{"id":1492,"date":"2015-06-17T22:00:02","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T22:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/?p=1492"},"modified":"2018-09-07T03:10:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T03:10:03","slug":"wednesday-june-17-bar-harbor-mount-desert-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/06\/17\/wednesday-june-17-bar-harbor-mount-desert-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, June 17 (Bar Harbor\/Mount Desert Island)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today was pretty much a perfect vacation day on our book! I woke up super
\nearly, before 4 am, and then got rather restless as it was getting lighter
\noutside (we are far north, and it’s almost midsummer–so this feels like
\nnorthern Germany in the summer in terms of daylight hours!), especially
\nsince the weather forecast had not lied and I caught glimpses of a clear
\nsky. At 4:25, I finally gave up on going back to sleep–I took my shower
\nand told Mark I would go watch the 4:47 am sunrise from the porch in front
\nof our motel room. Of course he was a good sport and joined me–it was
\ngreat to see the sun come up over the ocean. We then had some quick tea and\u00a0yogurt and packed our stuff to head into Acadia National Park early. We
\ndrove up to the highest elevation in the park, Cadillac Mountain, which at
\n1500 feet feels as alpine as it gets, given how shirt the growing season is
\nhere. At 5:30 am it was bright and sunny up there, but also extremely windy
\nand quite cold. But so beautiful! The blue water, lush green foliage and
\nharsh pink granite make for a fabulous mix, and we loved the little islands
\nwe could see (Maine has thousands of them; these were the Porcupine Islands,\u00a0and they looked like the ridge on a stegosaurus back to me).<\/p>\n

We then drove the same route through the park we took yesterday, but this
\ntime with sunshine and views! We stopped at virtually every pullout, but
\nour favorites were Sand Beach (a dumb name in any other place, but actually\u00a0sandy beaches are a total rarity here; this is the only one in this area)\u00a0and Otter Point, which has a great view and then a path to backtrack to it\u00a0along the cliffs right by the shore. Beautiful.<\/p>\n

At about 8:30, we made our way out of the park and drove to nearby Northeast\u00a0Harbor. We had coffee, a pastry and a to-die-for fresh-baked cake donut for\u00a0a snack, and then found the boat that we were booked to take a harbor\/bay\u00a0cruise on. Our friends Richard, Lorraine and Rebecca (from Hastings) met us\u00a0on the boat. The tour was about 2 1\/2 hours long and included a ranger as a\u00a0guide and a stop in one of the few remaining islands in Maine that are\u00a0occupied year-round, Little Cranberry island. We thoroughly enjoyed the\u00a0tour and our guide, but the absolute highlights were the seals that were\u00a0sunning themselves on a rock, including a very sleepy seal baby, and two\u00a0osprey nests. We also saw a bald eagle from a distance, but it was quite a\u00a0distance! The island visit was mildly interesting, but I was surprised to\u00a0see so many cars in such a small island–about a dozen right by the harbor,\u00a0even as only 85 people live there year-round–300 in the summer when the\u00a0summer residences kick into gear. Bathe last part of the cruise led us into\u00a0the actual Somes Sound (a kind of fjord, but apparently missing some sort of\u00a0trait that would really make it a fjord in the strict sense) and we had the\u00a0coast very close to us on both sides. The guide talked a lot about the\u00a0wealthy mansions on both sides, which was a bit boring–but it IS great that\u00a0the original super rich who moved here in the 1880s and then for the next\u00a0five or six decades, tended to follow the Rockefeller example and donate\u00a0their land to the government.<\/p>\n

We got back to Northeast Harbor a little before 1 pm, and had lunch with
\nRichard, Lorraine and Rebecca at the old and authentic Azicou Inn. We sat
\non the terrace, which had a fabulous view of the entire harbor, and had a
\ngood, although not outstanding, lunch including a popover, which is
\napparently traditional here. I had a lobster roll, but it was just ok; Mark
\nhad a standard hamburger. But we had a good time and the view was truly
\namazing.<\/p>\n

After this late lunch, mark and I drove back to Bar Harbor through the park,
\nand took a short nap to recuperate from the already long day. We got back
\nup at 4 and walked downtown, because we wanted to catch the low tide and
\nwalk back over the sandbank “bridge” to Bar Island and hike to the top.
\nThat was fun, as was rambling around the sandbank, which we had seen fully\u00a0submerged on Monday night). Then we found ourselves a restaurant for a\u00a0lovely salad and a good pizza, walked over to a main-drag ice cream store\u00a0for a scoop of overpriced ice cream , and walked back home (5.89 miles\u00a0without an issue, yay) to call it a day. A fabulous day!<\/p>\n

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  Today was pretty much a perfect vacation day on our book! I woke up super early, before 4 am, and then got rather restless as it was getting lighter outside (we are far north, and it’s almost midsummer–so this feels like northern Germany in the summer in terms of daylight hours!), especially since the … Continue reading “Wednesday, June 17 (Bar Harbor\/Mount Desert Island)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roadtrip2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1511,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492\/revisions\/1511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}