Acadia, day three

When we last left our heroine, she was getting hungry and whiny. Let’s pick up where we left off. We’re at last night – Friday.

My heart of hearts (that’s Kevin) woke up from his afternoon snooze, and sure enough, we went out for pizza. Not just any old pizza – but wait – don’t you want to see the on-the-way-to-dinner picture?

One of the great things about the rocks on the beach around Bar Harbor is, many of them are flat. It probably is a function of the grain of the rock itself, because the enormous slabs along the coast line tend to split up along even planes. This makes for reasonably easy cairn construction, as evidenced above. Fellow rock worshippers! Yay!

Back to our story. Not just any old pizza, but pizza and a movie, at Reel Pizza Cinerama. This is possibly the most brilliant idea, ever. You buy your movie ticket…go inside…order up your personal fresh pizza…go sit down in the theater…wait for your number to come up on the giant bingo board on the side wall of the theater…go get your pizza…eat it at your own personal counter directly in front of your seat…and presto, the previews begin, the movie starts. They even have an intermission. How civilized! 

We saw “Toy Story 3” incidentally. I got a little sniffly at the end, I must confess. Great movie.

Onwards to Day Three – Today.

Acadia National Park is full of carriage roads, constructed by Rockefeller before he donated his property to the Park. They make for some great bike rides. We decided to go all the way around Eagle Lake, on the theory that it would surely be level, and surely have a view of the lake the whole time. We started at the parking area at the south end of the lake.

Hah hah hah! Somehow, it wound up being uphill the whole way around the lake. I’m lying. It wasn’t all uphill. But it certainly wasn’t level. And, turns out the trail was quite a ways away from the shore for most of the ride. Thus, when we finally got within sight of water (at the north end), we figured it was a photo opportunity.

There’s water in there, on the left.

On the homestretch, we learned what sacrifice the weather gods wanted from us in exchange for the perfect weather we’ve had this whole time. They wanted Kevin’s shirt. That white shirt. The one he’s got around his waist. The ends got sucked into to his rear brake pads, and by the time we managed to extract them, the ends were grimy black and torn. Ah well.

Back at the parking area, we decided to add on to our ride by going alongside Bubble Pond, an adjacent body of water (it’s on the map, above), and found to our delight that this path was all we had hoped for.

 

Yay! Water!

Some cool tree roots.

These two are holding hands.

Then we hopped back in the truck and headed down to Jordan Pond House for lunch. Kevin is now four for four: that’s right – he had steamed giant sea cockroach lobster for lunch. I had various healthy things, followed by an orgasmic brownie sundae.

I was intrigued by the wall hanging next to the fieldstone fireplace, behind Kevin. That’s a huge, unbroken section of birch bark. Utterly gorgeous.

By this point, Kevin’s knee was an unhappy camper, as he had strained a ligament. Plus, it kinda looked like it was finally going to rain. So we figured we’d head back to the B&B and take it easy – maybe sit on the porch, read, soak up the vibe of being right on the water.

Alas, the nefarious nap fairies had been scheming all morning, plotting our demise. When we got back to the room, they bludgeoned us. It was ugly. Kevin went down hard, and I barely held my own. By 3:30 pm, I finally got a break in close hand-to-hand combat with a particularly vicious little bugger, and I staggered out of the room to go for a walk. I’m not kidding – I had walked into our room thinking I’d just freshen up and then head out for a walk or a ride, because I had plenty of energy, and wanted to burn off the sundae. But our room is on the west side of the house, and gets overheated in the afternoon. It runs about 10 or 15 degrees warmer in our room than in the rest of the house. A breeding ground for nap fairies, in other words. So I was pretty cranky by the time I finally rousted myself for this walk.

I headed out the back door and down to the Shore Path. Once I realized it was low tide, I decided to head for Bar Island just off the north shore of Bar Harbor. The official NPS map indicates that this is “passable at low tide”.

They aren’t kidding - this is halfway across the channel. There were even a bunch of cars parked out here, and plenty of people – kids skipping stones into the bay, folks out for a run.

Looking back to Bar Harbor.

This causeway was so wide, and so dry, that I just kind of figured that the high tide would only cover it every once in a while. Remember that thought, because we’re going to revisit it in a little while.

I went all the way across and up onto the island.

I discovered a lupine meadow at the top. By now, they’ve gone to seed – imagine what this must look like when they’re still in bloom!

Looking back to Mount Desert Island (remember, Bar Harbor is a town on Mount Desert Island), from Bar Island.

I was pleased to see my fellow rock worshippers had been hard at work. That’s Cadillac Mountain, its top shrouded in fog, in the background.

By now, it was time to head home, shake Kevin awake, and drag him off to our second appointment with Reel Pizza – that’s right, we were going to go AGAIN, this time to see the first showing of “Get Him to the Greek”.

Mission accomplished…great movie…delicious pizza…I told Kevin about my walk earlier, and as it was still light out we biked down to the causeway. You realize, of course, that it’s now four hours later.

No, really, honey, I swear, there’s an ISLAND, RIGHT THERE, I walked there, no, really! Good thing I took the pictures to prove it, huh?