My bright spot was Acadia National Park and I have plenty of documentation to prove it!

Now we’re talking!

We drove to Bar Harbor (which, if we ever return, will be our number 1 place to go) and had lunch at a lovely cafe which had locally brewed beer AND blueberry pie!

You can Harbor your Bars of Gold at Bar Harbor Bank.

This place made up for the previous two meals and restored my faith in Maine gastronomy.  We were able to sit outside in the sunlight as we enjoyed our beer and sandwiches.  And the pie!  Oh my, the pie!  If I had known about the pie I would have skipped the sandwich and just ordered a whole pie for myself.  My spirits were lifted and my tummy was full.  However, as fun and cozy and comfortable as we were, we couldn’t spend the day lounging around on the deck and eating; we had a National Park to go see!

This is what was waiting for us after lunch.

Back in the car, we navigated to a park entrance with help from the map on my trusty iphone.  There’s a two-lane, one-way loop that runs around the perimeter and we drove on it.  And drove.  And drove.  I looked up the Rules Of The Park on my phone.  One of the Rules was that you must have a permit to be in the park any time you’re in the park.  Ok.  Where do we get one of these Permits?  Answer: at a gatehouse.  Ok.  Where are the Gatehouses?  Answer: on the road.  We drove some more on the road that was conspicuously Gatehouse-free.  I tucked the $20 fee in the sun visor – ready to wave it as proof of our good intentions if some ranger were to pull us over with flashing lights, brandishing handcuffs and fines and threats of jail time and trespassing violations.  Our brush with The Law the night before had rattled me.

We drove some more and began to get annoyed.  We are used to California where you are charged a fee before you even get to the boundary of the Park.  “You there! You can see our Beautiful Scenery and are breathing our Fresh Air; that will be $27.43 per person plus 8% tax.”  And, of course, there are additional fees to actually get into the park, and for the privilege of using the restroom and hiking on a trail and taking a picture…

I had to pay a fee to take this picture in the Sequoia National Park.
This is not a true story.

This super-secret, must-have, invisible park Permit was a little unnerving.  Doesn’t Maine and the National Parks System want our money?  Are we being set-up in an elaborate plan that catches visitors unawares then imposes fines so even more money can be made?

We finally made it to a gatehouse and realized how it works: gatehouses are guarding the stuff that people want to see.  There were no spectacular vistas or crashing waves or dizzying cliffs where we had been driving.  Got it.  We got in the slow-moving line with the Chatty Ranger and paid the fee. Phew…  I felt better immediately.

Chatty Ranger told us that the place we had picked out on the map was no good and possibly closed.  Oh.  “Go down this road a ways until you get to Sand Beach*.  There’s some good hiking there”.  He said this because we told him we wanted to Hike.  I think he also said this because he saw our little Wimpola car and figured we were Yuppie Types who had no real ability to actually Hike.  Whatever, Chatty.

Driving down the road a ways we found Sand Beach.  We pulled into a lot that had 50 tour busses in it and about 500 cars (or so it seemed).  There was an empty parking space next to a beat-up SUV with a couple who were pulling out a veritable wardrobe of different types of Outdoor/Survival/Hiking clothing from the back seat.  They eyed our car.  I eyed their zip-off pants.  I came to the conclusion that People Who Wear Zip-Off Pants Are Hardcore.  The Man was doubly Hardcore as his pants zipped off at shorts-level and at capri-level.  I decided that I definitely did not want this man to do any sort of pants-conversion.

I grabbed my camera and camera backpack.  My Better Half grabbed his sunglasses and handed mine to me (as I get older I’m becoming more forgetful…).  We walked down the gently sloping stairs to the sandy beach area that was covered with people.  Through magical knowledge (or maybe because he had read a sign) my Better Half told me that we should look for a stone stair off the beach that leads to a hiking trail.  Ok.

We went to the right.  There were little boys throwing rocks into the water.  No stairs.

We went left and eventually came to a stream that cut through the beach which was forded using some handily placed rocks.  As I was walking across on the rocks an older couple on the far side shouted at me to be careful.  They kept shouting until I got to the other side.  Their animation and general demeanor distracted me so much that I almost fell in, which may have been their goal.  The woman said that she took her shoes off and tried to walk across but fell in anyway.  Hmmmmm…  While we were talking with them about the merits of testing each rock before actually putting all your weight on it, Hardcore Couple passed by heading for The Stone Stair.

We followed them, though not too closely (hiking is one of those things that is Not Fun in groups), up the steps that were cut into the rock.  It was beautiful scenery to be able to look through the trees at the mountains, the beach and the islands beyond…

The trail was well-marked with blue dashes that pointed the correct way to go.  Some of the dashes were on trees and some were on the rock trail.  I was initially annoyed that someone had painted on the trees until I figured out that they were trail markers.  Oh. Sometimes I’m not very bright.

We came to a place where the view was spectacular but only about 5 minutes away from the start of the trail.  Above us, on a ledge, were Hardcore, eating their lunch.  Huh.  I amended my previous conclusion: Zip-Off Pants Make You Look Hardcore.

We hiked on.  A woman came huffing down the path and told us in no uncertain terms that we should take the LEFT hand trail at the top of the mountain.  “The right hand path is very hard and we had to double-back and now I’m just completely exhausted.”  This was the type of Hiking we were looking for!  We took the right hand trail.

The Map of the park clearly shows the parking lot.

The trail was beautiful, running along sea-side cliffs with waves crashing against them, through rocky meadows, through birch forests.

There were some places where I had to scramble, using my hands, but this is because I’m so thoroughly Non-Hardcore that I was hiking in tennis shoes.  I was also wearing a jacket that belongs to my Better Half throughout this trip. Historically I’ve been more interested in clothing that Looks Good instead of clothing that Serves a Functional Purpose.  Don’t judge.

This is how little girl in Gotham rolls when Hiking.

I kept hoping we would see a moose.  That would have made my Maine experience complete (you know, the stereotypical trifecta of Lobster/Blueberries/Moose).  I talked so much about moose (and imagining that I heard one rustling in the underbrush) that I had the badness scared out of me by a chipmunk.  Yes – and stop judging – a Scary Chipmunk.  We heard a really loud yelping noise and I must have jumped a foot in the air.  The noise was coming from a little brown bastard sitting on a rock to our right.  He then broke into what sounded like laughter and we had to laugh, which made him laugh more.

This is not Scary Chipmunk or, maybe, it is…

He was our guide on the trail for about 100 yards and kept trying to scare us again.  I was wise to his antics, though…  (I have a minor phobia-thing about squirrels and have always imagined they’re Out To Get Me.  Chipmunks have always seemed cute and harmless.  This little guy was a practical joker and, for 1 second, was more scary than any squirrel in the lower 48 states).

We made it back to the car without any further mishaps and continued on our one-way loopy road.  We passed the sign for Thunder Hole (a big attraction with lots of tour busses lining the road) and the sign made me laugh so hard that I was crying.  Thank you, whomever made that sign.

Thank you for taking this picture. I would have taken my own but I was incapacitated by laughter.

We drove to the place where you can get tea and popovers.  It is, in fact, the only place to get anything to eat in the park but it’s famous for tea and popovers.  We didn’t partake in this ritual so it’s purely hearsay on my part.  There’s a lawn area that looks over a pond which reflects the Bubble mountains.**