Acadia National Park

It's been awhile since my last post, but I swear it was for a good reason--no internet.  We drove to Maine from Massachusetts and hit the big 1000 miles on the way there. I took a picture every tenth of a mile so that we wouldn't miss it.

Josh and I just got finished with a camping trip in Acadia National Park.  Josh surprised me with a trip there last Fall where he proposed and it was great to go back and see the park again.  It was most definitely a much needed reprieve from all things technological. No uploading, downloading, text, tweet or tv.  It's been awhile since we were able to disconnect from the world.  We got to camp in the very same site as last year.  There were a surprising amount of people also camping. In Maine. In November. I suppose we're not the only crazies out there.  Actually, we met two really nice people.  Maria is from Germany and she's on a holiday of sorts, from college. She has one more semester left at her university in Germany where she's studying ecological sciences.  And we also met Bill who happens to be a professor of history at Eastern Washington University.  He's been on a roadtrip himself for the fall/winter.  He'd been staying at Acadia for the last three weeks! He rolled out the same day as us, en route to Boston.  He has the semester off and is taking in the sights around the country and also doing a little research for one of his classes that he'll be teaching in the spring, The History of the National Parks.  It was a lot of fun to meet both of them.  We had dinner and a camp fire with them one night where we introduced Maria to the good ole' American tradition of toasted marshmallows and Silver Clouds!

Home, sweet home

We did a lot of cooking--no restaurants--which was excellent.  We did eat out once while camping--at one of the two restaurants left open in Bar Harbor. But mostly, cooked. We made pancakes our first morning there but it was so cold that the oil froze!

And it was soooo windy that it knocked the eggs off the table!

But wind and cold didn't keep us from fine dining

Making tacos. And being silly.

We went into Bar Harbor one day and spent the day walking around the town and perusing some of the shops.  Most of the shops and restaurants have closed for the season.  There were a few still open, including an ice cream and sweets shop that we stopped in. To have ice cream.

Naturally, there was a human-sized lobster holding an ice cream cone outside the shop.

One of the shop's claim to fame is lobster ice cream. Buttery vanilla  ice cream with chunks of real Maine lobster.  Which Josh tried. He doesn't think he'll have it again. It was...different.

We had some fun using the tripod and remote shutter to take some night pictures...

Josh lit up by the fire

 I went for a walk that night and walked until i couldn't walk anymore which didn't end up being very far. Because the ocean stopped me. So I went back and told Josh that I had to show him something and we took the tripod and camera with us for some more night pictures.  Josh did some fancy magic with the camera settings and we were able to take pictures of the ocean and cliff side coasts by leaving the shutter open for a long time to let in as much light as possible.

You certainly wouldn't know it but this picture was taken at like 10pm...looks more like  twilight

You can actually see the stars!

Sheer drop off.  This is why i stopped walking...


We did some hiking a couple of the days too. We hiked on the Wonderland trail which takes you out to the ocean and some tidal pools. Of course, it was waaaay too cold to go in. But it was still beautiful.  You keep thinking you've found the most beautiful spot on Mt. Desert Island and then you go somewhere else and realize that that's the most beautiful spot. It really is just a spectacular spot.  We spent some time on Cadillac Mountain as well.  We drove up there last year too but it was really busy and soooo windy that we decided not to "hike" to the top. We decided to try our luck this year, figuring it wouldn't be so busy in the winter and we were right.  We went to the top and looked out over the coast and watched the sun set.  Cadillac Mountain is the first place the sun rises on the east coast.  We tried to get up to see it but apparently alarm clocks just turn themselves off if you set it at 5am....

Hiking on the Wonderland trail...Josh is pretty good at making anything accessible

Out at the tidal pools

Is anyone watching the Once Upon a Time series on ABC? We decided that this portion of the trail could be the location where the film it!

Lookin' groovy in our wedding sunglasses on top of Cadillac Mountain

I'm on top of the world!!

Sunset on Cadillac Mountain

It's sort of nice to sleep in a real bed again.  Nothing beats your own bed in your own home but a really mattress was nice after some chilly tenting.  We thought about heading to Vermont yesterday to go pick up some Maple Syrup for a hostess gift for Thanksgiving but when we stopped in a local winery to do a wine tasting, the owner told us the forecast for that night. Which was snow. A foot of it. So we picked up a nice gift at the winery and found a hotel to buckle down for the storm. It turns out Vermont got a lot of snow but not us so much.  Just icy slushy stuff. But we're glad we didn't go. More sleep is always better than less. And now tomorrow we're off to have Thanksgiving dinner with Nicole Stevens and her family in Falmouth, Maine.  Happy Turkey Day everyone!