Acadia (from the outside looking in)

(My original post was unknowingly removed.  I will attempt to recreate as time permits)

 

 

We were up early on Friday morning, but still recovering from the day before.  I looked out the window and saw clouds in the sky and the eastern sky beginning to lighten.  I couldn't resist grabbing my camera with tripod and heading down to the pier to watch the dawn of another day.  The sky changes by the second as the sun rapidly pushes up over the horizon.

 

 

After breakfast we took a walk along the Shorepath.  This was built along the seawall in the late 1800's.  It starts at the town pier and extends for over one-half mile around the harbor.  It goes by some very expensive real estate.  The path is actually owned by the property owners, but they have allowed the path to be used by the public continuously since it was built.

The Shorepath

 



There are beautiful blooming plants all over the city and island.  The grass is exceptionally green and there are red and purple blooming plants.  They are not damaged by the heat as would be the case back home in Tennessee.  Time is short however.  The temperature is consistently in the 40s at night now.

 



Blooming plants-the red is Chokeberry which is related to the rose

We had a trip booked on the "Islander" for a 3 1/2 hour cruise around the coast of Mt. Desert and some of the adjoining islands.  We departed just after lunch on a small craft which allowed us to get in close to shore.  We left Bar Harbor, traveling past our motel and then down the coast.  The Bar Harbor Inn & Spa has a long history.  It was originally established as the "Oasis Club" and then later became a reading room where authors and poets would come and read their work.  Pulitizer lived in Bar Harbor and was often found there.  He was a newspaper publisher and the Pulitizer Prize was named after him.  During World War II the Bar Harbor Inn was taken over the by the US Navy.  Navy aviators practice dropping torpedoes in the harbor.  There is an island just off the coast which had the profile of a Japaneese battleship and the torpedoes repeatedly blasted away at the granite clifts.  In 1947 a huge fire swept over the island destroying much of the island with the prize homes.  The Bar Harbor Inn expanded and became the only hotel remaining in town.

Connie and a "Titantic Moment"

 

The Bar Harbor Inn & Spa from the water.  The Reading Room Restaurant is to the right.

 

Bar Harbor Inn-the east wing.  Our room is on the top second floor just left of the center with the drapes open

Martha Stewart's home can be seen near the top center.  It is located in Seal Harbor.

The home of Dick Wolf-creator of "Law & Order"

Bear Island Lighthouse

Lobster fishing is a difficult life.  Fishing goes on regardless of weather.  The traps are moved to deeper water as the water temperature decreases.  A typical fisherman has 800 traps in the water and will pull up and reset 200 a day.  A good catch is two to three keepers per trap.  The traps are baited with an oily fish and the bait is now being imported since there are restrictions on the Herring catch allowed.  A keeper is in the 1 1/4 to 5 lbs. range and can not be a reproducing female.  A lobster fisherman must wait as long as 9 years to obtain a license and must work under another lobsterman to be able to apply.  The fisherman has a distinctive color system on his buoys to indentify his traps and must display this color pattern on his boat when he is working the traps.  The fishermen would leave the docks at daylight to start working their traps.  Many of the traps in the Bar Harbor area were set in water that was 150' deep.

Lobster buoys-Different color patterns are used to identify each fisherman's traps

Egg Rock Lighthouse

Great Gray and Harbor seals resting on the rocks during low tide at Egg Rock Lighthouse

 

The seals were moaning and fussing with each other.  You could hear them over the sound of our idling boat engine.  The fussing seemed to be over competition for the chose spot on the rock to rest.

 

Egg Rock-voted by Maine residents as the ugliest lighthouse in Maine.  This light could be easily seen from our hotel room at night.

 

The bar in Bar Harbor.  This strip of ground appears during low tide and connects downtown Bar Harbor with Bar Island seen in the distance.  You may walk or even drive across the bar which is made up of rock and ground up shell.  It is present for approximately 3 hours and then disappears as the tide comes in.  If you get caught by the tide you will have a 6 hour wait until the bar reappears and you can come back.  The tide rises by 12 to 13 feet at Bar Harbor.