sufficient: Acadia Day Two

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Acadia Day Two

I really cannot recall the order of events from our second day in ANP. Looking back, I was utterly exhausted and feeling rather crabby.

We drove the park loop road and got out at the Sieur du Monts Springs. We walked around a bit at the botanical garden. The spring was not what I expected- a freshwater spring in the ground which they have built a gazebo around (in the time of the Rockefellers, I presume.) We then parked the car at some point near the beach and walked along the shore path and the rocks lining the beach for a mile or so. At one point, we were behind a group of Canadian tourists with a tour guide speaking French. I listened in for awhile and was amazed to find that I could actually understand some of what she was saying! She was wrapping up the tour and talking about The Little Prince. "On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

I think the destination of our walk was Thunder Hole, but we were there at low tide, so it wasn't particularly thunderous.

From there we drove up to the top of Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the East Coast. We took a ranger tour talking about the history of Mount Desert Island and learned all about the fire of 1947 and how the park amassed most of its land.

Peregrine falcons usually nest on Mount Desert Island, so we stopped at a site the rangers have set up with telescopes to view their nests. Unfortunately for us, for some reason I can no longer recall, the falcons had not nested there this summer.

From the top of Cadillac, we had seen the sand bar that separates Mount Desert Island from the sometimes island. We checked out the tide tables and found that we had time to make it out there before the tide covered the sand bar, so we headed back to Bar Harbor and took a stroll. The sandbar was lined with rocks along the water and we found a number of jelly fish floating in the shallow water. As it was quite the warm afternoon and we were exhausted, we also found an ice cream shop in Bar Harbor and treated ourselves to waffle cones.

We continued driving along the park loop road (and thinking back to the geography of the park, this must have been the point at which we stopped at the springs... or maybe we stopped there the next morning) and eventually made it to the area of Jordan Pond. It doesn't seem possible that it was late afternoon yet, but we did have tea and popovers at the Jordan Pond House. Quite tasty. We also spent a good hour ambling around the gift shop there, picking up lots of lovely souvenirs.

We hadn't really done any hiking yet, so we decided to hike up South Bubble to see Bubble Rock. It was a short hike, but yet rather strenuous. From atop South Bubble, you could see all of Jordan Pond and all the way to the Atlantic.