Maine (Part II)

As I write this we're in the midst of one of the hardest sun showers I've ever seen. The rain is torrential, but everything is suffused with a golden light that's reflecting off the car windshields and puddles. Anyway . . .

Partway through our trip to Maine, and with my ankle feeling only bad as opposed to awful and looking lightly bruised as opposed to eggplant-esque, we headed up to Bar Harbor and Acadia. All along the way the highway is dotted with lupines (a very washed out picture below, I know).
They're a flower I don't see that often but do particularly love, because my mother used to read my sister and me Miss Rumphius when we were kids.
As a little girl, Miss Rumphius decides to do two things before she dies: travel the world and live by the sea when she is old. Her grandfather makes her promise to also do something to make the world a more beautiful place. And so in her old age she walks around scattering lupine seeds wherever she goes.

But back to Maine. Bar Harbor is a lot like Camden in that it's pretty and quiet and has cute shops and nice little restaurants. And a harbor. My parents came here on their honeymoon.

I was more excited though, to see Acadia, which, as it turns out, is a very genteel seeming national park. My father sister and I started out by going on a bike ride along one of the carriageways built by the Rockefellers.

Along the route we were able to see a neat bridge and a pretty lake, but nothing particularly earth-shattering.


After our biking and a couple side trips, first to the nature center and then to Bar Harbor to grab dinner stuff, we drove along on a greatest hits of Acadia tour. Our first stop was Thunder Hole, which was just gurgling at the time. Thunder Hole is a little cavern at the end of a small inlet. As the waves come in they force air out of the cavern, making the noise. You can just see the cavern in this terrible picture:

Then, we stopped at a cove where my brother and sister got their feet wet in very cold water.

And finally we drove up the edge of Somes Sound, which doesn't look to terribly interesting but is actually the only fjord on the East Coast--and the only one I've ever seen.

Our final stop of the night was Cadillac Mountain, where we watched the sun set.

And then it was the long, late drive back to Rockland, two-and-a-half hours away.