Acadia National Park is on Mount Desert Island. Somes Sound divides the island roughly in half. The eastern side of the island has the Park Loop Road and is the most visited part of the park. The western side is considered the "quietside" and is not as busy. Our campground, the Smuggler's Den, is located on the quietside, so we spent our first day at Acadia exploring the western side of the park. We did ALOT of hiking, and I've decided that most of Maine's hiking trails are steep and rocky!
It was an excellent day for hiking, crisp and cool! Our first hike was to the Beech Mountain Fire Tower. The Beech Mountain Trail is a 1.1 mile loop. Designated a moderately difficult trail, there were lots of steep places, and rocks and boulders to traverse. I had more energy today and Mark didn't have to push or pull me up the steep places. 😊 We could only climb part way up the tower. The top platform was closed off.
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| Beech Mountain Trail |
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| Part of the trail |
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| View near the top
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| Fire Tower |
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| View from the tower. |
The trailhead for our second hike was across the road from the first one, and headed in the opposite direction. The Beech Cliff Loop was .6 miles and also rated moderately difficult. The lookout we hiked up to was a cliff with a precipitous drop to the water below. I set our water bottle down to take a picture and it started to roll towards the edge. Instinct almost made me lunge after it, but I would surely have tumbled over the side to the depths below. Thank God I stayed put until it stopped rolling, right at the edge of the cliff!
Our next hike was at Fernald Cove. We did a 1.4 mile loop up the rocky Flying Mountain Trail and back on the blessedly level fire road. At the lookout we met a nice couple from Kansas (Tim and Jenny) and started comparing notes on our travels in Maine. We found that we had arrived in Portland the same day and our itineraries were almost identical. It's amazing we hadn't run into each other earlier on our trip! We will be keeping an eye out for them from now on since we will be covering much of the same ground going forward, and then leaving Maine for home on the same day! They encouraged us to stop at Thurston's restaurant in Bernard while we are in Acadia. Apparently Martha Stewart recommends their lobster rolls!
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| Flying Mountain Trail |
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| View from the top |
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| Going downhill
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| Down by the water |
Our next stop was the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse. The small parking lot was full and we joined a few cars in line waiting for a spot. We found out later that the map said "autos only" for this parking lot, so we were the largest vehicle parked there. Fortunately we are able to fit in a regular parking space.
We took a relatively short, but steep hike down to the rocky shoreline to get a picture of the lighthouse from that perspective.
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| Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse |
When we left the lighthouse, there was a light sprinkling of rain and we decided to take Jenny and Tim's advice and head to Bernard for an early dinner. We located Thurston's and had our first ever lobster rolls. We found that we are not lobster fans; but it was a fun, authentic, downeast Maine experience.
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| Thurston's in Bernard |
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| Picturesque building in Bernard |
On our way back to our campsite we stopped at the Ship Harbor Nature Trail for one more hike. This is an easy 1.4 mile loop in the woods and along Ship Harbor. We enjoyed more of God's creative handiwork and got back to the truck just as the sun was setting.
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| Ship Harbor |
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| Setting sun shining in through the trees on the trail back...Beautiful! |
It was a great day!
Note: The camera and the ipad have both been acting up. Blogging may cease unexpectedly at some point!
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