Acadia National Park 2007 - Ilaria and J's Photo Page

Ilaria's Page J's Page

Acadia National Park 2007


(Click on the images for a larger version.)

A month after giving our new camping equipment a try in Martha's Vineyard, we were off to give it a second go -- this time in Acadia National Park. This trip was with our friends and experienced Minnesota camping duo Elissa and Ben (their Acadia album). Elissa and Ben woke up really early to pick up and pack the Zip car, so we could get a quick start on our five hour drive to Maine. This photo here is me by our Zip car at the gas station in front of our apartment. This is as far as we got before our first interesting part of the trip.


You see the hard-working sweaty guy there? Turns out his sister is from Acadia, and he really likes it there! So he starts pumping our gas and telling us all about the beauty, food, and culture of Acadia. According to him, Acadia has beautiful eagles nests which you can see from the interstate, fantastic lobsters that are incomparably better than in Boston, and lots of "arts and crafts and shit". He was super nice to get us psyched about our trip, the only problem was that at the beginning of a trip everyone is pumped to get moving, and although he was talking quickly, the gas meter wasn't moving so fast. In fact, the gas meter wasn't going up AT ALL. No matter how hard I'd stare at that meter on the gas pump to try and indicate that HEY NO GAS IS GOING INTO OUR CAR, he just kept enjoying telling us great things about Acadia. Finally, I couldn't take it and I said, "um is the pump working?" "oh, I'm sorry; here I am talking and I forgot to turn the pumps on." He turns on the pumps, and continues his Acadia promotion telling us about his sister's land, etc. And now the gas has begun to trickle into the take. And yes, I mean trickle. I mentioned this, and he said that the big tanks below the station must be almost empty. Another 20 minutes passed and our gas tank was certainly not full, but a 1 hr stop at the gas station across our street was long enough, so I told him I thought that was enough gas. He said "no, no, you're going all the way up to Maine, you need to fill your tank". However, the voices of Ilaria, Ben, and Elissa assured him that this was exactly the amount of gas we wanted.


After an hour at the gas station across the street, we got in the car and headed to Acadia. We made great time on that fantastic North End, bottom-of-the-tank gas. Nothing could stop us


except Arbys. We don't have Arby's in Boston. So when Elissa, Arby's addict, Cosgrove saw her mecca, she had to stop - despite it being 10AM. As an Arby's addict myself, I was happy to stop and get a giant Arby's Roastbeef. Ben, the chivalrous knight, Cosgrove kindly ordered for Elissa. However, she didn't want what his chivalrous knight instincts told him she wanted, and this led to some temporary chaos at the drive-through window.


But everything got sorted, and we were off to Acadia.


When we stopped at the park's visitor center to make sure we were headed in the right direction to the campground, we encountered our first glimpse of the Acadia wildlife. a grasshopper


and a butterfly. If we see this much before we even enter the park, imagine the spectacular nature (and arts and crafts and shit) that await inside!


We pulled the Zip car into our assigned camping spot


and discovered that someone had given our Toyota Matrix a name.


That's right, we had been riding in style in the SEXY PERV.


And then it was time for my favorite part of camping: putting up the tent. Ilaria you hold the stake


and I'll pound it in.


The tent was Elissa and Ben's, and it was the first time they'd built it. So we all decided an MIT student would be best suited to read the instructions and make sure the tent was assembled properly.


As soon as the tent was up, Ben and Ilaria, the two tiddist people amongst us, organized the tent (and since Ilaria was involved, they probably came up with a half-a-dozen rules to keep things neat and clean).


We stopped Ilaria right before she broke rule #1: no #2 beside the tent.


We put some food in our bellys and let Ilaria feed her map obsession for a bit.


Then after a short hug


it was time to


embrace Mother Nature.





Initially, we were all stunned from the beauty of the scenery and happy to be out of the car and see something spectacular, so we just sat around on the rocks talking about how nice the park was. But no matter how nice the scenery, humans get antsy and need to do something eventually.


Ilaria, myself,


and Elissa walked around taking


nice


photos.


Meanwhile Ben went


on a climbing adventure


and made his way towards the sea.


The rest of us climbed down a different way.


Ben came over to join us, but lost his footing a bit and stopped his momentum just in time to prevent falling off a pretty steep cliff.


So while the rest of us continued down to meet the ocean,


Ben calmed his nerves for a bit and appreciated being alive.


I really like this bright green living stuff that I found on the rocks,


but I have no idea what it was. After that quick look at the ocean by our campsite, we hopped in the Zip car


and drove to Jordan Pond House -


the only full service restaurant in the park.


That's one heck of a nice place to eat. Be great to wake up and have breakfast here. It was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so we snapped these photos


and went to hike our first trail: up to the bubble rock.


Now you might be thinking, what's a bubble rock? That's what I was thinking too


when we reached the peak of the Bubble trail.


Well think no longer: here's the bubble rock.


The Bubble Rock is this giant rock that sits precariously close to the edge of the mountain. I think it's been there since the last ice age, so it's pretty stable, but it sure looks like its ready to fall at any minute.


Ben took a break on the rocks


where we had one heck of a view. And now I present a short photographic series: woman and the mountain.














After our bubble rock climb, we headed back to the campsite to rest a bit before scouting the local town of


Bar Harbor for some dinner. LSU was playing Virginia Tech, so I put in a request to eat at a place with a TV focused on LSU.


We didn't have luck finding such a TV, so we ate in the upstairs of a nice seafood restaurant.


We had some chowder,


salad,


shrimp,


fish,


and I had


a yummy pork chop (I know it was a seafood place, but I'm not big on seafood).


As we left the restaurant, we noticed that the bar next door had a TV with the LSU game on (how'd we miss that before?). LSU destroyed Virginia Tech, so no worries.


We left Bar Harbor to return to our campsite where


Mary, Joseph, Ben, and Elissa


went to sleep.


The next morning, Ben got up early


and quickly got a


nice fire going on his new camping stove to make his lady-friend some


oatmeal.


Meanwhile, Ilaria and I practiced our kung fu fighting and then


made up after the battle was over.


Then we all


headed


over to


Thunder Hole (weird name, sounds like Beevis and Butthead making fun of the Thundercats cartoon).


Actually lots of people headed there with us, because at around the same time each day (based on the tides) there's the potential that a thunderous noise will come from these rocks.


There's a small cave under rock that fills with water really fast causing the air inside to come out with a BOOM. However, we really only heard little belches while we were there. What are the odds of a Thunder Hole and a Bubble Rock in the same park? Pretty unlikely, that must be why this is a National Park (and the only National Park in New England at that).


How could we top the Thunder Hole?


I topped it by making huge amounts of noise banging these two rocks together,


while the planners amongst our group (i.e. everyone except me) decided


we should


hike our way


over to the beehive trail.





When I saw these legs sticking up, I thought to myself "who's the excessively athletic person that thinks they need to stretch at the top of the mountain".


Of course it was Ilaria.


But this wasn't the peak of the Beehive,


this was the peak of Gorham Mountain on the way to the Beehive trail.


Ilaria sat next to a cairn (ometto or omino in italian [translated small man]). These little rock sculptures (often human shaped) are used as trail markers.


Look


we match the trees.





The view from the peak of Gorham Mountain was nice,


but the trail up the beehive was calling us.


The bubble trail we hiked the previous day was an intermediate level. The beehive was advanced. This little sign here should give you a little more info about what your getting into with the beehive.


It starts out simple enough;


sure we can hike this "difficult" trail.


But then it gets interesting. This part was Ilaria's least favorite part.


But she crossed it just fine.


And waited for the others to follow.


But for me this spot wasn't too bad, the drop was only 20ft or so.


What bothered me was that as the fall got higher and higher, we never really got a flat section to give us room for error. You lose your footing and you've got a long way down.


Sure the climbing was dead easy, because you have these metal bars to hold onto.


But unlike when you rock-climb steeper cliffs, we didn't have any ropes!


I put my camera away when I crossed that little bridge at the start of this climb and focused on not falling and controlling my fear of heights so I could get to the top in one piece. Elissa took all of these pics. She's afraid of even traces of chemicals in our laboratory, but she's not afraid to dangle off the side of a mountain one-handed to snap some photographs. Humans are all different.


Anyways, I'm very greatful for the photos


so I can see


that the trail was actually


really beautiful. I mean that is spectacular, but the 3 feet ledge next to the hundred foot drop took away most of my feelings of wanting to hang out and enjoy the view.


Eventually


we reached the top.


And it was


beautiful.


But I had to find a rock and lie down for a bit to heal my nerves. It was fantastic to be surrounded by flat.


Thankfully, climbing down was much easier. I think they should change the level of that trail from difficult to intermediate but dangerous.


Next we drove over to Cadillac Mountain. Unfortunately, the weather had begun to sour. Ben and Elissa went around quite a bit.


Ilaria and I had a quick look and returned to the warm dry Zip car to relax.


On the way back we stopped to take showers. The showers were pretty close to the campground and worked more like a washing machine. You put in 4 quarters, and you have water for 5 minutes. Unfortunately, you couldn't see any timer. So unless you had a watch, you had no idea how much time was remaining. There was also very little dry space inside each shower to place your clothes. So each day, I'd take off my shirt, shoes, and socks to minimize they clothing I had to find a place for. Elissa told Ilaria she should do the same. Much to the enjoyment of some random guy in the parking lot


Ilaria did.





We went back to the campground and got inside our dry tent. Unfortunately, this rainy evening was the day we'd already planned to have our super-duper campfire cookout with hot dogs, pasta, and smores (the timing was my fault, because I wanted to see the LSU game in town the day before).


We killed time hoping the rain would go away by answering random trivia pursuit questions.


Ben is by far the best trivia pursuiter amongst us. But the rain just wouldn't go away.


So we had to deal with it.


Since the camping trip Ilaria and I had just taken to Martha's Vineyard had also been spent standing in the rain, I wasn't in the best mood for this meal.


But thankfully lumberjack Ben came up with a crafty way to create some thinner starter logs from our large logs using the back of a hammer.


And we had fire.


In the middle of a heavy rainstorm,


we had fire.


And we also had hot dogs and pasta with rain-water thinned sauce. Next time I go car camping, I think I'll invest in one of those large tarps.


The next morning, Ilaria and I slept in. But Ben and Elissa got up early


to watch the sun rise.


They didn't have much luck with the sun. But in place they had an


Elissa-rise.


Then little by little,


we folded up the wet camping gear


and placed it into the Zip car.


All done.


Before heading back to Boston,


we drove the rainy streets of Acadia


to have a peak at the


nearby lighthouse.





It was cold and rainy,


but the flowers defied the ugly weather and were still pretty.


The bathrooms at the lighthouse consisted of a toilet on top of a big, deep hole.


But it was good enough for me.


Our final stop before heading back was Beal's Lobster Pier,


which our Boston gas station Acadia expert told us


had the best Lobster sandwiches.


After taking our seafood sandwiches to-go, we drove back to Boston in the pouring rain, stopping at the outlets and at the Cosgrove's storage facility. For me, it was a great trip, but I hope I can have rain-free camping next time, otherwise my outdoors instincts might go extinct.