Leaving Vermont, we moved on to Maine for a two-week stay. Since we needed to make a short return to Virginia for a family reunion in early June, we traveled first to our northernmost Maine destination, Bar Harbor. From there we could continue exploring Maine at other destinations to the south.
We began our visit with Acadia National Park. We'd visited Acadia in October 2018 during our Ciaowagen "sea trials" and it was nice to be back in a different season. Unlike the sweltering heat afflicting the East Coast at the start of our visit, it was only in the upper 50s in Bar Harbor. A number of the mornings started with mist and fog.
While most of Acadia NP is on Mount Desert Island, a second unit is on the Schoodic Peninsula to the east. The park also includes 16 offshore islands.
Interesting fact: Acadia was designated as a national park in 1919, but was named Lafayette National Park for 10 years before it was renamed Acadia in 1929. "Acadia" was the name of a French colony consisting of Nova Scotia, parts of Quebec, and most of Maine in the 1700s.
We boondocked in a National Park campground for the first couple of days. It took just a short walk through the forest to reach the rocky (and foggy) ocean coast.
On our first full day in the area, we drove the Scenic Loop Road through Acadia NP. Our first stop was at Sand Beach. It is a rarity since most of the Maine coastline consists of rocky cliffs tumbling into the sea.
Another stop along the road is Thunder Hole, where a cave has formed along the shore. If you are there at the right time, the rising tide causes waves to fill the cave, trapping air inside and causing a booming sound. We were there a bit early for the booms, but were still able to see the water reverberating back out of the cave.
Continuing along the Scenic Loop, we at at Jordan Pond, a lake dug out by glaciers during the last Ice Age. We loved the Jordan Pond hike when we did it in 2018 at the height of the fall color...
...so decided to hike around the pond again. However, this time we hiked clockwise rather than counter-clockwise, putting the more challenging parts of the trail first.
The next morning, we moved our rig to the KOA in Bar Harbor. The campground is right on the water, with beautiful sunsets in the evening.
Another perk of this location was a great lobster place just a mile away, The Traveling' Lobster. You haven't eaten lobster in Maine unless you've had it fresh from boat into the pot then eaten outside at a picnic table.
The next day, we headed over to the Schoodic Peninsula, hiking a trail that provided beautiful views of Schoodic's rocky coastline and the mountains of Mount Desert Island in the distance.
Jeannette was particularly fascinated with the multi-colored layers of rock exposed on the shore,
We also rode our bikes on some of the bike paths that crisscross the Peninsula.
The next afternoon we got on our bikes again, riding some of the famous carriage roads that go through Acadia on Mount Desert Island. There are some 44 miles of carriage roads, designed and financed by John D. Rockefeller, who then donated the paths to the national park.
We're so glad we decided to invest in our two Lectric eBikes before getting on the road this year. They are fun to ride, and work well with the motors boosting our aging legs. One of the most amazing things is that we can fold them up, fit them into two Rubbermaid tubs, and store them both in the back of our relatively tiny Honda Fit.
That evening we drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain, the highest point in the national park and the highest mountain summit on the East Coast. This is a particularly popular drive for people who want to see the sunrise (earliest in the entire U.S.) and sunset. In 2022 the NPS has instituted timed entry passes for the road up the mountain because parking spaces are limited at the top.
There is a half-mile walking trail around the summit. In the evening sunlight, we could see the town of Bar Harbor, Barr Island and the various "Porcupine" Islands...
...the Schoodic Peninsula we'd visited a couple of days before...
...and the beautiful pink granite of the mountaintop, along with the hardy plants that survive up there.
Our final full day in Bar Harbor was devoted to hiking. There are many hikes to choose from. We picked the Gotham Mountain Loop trail, which would provide beautiful views of the coast and good exercise (the trail has an elevation gain of almost 600 feet).
Much of the trail is exposed pink granite, and there's lots of scrambling up, down, and around rocks. You also pass through different vegetation zones at different elevations on the mountain.
In some places, it's difficult to make out exactly where the trail is.
Fortunately, blue blazes and rock cairns keep you from getting lost.
We had beautiful views of Sand Beach and the Schoodic Peninsula during our climb...
...and reached the summit in one piece.
We trekked down the far side of the mountain, reaching the Scenic Loop Road, which we walked along for about a mile to return to our car. We had beautiful views of Maine's rocky coast along the way.
We celebrated that night with some more lobster.
The Memorial Day weekend was upon us, so we decided to get out of Dodge (er... Bar Harbor) and relocate to Rockport, Maine about an hour-and-a-half down the coast. We stayed at "Megunticook Campground by the Sea."
The Fittata's automatic transmission began acting up shortly after our arrival in Bar Harbor, making a funny noise when shifting into 4th gear. We were able to work around the problem using the paddle shifters on the steering wheel but we didn't want to tempt fate, so we stayed close to home at Megunticook. We also realized we'd been on the go pretty much every day since leaving home in April, so some campground "chill time" was overdue.
After a quiet holiday weekend in Rockport, we moved south again to Freeport, Maine, pulling into a KOA where we would leave the Ciaowagen while we drove home to Virginia to attend the annual Smith Family reunion in Lancaster, PA on June 4. It's the one time of the year we're able to see all our siblings, nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews, and it was great to catch up with everyone.
We were also able to share some wedding cake for our son Sawyer and daughter-in-law Allison who were married last November in a very small civil ceremony.
We made it home successfully to Virginia on June 1, avoiding 4th gear on the 576-mile drive along the interstates. However, the day after our arrival we took the Fittata to a local transmission shop we'd used in the past. Their diagnosis: the transmission was shot and either needed to be rebuilt or replaced with one obtained from a salvage yard. We opted for the first choice. However, that meant that we would be stuck in Virginia for up to two weeks. This would put a serious dent in our Nova Scotia plans, since our ferry trip to Newfoundland was scheduled for June 19.
While waiting at home, we would spend time trying to rearrange and reschedule some of the post-Newfoundland portions of our trip. More about that in our next blog post.
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