Bar Harbor

We got to Bar Harbor early in the morning, right around 8:30 (planned for 8, we ran a bit late) and hit the visitors' center.  I'm so glad we got there early.  What a zoo!  Acadia is a very popular national park, and pretty much all the visitors go to the Bar Harbor side.  And since we were there for just the one day, we saw the big sites, which meant we hung with the crowds.  We did the loop road, and hit the things we wanted to see/do from there.  Our first stop was Cadillac Mountain, which they weren't sure at the visitors' center if we could make it up because of our size.  What?  So easy.  And at the top were huge tour buses, so I'm not sure what the ranger was talking about.  Anyway, at one of the pull offs, I noticed this guy. Butterflies are so gorgeous, and so challenging to take pictures of!  I think I took about 20 pictures between this stop and the top.  Bill likes this one because of the difference between the underside of the butterfly and the topside.    

This may be my favorite find of the day.  Cadillac Mountain is the highest spot on the northeastern seaboard (under 1600 ft), so this is a very popular spot, especially in fall and winter when you can get up there before dawn and be the first person(s) to see the sun hit the continental US.  As I was traipsing over the rocks, I took a good look around and saw this little man.  M ended up naming him What What.  As in, "What?  What?"  There's a huge sign telling all about staying on the trail, following cairns and blazes, and info about leave no trace.  Does this dude count as leaving a trace?  Cuz I don't think he's natural....            

While I set off myself to investigate the rocks, so did the kids.  I managed to snag a few along the way, long enough to show K, J, and M the What What.  But as we headed back up the mountain, we snagged a few more.  Not all the kids, but all the non-teenagers.  This was a kids' dream, nature's own playground.  Rock climbing/scrambling is fun.  J did freak M out a bit by how far he was willing to go over the edge.  Once you're there, you see that it's not really a cliff of doom or anything, but from where we had been, it sincerely looked as though the mountain just ended and J was going over the edge.  Everyone reamined completely safe, I assure you.                              

The BIGGEST attraction by far off loop road was sand beach.  The area was parked up for what seemed like miles.  I'm not kidding about that.  Shortly after the beach (which we did NOT stop for), is Thunder Hole.  The waves hit this rock formation and make a noise like thunder.  When we returned to the visitors' center, the intern told us that the sound is rare.  I couldn't tell if she was making a joke and bad at delivery, but it made me wonder because we heard very loud crashing.  Was that really not the sound?  If not, how the heck much louder does it get?  But I do know that the waves crashing that we saw were small because it was low tide.  At high tide, the waves can get so large that they close the viewing platform.  I'm glad we got to go on the platform, though, because it allowed us to see how the rock was carved out and how the wave travelled it.  The large waves would have been way cool, though.                        

We even managed a group shot.  This is up the rock formation and back up the road a bit from Thunder Hole.  Getting 11 people in the right place can be a challenge, but we got it done!                    

At one of the pulloffs, NB and I took a walk and checked out this beautiful gull.  The shoreline in Acadia is beautiful and rocky.  This gull is clearly used to having his picture taken, cuz he didn't take off, even when people got close to him.  Of course, all the gulls I've ever seen are pretty calm about people--I think it comes from their overwhelming desire to steal food from people, and you can't do that if you run away from peeps.                                  

We planned our day around a trip on Diver Ed's boat.  Diver Ed takes you out on the water, takes a camera down into the ocean, shows off ocean critters in their natural habitat, then brings a bunch on board for you to handle and photograph.  This is his dog, Nori the Newfoundland.  Such a beautiful, well tempered doggie.  Just gorgeous.  G has decided he'd love to have one.  *psyching myself up for the mess* I guess that would be lots of fun.                                  

The kids got to hold a lobster.  Diver Ed called the kids up front so he could show them the critters, but then some of the critters got taken around the boat for all the rest of us to see.  Diver Ed does an outrageous show where he kisses all the critters, including the lobster and crabs.  He also put a sea cucumber in his mouth.  I'm still recovering from that one.  We got to see sand dollars, brittle stars, crabs, lobster, sea cucumber, scallops, and sea stars.  Mini Ed, a toy diver, went down and showed us how to kiss all the creatures in the ocean.  He got a little man handled by the lobster, but managed to live.  He's the 175th incarnation, though, so his time is coming to an end, I can feel it.                            

Here's an up-close of the scallop.  First, I did not realize they were so huge.  And Diver Ed told us this one is only about half the size they can get.  Second, take a look at the black dots around the opening.  Those are all eyes.  And still their vision isn't wonderful.  How do you put glasses on all those eyes?  So, after checking out all the wonderful sea life, we finished up the evening with a seafood dinner.  Or barbeque, depending upon who you were in our party.