Laura OLPH has been spending a week at Bar Harbor, Maine, every year for umpteen years. It's clearly special to her; if you go over her blog posts about it, she loves it there, and she'd talked about retiring there. The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I were honored to have been part of a small group of bike-y friends and partners who were invited to share this place with her this summer.
The town of Bar Harbor is touristy (to my taste, it's pretty and energizing; to some it's likely to be too much), but the surroundings are undoubtedly beautiful. In addition to the storied "rock-bound coast", there are nearby mountains, including Cadillac Mountain, to the top of which Laura makes a point of riding one of her bikes each year, and then terrifying herself on the subsequent descent. (Reader, is this foreshadowing? Of course it is.)
TEW and I drove up last Saturday, in fog and greyness, and settled into a Vrbo we'd rented to share with friends Rickety and his wife Cheryl. We four met the five who were staying at a hotel for dinner that night.
The next day, Sunday, we gathered to hike the Ocean Trail in Acadia Park. The park protects much of the land and shoreline in this area of Maine, and not all parts of the park are connected. We took a loop bus (part of a system of these buses, heavily supported by L.L. Bean) into the park, and got underway.
At the trail:
The grey and fog from the previous day had not cleared, and my pictures do not do justice to the views. While not an easy hike, it was a beautiful one.
From the trail, we took another bus to the park restaurant at Jordan Pond, where we had (among other things) popovers that are apparently famous (and rightly so).
And back to the bus, back to Bar Harbor.
The next day, TEW and I got up early, and walked along the Shore Trail, which meanders along the shore in Bar Harbor. (There was a bit of confusion between the Ocean Trail, in the Acadia National Park, and the Shore Trail, in the town. Your editor considers this bit of confusion understandable and forgivable.)
Later, the group assembled to walk to Bar Island. At low tide, Bar Island is connected to the town by a land bridge. (I'm sure Bridge Street, at the end of which the land bridge appears, is named for this phenomenon).
In past years, one could pretty reliably depend on the bridge to be dry enough to walk 90 minutes either side of low tide... but when we tried to cross, there was a low point still under several inches of water (higher than the tops of my hiking boots). Some of us waited for the water to recede; others didn't.
After a while, the water was low enough for us all to cross.
On the island, looking back at the land bridge:
There are trails on Bar Island going to the summit of the hill. They are rocky and demanding, and my knees reminded me that they are well into their eighth decade, and would not be grateful for this mistreatment, so TEW and I turned around and went to investigate the ruins of a stone house on the island.
Why is there such an elaborate fireplace outside the main house?
From this vantage point, we could see that the waters had receded even more from the land bridge.
TEW and I took this as our reminder that the land bridge is subject to submersion again each tide, and decided to head back to town. (The adventurers met for dinner, but I will spare both the adventurers, and you, dear reader, from some of the worst pictures ever taken.)
Continued in another post.
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