I just got back from Acadia. It was nice to get away for a bit. I am splitting this up into two posts. This is the first post and contains the park pictures. The albums are below:
Driving to Acadia - https://photobucket.com/share/25fa63be-332b-410d-be33-35755e77c89f
Acadia Park Loop and Bass Harbor Lighthouse - https://photobucket.com/share/394019a5-3752-4d11-a6b4-d1b470b0db08
Cadillac Mountain and Schoodic Peninsula - https://photobucket.com/share/14486a07-1242-46f6-b137-1bd120321251
Coming Soon: Car camper and campground - https://photobucket.com/share/c68b6323-7192-46ff-9595-464fc054dc88
The first day was dedicated to the loop road. Because of the sleep situation, I was up at 6AM. I got to the visitor center (I wanted a park map) before they opened at 8:30, but I waited. For the most part I didn't have too much trouble parking, but Sand Beach and a couple of other spots I did have problems. Acadia deals with its parking problems by letting people park in the right lane (it is two lanes) and they made the loop a one-way. However, it also isn't always clear where you can and can't park; the signs allowing and prohibiting it are identical except for the last word, and if you are looking around, they are really easy to miss.
Sand beach was really nice. It was surprisingly not crowded given the awful parking situation. I didn't go swimming, but I waded far enough in to get my shorts wet. The water felt like it was somewhere in the 50-55 degree range. I stayed there for well over an hour, maybe closer to two, wading through and playing in the sand with my feet. The waves moved the sand a lot more than other beaches I have been at.
From there I hiked to first Thunder Hole, which was interesting, but it wasn't high tide so I only got some minor thumping.
I continued on to what I thought was Otter point, but was actually Otter Cliffs. Oops. My feet were tired by that point anyways, so I took the shuttle back to Sand Beach near where I was parked. The shuttle stopped at Bar Harbor for a while, so I walked around for a few minutes, but shopping isn't really my thing. There are some rather interesting buildings and stuff there though.
After that I finished up the loop and took the scenic drive back to the campground, taking the roads along the ocean instead of the faster roads further north. I had enough daylight left at that point to hit up Bass Harbor Lighthouse. It was a short excursion since you can't go in; it is actually a private residence now. But they have trails that go up to it, and one on the cliff side.
The next day was my trip up Cadillac Mountain. I drove up. It wasn't annoyingly busy due to them restricting the number of car passes, which was nice; I had no problems stopping at the view points on the way up. The top was a bit busy, since I am guessing a lot of the sunrise people hadn't left yet. One of the big appeals of Cadillac mountain is that it is the first place in the US that sees the sun. It is also the tallest mountain in the area, though it is not a big mountain; only 1530' give or take, which is tiny even by non-high-peaks in the Adirondacks standards. But it is the tallest mountain within 25 miles of the coast between Nova Scotia and Mexico if I recall the signs correctly. The summit trail isn't actually at the peak, it is adjacent to it, and I never found the USGS marker sadly. I was in flip flops though, so I admittedly didn't search as hard as I could have.
After that I went over to the quiet side of the park on the Schoodic Peninsula. The drive there was about an hour and a half from the main part of the park. It is less developed and less populated though, which is more up my alley. This area also has a scenic loop to drive, so I did that, and spent a little time at Schoodic Point.
Sadly this marked the end of my trip, and it was time to drive home. I took a more scenic route home, avoiding highways in general until I got to NH, and to be honest while it took a little longer, is a much better route. I stopped for lunch on the way back and encountered a blasphemous shop that was out of lobster, so I had to get crab instead.
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