We woke up this morning refreshed after a blissful night in BEDS at Steve and Amy's house and got back on the road around 9 a.m. Many thanks to Steve and Amy, Matthew and Zachary for hosting us. We miss them and are so glad we had the chance to visit with them. It's been too long.
We weren't in a rush to get to Mount Desert Island, on Maine's Down East coast, but we drove straight through and figured we'd wait to eat lunch until we got here. Problem was, we didn't arrive until around 2 p.m., just as it started to drizzle. We didn't want to fix a picnic lunch in the rain, so we headed to Bar Harbor in search of a cafe.
That was a mistake. Bar Harbor, the epicenter of Mount Desert Island and home base for most people visiting Acadia National Park, is a circus -- an overcrowded mess of resorts, motels, chichi restaurants, pubs, galleries, gift shops and gourmet food markets. Everyone on the planet had, for some reason, congregated there, and had parked their cars in every available parking spot in town. We couldn't even make a right-hand turn from the right lane because the cross street was so clogged with parked cars. Imagine that. And now imagine that with a trailer. Even worse, Keith and I couldn't even see straight because we were both so hungry. And the kids, like clockwork, were coming down with the Two O'Clock Squirrellys, something that happens every day they sit in the car for more than an hour. Needless to say, it was not a pretty sight. We were in Bar Harbor for about four minutes before we turned around and high-tailed it to the other side of the island. I don't see us going back there any time soon.
In my first blog entry of this trip, I mentioned that, in planning this trip, I was flying by the seat of my pants. Really, that's only partially true. We've held reservations for every campground (all four of them) on this trip so far; I just didn't make the reservations as far in advance as I should have. I have scoured the Internet and the guide books for the perfect campgrounds. I've looked at dozens of different campgrounds online, and inspected at least a couple of hundred individual campsites -- either by looking at campground maps or by seeing actual photographs of the sites. I chose most of the campgrounds based on: 1.) An overall sense of peace and privacy, 2.) Their proximity to bodies of water, and 3.) Access to showers (the national park doesn't have them).
Mount Desert Island didn't have an overwhelming number of campground choices, which is surprising considering that Acadia is one of the most popular national parks. I was able to rule out ones that offer "seasonal sites" (code for cement pads with giant RVs permanently parked there), or "convenient access to Wal-Mart," or, I swear to God, "Elvis Sing-along Nights," complete with costumes.
My mistake was waiting until June to make the reservations for the Acadia area, and, out of the campgrounds that met my criteria, we ended up with, like, my third choice. And so here we are, at Somes Sound View Campground, on Somes Sound, which, they say, is the only fjord in the lower 48 states. It divides Mount Desert Island into two lobes. We are on the "quiet" side; Bar Harbor and most of Acadia are on the other side. I'm not sure what I think of this campground. It's mostly tent campers, which is nice; they're a quiet bunch. We have a view of the water if we squint down the hill, through the trees and past four campsites. The strangest part is that our campsite butts up against a tall wooden fence which runs the length of the property, so we feel like we're in a zoo. What's on the other side? We don't know. Guesses include: wild game park, nudist colony, mutant dinosaur experimentation lab.
The closest occupied campsite is 150 feet away, but the man who's staying there snores like thunder. I'm sitting at our campfire right now, and can hear him as if he is sleeping right next to me. Keith just shook his head and said kindly, "I'm going to pretend that it's some kind of bird."
After we ate lunch and set up camp, we set out for Sand Beach in Acadia, where the kids played in the ... wait for it ... sand ... for the rest of the afternoon.
From there we went to Thurston's Lobster Pound in Bernard, near Bass Harbor, where, to Natalie's dismay, I picked out a live lobster for my dinner (that makes lobster two nights in a row for me). Keith had a lobster roll (like lobster salad on a bun), and the kids had hot dogs. We finished off the meal with Maine wild blueberry pie ala mode. Perfect!
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