Bar Harbor Maine/Acadia National Park

Bar Harbor

Bar Harbor/Mount Desert Island was to be as far north as we would get to go this year.  We had hoped to go just a short distance further up to Canada specifically Novia Scotia, but it was not to be as the border is still closed.  In Bar Harbor, we stayed intown at a B and B which was nice so we could easily walk the town.  The B and B was Castlemaine Inn.  We had reserved probably their smallest room which we knew ahead of time and hoped it would not prove to be too small.  Happily the room was bigger than expected and even had a little porch that we ate on a couple of evenings.  Having said that I think as you look at the pictures you will see we were in the attic which does limit space some!  It also meant keeping our room air conditioner on since we hit Bar Harbor in a heat wave.

from my view in the top picture I am looking at this little nook with the doorway in between.

theater in town playing Raiders of the Lost Ark

Boats in the harbor
an old schooner and a modern yacht

Bar Harbor also had a walkway along its harbor - little after dinner walk one day

Food

Yes we ate lobster - we had it in rolls (kind of a submarine style sandwich), as the main course and as an addition in things like mac and cheese. We also had some delicious "spaghetti and meatballs" and drank some local brews. So our take on lobster - you want the pinchers not the tail because the tail is tough. Personally we think gulf shrimp is better! I would eat again with no qualms, but won't be hunting it out either. The "spaghetti and meatballs" we want to try and recreate. I have it in quotation marks because it was neither meat nor flour based noodles, but oh was it good. It was our first night in town and we shared a meal at the bar of a restaurant called Havana that our hotel had recommended. The meatballs were made from Beyond Meat and were really good and the noodles were actually made from zucchini and spaghetti squash, with a basil/coconut cream sauce and a pistachio pesto. We really enjoyed the meal. Finally we enjoyed the Atlantic Brewing Company's downtown location and their spot with Mainely Meat Bar B Que. Since Maine is full of blueberries we tried and enjoyed Atlantic Brewing's  Blueberry Ale.

The one place in the park where we noticed the crowds in Jordan Pond.  It is popular for 2 reasons.  1 It is a great starting point for 3 or 4 of the carriage roads and 2 it is the home of the Jordan Pond House which is an extremely popular restaurant.  There are 2 parking lots and they both fill up.  Jordan Pond House is one of the few restaurants in the park (if not the only), but the reason it is so popular is its popovers with strawberry jam.  Seems that back in the late 1800s the family who owned the land started serving her popovers to the people visiting the area.  When we were there people were waiting 2 hours to eat in the restaurant.  We got luck and it was more like an hour wait.  On the menu as an item is "2 popovers and a drink"  each of us ordered that and it was quite good.  With that sustenance we set out on our shorter carriage road bike trip.

Bar island

Is a small island in the cove/harbor that Bar Harbor is located on.  It is now part of Acadia National Park thanks to John D Rockefeller who purchased the land and gave it to the park.  That is not its key to fame rather there is such a difference between high and low tides that you can walk to the island in low  tide and have dry feet.  We learned some of those same spots will be 6 feet under water in high tide.  There are several warning signs about watching the tide or you will be stuck and it will cost $50 dollars to get off the island.  I was amazed to see someone drive out there and later learned that on average several cars a year are lost to the high tide.  Pictures below are the strand or bar that you can walk across and tide pools that are accessible in low tide.

looking back to Bar Harbor - just a little windy!

Nature and Lighthouse boat tour

our ship as we saw it the day before off of Schoodic Peninsula

One of the activities/tours that caught both of ours attention was going out on a boat tour in Frenchman Bay and the Gulf of Maine.  We chose the Puffin and Lighthouses Tour from Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company.  One of the reasons we chose their tour was that their boats were catamarans so a smoother ride. We started our 3 hour tour sweating in our long sleeve shirts as they boarded everyone.  I think it was the first tour of any kind we have done that was at a pre pandemic level of full capacity with some people having to sit inside.  After we got going we were happy to have the shirts on and even added our windbreaker jackets.  Did we see wildlife - yes!  We saw puffins as the tour name suggests; a wide variety of bird types such as artic terns, bald eagles and double crested somethings; seals and harbor porpoises.  Many of the birds were nesting on a couple of small islands we went past in fact one of the islands has an ecological outpost and the naturalist on board our boat spoke with the biologist stationed there about what the they were seeing.  Seals were also on the islands lounging around for the most part.  We could see young ones with their mothers and happily we caught one swimming by us while we were out on the boat too.  Last of the wildlife from the cruise was the harbor porpoise.  It looks like a dolphin in that is a smooth shiny grey color with a dorsal fin on top.  However it is actually the smallest whale species with teeth and that dorsal fin is the shape of a triangle.  As we were going from island to island we also saw some lighthouses and the coast of the Schoodic Peninsula which is a part of Acadia National Park.

see bird in nest on top

this is the island where naturalists stay and study the nesting birds

part of Schoodic Peninsula

floating items in water are lobster trap markers - each unique to the lobsterman

Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park is one of the smaller national parks and one of its most visited (per the signs) which sounds like it will be crowded.  It was in some areas and yet we found spots where it was pretty empty.  It is known for its rocky coasts with soaring cliffs filled with woodland areas.  Mount Desert Island is home to most but not all of the park.  We drove around its loop road and listened to descriptions about key places such as Thunder Hole, Sand Beach, Jordan Pond, Sieur de Monts and Cadillac Mountain.  We biked the well known carriage roads and we hiked some of its trails; oh and we ate the famous popovers.  We also explored the quiet side of the park - Schoodic Peninsula.

Boulders like this were deposited by retreating glaciers

Biking

I was looking forward to biking the carriage roads.  Per the brochure "Forty-five miles of rustic carriage roads, a gift of philanthropist John D Rockefeller, Jr and family weave around the mountains and valleys of Acadia National Park.  Rockefeller a skilled horseman, wanted to travel on motor-free byways via horse and carriage into the heart of Mount Desert Island."  To me it meant pretty paths with no cars that were nice and wide - sounded great.   Oh yes, there are hills. 😉  People can bike, hike or ride horseback on the trails plus some organized carriage rides are done.  (I trust they feed the horses well, as they work hard.)  While we saw others while we were riding, we were never crowded and really it was passing the occasional group going the opposite direction or being passed by someone else so a nice quiet experience.

steep stairs leading to a hike from the carriage roads

example of what the carriage roads look like

waterfall behind us - next pictures are same water fall from different vantage points

16 stone bridges, each unique

carriage that passed us

Schoodic Pennisula

While included in Acadia National Park, it is physically separate.  We drove about an hour, but I would recommend taking the ferry from Bar Harbor to Winter Harbor and then riding the park service bus.  Once there, we drove around on its 6 mile loop road and stopped at some sites.  We probably spent an hour at one spot watching the tide come in.  We saw what looked like small 1" crawfish, but were told by another tourist they were baby lobster.  I'm a little skeptical, but its fun to think he was right.  Another stop, was  very rocky and large outcropping that people were going out on to take pictures.  In our mind, some of them seemed oblivious to the waves getting closer to them.  We suspected that happens some since there was a life ring and rope at the top of the hill!

One of many former lava flow

walking around the coast - windy and a little chilly

the spot I mentioned

another picture of that spot

people were standing on that end when we first got there

more of Schoodic and the low tide levels

While driving around, we noticed signs for the Schoodic Institute and how visitors were welcome.  Being the curious sorts we turned in to see what the Schoodic Institute is.  Turns out it is a former Naval listening post that was built with funds from John D Rockefeller.  He made a deal with the government if they would move the listening post off of Mount Desert Island and to this spot on the peninsula, he would pay for the construction of the new buildings. When you drive the loop road there is a stop called Fabbri named after a rich middle aged man who built one of the first amateur radio listening posts and then during World War I insisted on manning it for the military even though he was too old to enlist which was the basis for the original listening post.  The new post was used until 2002 when the facility transferred to the Park.  In 2004 the Schoodic Institute was born.  It is a learning and research institution and has a lot of conference space.  

exterior of the building Rockefeller built for the navy

Hiking

We did not hike as much as we thought we would.  We did mostly short hikes of a mile or so. One of the first ones we did was at Sieur de Monts stop where the Wild Gardens of Acadia is located.  It is a jointly run garden by the park service and a local garden club.  

There is a couple mile trail at the same parking lot as the gardens that takes you through a wetlands.  These pictures are from there.  Notice the wood planks for a trail in one of the pictures.  Jeff really liked the fungus growing on some of the tree stumps in the area too.

Other scenes from the park

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

On our way to Bar Harbor we made a detour to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.  It is a rather young public garden having only been founded in 2007.  A large portion of the gardens are kind of a wilderness area with paths going down to a river landing.  We started down there and then decided against it due to timing and how we were dressed.  We did walk through the rhododendron garden and saw a few late blooming rhododendrons and some dogwoods blooming by a pond.  We decided to mainly stick to the ornamental gardens.  Also like many public gardens these days they had an ongoing special event for the summer "Guardians of the Seeds" which meant 5 large trolls had been placed around the gardens - we saw one.  The trolls were made by a Danish artist Thomas Dambo.

white dogwood with variegated leaves

pink dogwood

One of the things that surprised me on this trip was the timing of blooms for spring flowers.  This picture is a peony blooming in late June.  In St Louis, they bloomed in mid May so a month different.  However, things that would be blooming in St Louis in June were also blooming in Maine.

Do you see me in the picture?  Unfortunately I don't remember what they are called but yes the tall spires that kind of look like candy corn or maybe glass garden lights are flowers!

the one troll we found

Going places along the Maine coast can mean going around a lot of water as it is not a smooth coast - it has lots of inlets, coves and rivers all mixed with some mountains/hills.  As we were heading for the botanical gardens we saw a couple of interesting/touristy sites.  We were able to only catch a glimpse of the first site as it was tucked in on the side as we were coming down a mountain to cross a bay - a naval base with several large ships.  Unfortunately for Jeff he was driving so he did not get as good a look as he would have liked.  Jeff believes it was the Bath Iron Works, which builds the new Zumwalt Destroyer for the Navy.  Later an unusual pretty suspension bridge (Penobscot Narrows) caught our attention.  Unlike most it had the suspension cables running right down the middle of the bridge with just 1 lane in each direction.  Our last site was a well known lobster roll shack called Reds Eats.  As I had read, there was quite a line of people waiting to eat at it.  

We enjoyed both spots in Maine and hope to come back to the Arcadia National Park in the future (still hoping to make it to Nova Scotia then).  One thing about Maine residents.  They like to play with the name of their state.  If you look back, our hotel was the Castlemaine Inn and we ate at the Mainely Meat Bar B Que one night.  They also like to play off of their state abbreviation of ME.  You will see many Tee shirts with some use of the ME in it and on all sorts of tourist trinkets.