Scoot!!

Thursday, August 27, 2009

We had a lot of fun today, AND we are TOTALLY exhausted!

I must say, we are not really the “get going early” crowd when we are on vacation. I didn’t wake up until 8:15 today. I rolled out of bed (sleeping in our cabover bed, this can be taken somewhat literally!) and started the day by walking the dog. This is usually Joe’s morning “job” when we are RVing, but I was in the mood to go out, as was Roxy, and Joe was still abed. So for the first time, I took a walk down the road adjacent to our campground, and discovered the beach only about ¼ mile down the road from us! It was a gorgeous, crisp morning with a bright blue sky, and the ocean was beckoning me in the distance almost from the minute I began walking. We were virtually alone on the road (there are perhaps 4-5 houses down this road, but it’s pretty isolated) so I was surprised to find a guy with a border collie already on the beach when we got down there. Roxy and I basically ignored them, concentrating instead on the gorgeous blue water (me) and the smells along the beach (Roxy). We did see a bunch of dead crabs, big ones, near the edge of the sand. I guess that was the high water mark; it was hard to tell.

The walk back was all uphill, but I felt I was earning my not-yet-eaten breakfast. Joe was awake when I got back, and he went off to shower while I ate breakfast and transferred yesterday’s photos. Then he came back and I went up to the laundry to upload my blog. Beth called and we caught up with her. All in all, once again we weren’t ready to catch the shuttle until the 11:25 bus came through.

We went directly to the scooter rental place, and after about a 30-minute check in and instruction process, we were on our way. Part of the process included chatting with the lady who rented us the scoots. She and her husband are “retired”, so they spend the summers in vacation places (last year she says they spent in Yellowstone) work-camping. This year they are camped through October at a campground on Mount Desert Island, and working at the bike/kayak/scooter rental place. They split the job with another couple (this is quite common in the work-camping world) which means they basically work half-time all summer, and get to visit different parts of the country for an extended period. She says she can’t go “full time” like this (many do) because she gets claustrophobic in her RV after a while, so they go home in the winter to Arkansas. Both the lady and her husband were very nice and seemed to be enjoying their jobs. I would have liked to chat longer and find out what their jobs were at Yellowstone, but we wanted to get going with our scooters.

After perusing our maps, we decided our first destination would be to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which we missed out on yesterday. This turned out to be a fantastic choice! We scootered up the road into the park, and started our ascent up the mountain. There was very little traffic, so we felt quite comfortable, and we stopped as we passed the scenic turnouts.
The higher we went, the more stunning the vistas became. Eagle Lake

^ Looking down on Bar Harbor (this gull was very friendly!)

It was actually quite cool with the wind blowing past us—I was glad I had worn jeans and a long-sleeved shirt over my sleeveless shell; Joe had on a sweatshirt (I would have liked that, too, but wasn’t too cold with just the long sleeves.) It was so much fun going up!

We got to the top and found a lot of people up there. We ended up buying some granola bars and nuts at the Visitor’s Center, because it was already after 1:30 and Joe needed to eat something. (I had suggested packing a picnic lunch, and we decided instead to get “a nice lunch”—but THAT didn’t happen, due to our stupid timing.) After eating, we wandered around the summit of Cadillac Mountain. You can look out in every direction, looking east down on Bar Harbor and surrounding islands, or south-east out toward the ocean, or west toward the center of Mount Desert Island and Eagle Lake. The top of the mountain is basically all rock, and people were climbing out way past the paved walkways. There is a trail which leads 2 miles back down to Bar Harbor, and people were heading that way, or coming back up. It was a great view everywhere we looked, despite the fact that our blue sky definitely had a haze in the distance. This is, unfortunately, pollution being blown up from Boston and New York toward Maine. It wasn’t severe today, but I’m sure that 100 years ago, the air was much clearer. Nevertheless, we had a basically perfect day today, and nothing to complain about.

Looking west toward Eagle Lake --^
Looking Southeast out to sea--^
Looking east down toward Bar Harbor/Porcupine Islands --^

Zoom in on Bar Harbor from top of Cadillac Mountain--^

We headed back down the mountain finally, and the descent was a real “wow moment” for me. They tell you that the “only” way to “really” appreciate the park is walking or biking, but scooters give the same effect and are easier on the legs! We swept around the road’s curves, being treated to wonderfully scenery around each corner spreading out below us. I felt positively jubilant—it was so exhilarating and absolutely gorgeous to see the foliage close up, smell the wind, and see the blue and green stretching below us. I was sorry when we got to the bottom (and in retrospect, I’m thinking we should have simply driven back up so we could come back down again, LOL!)

At the bottom of the mountain, we stopped so we could look at the map, and we decided to try to ride to the other side of Mount Desert Island to see what the towns there were like. This turned out to be not such a great idea, however. First of all, I underestimated the length of the roads across the island, and it was a longer trip than I expected. Second, our scooters (or at least mine) went about 40 mph downhill, no more than 30 uphill, and a steady 35 on a flat road—but the speed limits were anywhere from 35 MPH to, in one place, 50 mph! The traffic was not terribly heavy at that time of day, but we pulled over quite often (sometimes on the shoulder, sometimes on pullouts, and sometimes on the bike paths) to let cars pass us, and it made me feel unsafe (I was the lead rider, with Joe following me.)

After riding for maybe 20 minutes, and realizing we still had quite a long way to go, I was not too happy about my choice. Joe said, “Let’s just go back to Bar Harbor and drive around there.” So that is what we did. We drove down a bunch of streets which we hadn’t walked, and which the shuttle hadn’t taken. We finally found the RV parking—not too close to the center of town, that’s for sure!—as well as exploring some of the historic roads with large old houses on them. Finally, we drove back down Main Street and stopped for our daily ice cream fix, before returning the scooters to the rental shop down the street.

All in all, we had a wonderful time with the scoots. I would have liked to get an earlier start, and to have packed lunch. There was storage under the scooter seats, which was great—we had the backpack under one seat and water bottles under the other, but we had room for lunch! That also allowed us to be free of appendages as we buzzed along the roads. They were very cute bikes, but I would have been happier with more power!

After we returned the scooters, we noticed a hardware store right next door. Our muffler needed a little attention (I don’t remember if I wrote about this before—one of the supports seems to have rusted, and Joe rigged a temporary substitute, but this time he got what he needed to actually fix it.) And then we walked to the shuttle and caught a ride back to Mo by 5:30. We realized we were VERY tired—I guess all the fresh air, and the energy of riding the scooters really wore us out!

So now we are planning the rest of the trip. At this point, I think we will be heading down the coast of Maine tomorrow on Route 1 (if we follow it all the way, it leads us home!) with a stop at L.L. Bean, of course, and we’ll see where else we end up. I am going to route us through Rhode Island to be sure not to miss a complete sweep of New England state stickers (plus New York!) for this trip. Some people say you have to spend the night in the state before you can put up the sticker. But we figure that given Mo’s history, we should be thrilled to make it THROUGH any state—and we deserve the sticker for survival! I have no idea where we’ll be able to stay the next two nights—it is once again a weekend, after all. But we’ll worry about that when we get ready to stop for the night, and meanwhile, we are still….Deb and Joe, on the road!

Acadia National Park

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

We had another nice day in Maine today. Once again, we took the free shuttle, this time to the Visitor's Center of Acadia National Park. This shuttle service is really terrific, I have to say. It comes to our campground every 30 minutes (as part of the "Campground Loop", which goes to most of the campgrounds on this side of the island, plus will stop at request for any inns, cottages, restaurants, etc. along the route.) There are a number of other loops--today we took the Park Loop Road, with stops at most major sights. Every shuttle stop has an electronic board with the current time, and the next expected shuttle times. It is really convenient--and not only do they carry bikes on racks (up to six), but today we found out they even allow dogs!

In fact, a digression--this is about the dog-friendliest place I've ever seen. (Too bad we don't have an equally friendly dog, sigh.) There are two dog-centric stores on Main Street in Bar Harbor, and today at the Jordan Pond House, there were tons of dogs, even on the grass in the restaurant area next to their families' tables. This is also a huge place for people on bicycles--there were dozens and dozens of them at the Jordan Pond House, as well as pretty much everyplace in the park.

Anyway, we got to the visitor's center and i realized we'd left "home" without water, and I was already feeling kind of dehydrated. So I asked where we could find water (there was absolutely nothing at the Visitor's Center.) The first stop on the loop with drinks was Thunder Hole. So we got on the shuttle, went past a couple of stops, and got off at Thunder Hole. There we found a small concession stand inside what was originally a ranger station. We bought water and I also bought a hat (forgot that too!). There is a trail which leads between Sand Beach and Thunder Hole. We'd passed the former, so after looking at Thunder Hole, we walked back from the direction we'd come to Sand Beach, enjoying the coastal vistas on the way.



Sand Beach is "the" beach in Acadia, and it was very crowded today. They have changing rooms and rest rooms (but no water or anything else to buy? Go figure!) We found a fallen tree trunk in the shade, and sat for a while watching the surf and all the people. The water was obviously freezing, since only very little kids seemed able to tolerate it. The day was gorgeous, though, with blue sky and hot sun.
After we sat there for a while, we realized it was after 12:30 and we'd need to eat something soon. The only place I knew of in the park for food was Jordan Pond House. So we caught the shuttle and rode up the road, again passing a few sights, to get to Jordan Pond. It wasn't quite what I expected--for some reason I expected an old elegant building from the early years of the park. What we found was a largish, quite modern building. The restaurant is apparently famous for its popovers. There was, however, a 30 minutes wait for a real sit-down lunch (and the prices weren't exactly low, either.) We opted instead for "fuel" rather than "food", as Joe calls it, and bought pre-made sandwiches in the large gift shop (sign at door: "Dogs Are Welcome In Gift Shop.") We found a place to sit on the lawn with a view of Jordan Pond. The place was swarming with visitors (two legged and four legged, as I mentioned). There were bike tour groups, families galore, and like I said, it was very busy.

We finished our sandwiches and I got myself a "Harbor Bar" (which I suppose is pronounced "Hah-bah Bah" up here--vanilla ice cream between two chocolate chip cookies, covered in chocolate. While I ate that, we wandered down the path to the "pond", really a lake, and quite beautiful. We walked along the trail by the lake for a while.



From there, we decided to finish the loop by going up to the top of Cadillac Mountain and then maybe go back to the campground. Cadillac Mountain is the highest point on the east coast, and supposedly has a 360-degree view which is a "must see". However, we were quite surprised when the shuttle went right by the road leading up there, and took us back to the Visitor's Center. I asked the driver, and he said the shuttle doesn't go there, despite the way it looked on the Shuttle Route Map. So we are planning to go there tomorrow on scooters, since we still want to rent them and drive around the island. We saw a number of scooters today and it definitely looks like fun!

Since it was only 3:30, we decided to go into town so Joey could catch up to me in the ice cream department. We went to our new favorite place, Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium, and Joe tried another of their sugar-free flavors. I was actually too full from my Harbor Bar to even WANT any, but Joe suggested I buy some chocolate to bring home, so I did that. I mean, he TOLD me to, so I felt I should listen!
Like many resort towns, the signs on the local businesses are often very cute! Here are a couple that we liked (I figure the one above is a store named after me, with a Maine accent! Since they drop the R in Bah Hahbah, why not in Debbah?)

This lobster sits in front of Ben & Bill's. Even lobsters love ice cream.

We wandered around a bit, window shopped and people watched some more, and then we caught a shuttle back to our campground. I am now in the laundry room doing some laundry as I type this, while Joe, who has fixed one of our lights (burned out blinker) is now making dinner. We are both trying to mellow out--at least I am. I haven't mentioned much about our mishaps on this trip (other than Mo's) but we've had a few. First of all, Joe turned out to have "a little bit of bronchitis" when we left home, and was coughing a lot (he seems all better now.) Then on the 2nd day of the trip, he broke his little toe in a freak mayonnaise accident. He opened the refrigerator door, and a large, full jar of mayonnaise fell on his foot. His toe has been hurting since then, and he's been eating as much of my Aleve daily as I have.

Then tonight, I had my turn. We'd just gotten off our shuttle at the campground, and were walking back to our site, when another shuttle came around the corner in a narrow place right by the showers. There was a curb there (we were in the road), and as I stepped sideways toward the curb to avoid the bus, I tripped on the curb and fell over sideways, badly bruising both knees and skinning the palms of my hands. I think I'm going to be pretty black and blue tomorrow, and right now the knee which is skinned the worst is stinging. However, onward we go, ignoring these mild difficulties, and focusing on another day of sun (high around only 70 degrees) and fun. I must say, the weather has been pretty scrumptious (except the freezing whale boat), and the nights are wonderfully cool (the weather report says tonight is a low of 52-degrees, which makes it so yummy for sleeping!)

PS added Thursday morning--Yum! The weather is SCRUMPTIOUS today! Cool, blue skies, just perfect. Hooray for no humidity!!! We have renewed our campsite for one more night, and are off to rent scooters today.

A Whale of a Story

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

We started our day by moving Mo to a new campsite which seemed a bit more secluded than last night’s, so that Roxy would not feel compelled to bark at everyone who walked past our site on the main road. Also, now we don’t have a great view of the bathroom, ha ha! The new site is also even shadier than the one we had last night, so we felt that if we left Roxy alone all day, the RV would not heat up very much.

Then we hopped on the shuttle which took us to Bar Harbor. This shuttle idea to get people around the island is actually very good for RVers, as I think I wrote last night—it takes away a lot of the worry of driving into a crowded town and finding parking. And boy, is Bar Harbor crowded, AND I would NOT have wanted to drive there, that’s for sure. I kept seeing signs pointing to RV parking, but never actually SAW any RVs parked anyplace—maybe they send them a mile away! But the shuttle got us into town in only about 15 minutes. We got off at the Village Green and walked down VERY crowded streets past all kinds of adorable touristy shops, heading toward the waterfront.

Our original plan was to come to town and maybe rent scooters to explore. We were dressed for scooters, including carrying some snacks. However, it was already noon, and when we passed a VERY attractive ice cream and chocolate shop, I couldn’t help but go in—just to see if they had any sugar free ice cream for Joe; I certainly wasn’t thinking of MYSELF, of course! They had FIVE interesting sugar free flavors, including blueberry—so that’s what Joe got. I couldn’t let him have ice cream alone, so I got two flavors of chocolate—and MAN was that ice cream good!! Joe was super-impressed with his, also; he said it was wonderful. So it’s good to be grown up and have ice cream before lunch, right?

Then we walked to a grassy hill overlooking the harbor. It was simply beautiful! Blue water, white boats, green mountains in the not-so-far distance, and even the people everywhere couldn’t mar the vista. There was a good reason for all the people—the Caribbean Princess cruise ship was sitting in the harbor. I suspect there was an additional few thousand people in town just because of that. But we didn’t really care—we sat on the hill eating our ice cream, and admiring the view and the warm sun, blue sky, and exquisite day. It was simply perfect.

Then we went to check out the whale-watching cruises, because the building was right below our seat on the hill. They were sold out of their 1 pm cruise, but they had tickets for 4:30 for the “sunset cruise”. So we decided to go on that, and bought ticket. It boarded at 4 p.m.

This meant we had 3-1/2 hours to spend, but we decided NOT to get scooters this time around. Instead we wandered along the waterfront by the Bar Harbor Inn, and then window-shopped. Around 2 pm,we were hot and needed to eat some real food, so we found a nice restaurant for lunch (not a lobster pound, but Joe did have a lobster roll, a sandwich which is available everywhere here, and he said it was very good). Then we wandered again for about 45 minutes, before going down to get in line for the whale watching cruise.

The cruise got off to an inauspicious start. For one thing, it was 4:30 and we were still standing in line waiting for the previous whale cruise to come back. We didn’t get onto the boat until around 5. They apologized for the delay, explaining that the 1 p.m. cruise had not seen any whales, and they’d been sailing quite a long way in search of them, which was why they came back late. Then they told us that they were going to take us to a different place from the 1 pm cruise, but it was farther out in the water, and would be choppier. They gave us the option to get off and get a refund or a new reservation, but Joey and I stayed on, despite my growing apprehension that we were not dressed right for this experience. We were both wearing shorts, and although I’d brought a long-sleeved shirt for myself, Joey didn’t have one (he insisted he didn’t need it.) I recalled that it got cool at the campground last night, and realized that on the deck of a boat out in the ocean, we were going to be COLD. But, we stayed anyway in our seats on the top deck at the very front.

So the boat got under way, and almost immediately I was cold. All the other people apparently knew what to expect—I saw people pull out everything from cotton hoodies to heavy jackets! If I’d had any idea we’d be out on the water today, I’m sure I would have packed differently too. I managed to stay on deck for an hour, but just around the time we got to the area where they thought the whales might be, I went down to the 2^nd deck so I could stay inside if we didn’t see whales.

Almost immediately, however, we found a huge group of pilot whales. The guide was very excited—he said it was the first time he’d seen pilot whales this season. They are not among the “large whales”, as he called them, but they ARE whales and they are cute. All in all, we may have seen 50-75 pilot whales, and they were on both sides of the boat, very close to us. In the photo with the 5 pilot whales here, you can see the blow-holes on two of them, which should give you an idea—they were so close below us (and since I was one level down, I was even closer than I would have been up on top.)
I forgot about being cold, and started snapping pictures and oohing and aahhhing with everyone else, running back and forth depending on which side of the boat the whales were on (finally, they were all around us!)

But then the guide said he saw white puffs of water coming up a little bit further away, and we got a close-up view of 3 or 4 finback whales. Finback whales are among the very largest whales, and this group was chasing fish and moving very fast! However, the boat was able to stay fairly close to them, and we saw them again and again, first to one side and then to the other. They were intent on feeding and didn’t come too close to us, but they were coming up out of the water as they swam, making large waves, and exhaling in great puffs. I got several really good photos, as you can see!

All in all, we spent about an hour with the whales. The pilot whales came back near us as we were finishing up, and the sunset gave us some lovely light with whales—both finback and pilot-- silhouetted against it.
The guide said it was the best cruise of the day; the photographers (who were working for the local whale study program) were very excited, and of course we were happy also, knowing that the previous cruise hadn’t managed to see ANY whales (they think that the waters had been stirred up by the recent hurricane, so that they had moved from their previous location and were proving to be more elusive.) BTW, supposedly you can see the “official” photos on a flickr site at www.flickr.com/photos/bhwhale. I don’t know if it works, though (I hope I remember the address right.)

The ride home was about an hour long, but they showed us a nice movie of undersea life. One interesting thing was that at 5:15 when we left the dock, it was getting overcast and dim; but the visibility out on the ocean where we saw the whales was much clearer. As we came back to harbor, it was totally foggy again, and the decks of the boat were slick with moisture. But the town of Bar Harbor itself was considerably warmer than the ocean had been, and less foggy too. I do wish I’d had long pants and a heavy jacket on this trip, but I managed to survive, and we were thrilled by the whole thing. We caught a 9:30 shuttle back to the campground, and luckily Joe has a flashlight on his keys, because the ride here was foggy and the campground is VERY dark! But we are back, and warmed up, and my blog is done. I’m not sure if I want to go up and post it now—it’s after 11 pm. It’s been a very long day, but a very good one. I am SO glad we decided to come here to end our vacation—the area is beautiful, there is a lot to see and do, and we are looking forward to the next few days.