptions to every rule.  

So then after getting ice cream and shopping a little, I accidentally stole a postcard.  I was so distracted by how good my ice cream was that I had picked one up to buy and then just walked right out of the store with it when Christi said she was ready to go.  I realized what I had done in the next store and just looked at it and said "Oh no!" and walked back to the store to explain what happened.  They were very nice about it.  There was a young girl who was manning the shop and I told her what happened and she said, "Dude, it's totally cool.  Thanks for coming back. Righteous."  Then we talked for a while about the weird crystals she sells in the store and then I left with my almost-illegally obtained postcard.  

We decided to get back to the campsite for sunset.  We made it in plenty of time and I finally realized that our campsite was the PERFECT location to do a polar plunge.  I ran to the cabin, grabbed a towel and got back in the water up to my waist. It did take a moment of searching the waters and steeling myself to the iciness that awaited me.  I had been told that finding lobsters in the rocks was not uncommon.  Finally I went all the way under and that gorgeous cold salty water enveloped me.  Only for a brief moment, it was too cold to stay in. Then I ran and took a warm shower.  

I came back outside to have a picnic dinner with Christi beside the fire that we built.  It started off VERY humbly.  I was convinced that we were going to fail and not get our fire-building merit badge.  But after a little TLC, some fretting, and the addition of handfuls and handfuls of pine needles and paper napkins, we got a good blaze going.  

I took this photo and in my head called it "The Last Pale Light in the West" after a Ben Nichols record I came across years ago, which Wikipedia tells me was inspired by Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian or Evening Redness in the West. 

A beautiful end to our time in Acadia.