Maine | Allons Danser Blog

We have only one full day to explore as much as Acadia National as we can. Our plan is to start the day with a drive around the coast, hike the Acadia Mt. Trail, picnic at Echo Lake Beach, visit the towns of Northeast harbor and South Harbor, and finish the day at the summit of Cadillac Mt. for sunset. There are so many things to see and do on this island, Mount Desert Island, that you could spend at least 2 weeks here doing something new everyday. We are already planning to come back. It’s only 28 hrs. away 😦

I love how the ground is covered by green velvety moss. Jacob thought the edges of the forest were well manicured, “they must pay someone to cut the grass here, it looks great!” he thought it was grass until I pointed out that it was moss.
This is harbor nation, every town in supported by its harbor. Seafood is the main form of income, and tourism, the lobster and clams are as fresh as the can be. The wood boats in the harbors are beautiful, and make for great pictures!
The pebbles line the beaches and stream. There is sand on the beaches but it is different than what we are used to along the Gulf Coast Beaches. While the Gulf Coast is lined with white powdery sand primarily composed of Quartz, from the Appalachian Mts. weathering over millions of years, and pulverized shells, the sand around Desert Island is course, kitty litter texture, composed of a variety of minerals from the surrounding mts. including; pink of Feldspar, black of Hornblende, and white/clear of Quartz.
I hope you can see in the picture that the rocks are pink. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take any home with you.
The drive around the Island was so breath taking.
When we arrived at the trail head of course I had to stop at the out house, it was a long drive and coffee doesn’t help.
On to the Acadia Mt. Trail, which was recommended to us by the park ranger. He said that it was an easy hike that should only take an hour. So we wore regular tennis shoes. This looks pretty easy!

Still not so bad….then we come around a corner…
and this is what most of the trail consisted of…it what way is this considered “easy to moderate”? There were people with small children and babies who had to carry them most of the way. Bad call on not wearing hiking boots!
The views were awesome at the top!

Big Foot?
After this 2.5 hr. hike, we hopped in the car to go to Echo Lake Beach. Jacob wanted to go swimming after working up a good sweat, but I knew there was no way I was getting in the water, it’s just too cold for this gal! Instead of swimming we had lunch and basked in the sun. It was super windy the people who got in quickly got out. Looked like torture in my book. It was a gorgeous day to lounge in the sun and we took full advantage of it.
I guess the settings on the camera got messed up because all of our pictures at Echo Lake are like this….I guess we’ll just have to go back!
Before sunset at 7:25pm, we had to head back to the camper to shower and walk Roux. On our way there we ran into my Aunt and Uncle again, too funny! The reason we showered before sunset is because we have to use the generator to power the water heater and water pump, our battery is not able to power both, and generators can only be used between 8am and 7pm.
Off to Cadillac Mt…..WOW! The views up here are amazing and you can drive all the way to the top. It looked like half the town was there with us. I’m so glad we didn’t miss this site. Maybe next time we come to this area we can catch the sun rise too.

As Jacob likes to say….Bon soir!

Hi there, well today didn’t start out so well for us. Upon leaving Frank’s house, I checked the curb with the bumper of my camper and literally tore it off of the camper, not good way to start off! After stopping traffic for what felt like forever (it was more like 2 mins), I was able to fix the bumper in a way so that I could move off of the road to let traffic through. My camper has a retractable bumper that pulls out to reveal a nice shelf area where you could store bikes, boxes, or ice chests. We were using it to store our bikes. It can be seen here from a picture of our first day of the road trip, look on the rear of the camper.

After getting to a safe location, I was helped out by a friendly Bostonian on a jog. He stopped an offered to help me remove the bumper and place it in the truck. That bumper weighed a ton and I dont think we could have done it without him. He sympathized with me because he used to own a camper. He said the streets of Boston aren’t conducive to owning a camper, I couldn’t agree more. Here’s some pictures of it in pieces in the back of the truck 😦

Aimee and I have a pretty good system when it comes to backing into locations, we use walkie talkies. I learned my lesson from this experience, always use walkie talkies when backing in AND pulling out of stops. Aimee was yelling out at me to stop, but of course I couldn’t hear her of the loud roar of the Diesel engine and the windows were up. Oh well, at least it was something easily replaceable and not a broken arm or leg! On to the rest of our day…
After leaving Boston, we headed straight up I-95 to Maine. We were welcomed by Maine..

Maine is beautiful, it really is, the ride along I-95 was full of rock cliffs, lookouts over harbors, and plenty of wildflowers..

Ohh..and can’t forget about the Moose crossing…yes, there’s Moose crossing signs in Maine!

At one of the first exits, we stopped of at Kittery Trading Posts. This place is like a Bass Pro Shops or Cabelas but bigger! We picked up a couple of camping supplies while we were here.

After a couple more hours of driving, we finally arrived in Arcadia National Park.

We pulled into our campground and setup camp. There are wild blackberry’s growing in the campground..cool!

After setting up camp, we were starving and what else is there to eat in main but Lobster! I’ve been waiting for some lobster all trip. Lobster is dirt cheap up here, you can pay around $4/pound at most Lobster Pounds (that’s what they call their seafood shops). We decided to go to a little cafe that we had read about on Yelp!, the Lazy Lobster. We ordered Lobster, Chowder, and Lobster Bisque. Everything was great!

No Aimee, you can’t suck a lobster’s head 😀 yuck

The town we ate in was Bar Harbor. This town is pretty cool. It’s full of local shops and restaurants as well as plenty of bed and breakfasts!

We found a park near the shore and were able to get some great shots. We were able to get a dusk picture of of a cool rocky shore..

After that, it was time for something sweet. We found a frozen custard shop, frozen custard is our favorite. On our way there we ran into Aimee’s Aunt Debbie and Uncle Doug who happened to be in on vacation too…never thought we’d see people we know here! Back at the custard place, Aimee had an expresso cone and I had an Oreo and Hot fudge cup..yum yum!!

When we registered at the campground, they had a special event at 9:00 PM, Stars over Sand Beach. I’ve been honing up my photo skills for night shots, so what a better way to get some great night pics but out here in Acadia National Park, so we headed down to the beach. Unfortunately, the full moon was out in full force, which made star gazing a little difficult. The ranger was very knowledgable about astronomy and I was still able to get some cool shots!