Carriage Ride Day

Day 11: July 9, 2015

Another great day in the cool Northeast.  We awoke at our usual time, fired up the coffee pot and nourished ourselves with bacon, eggs, and toast.  Yesterday, we tried to get reservations for a carriage ride on the carriage roads, however, they were booked full.  The lady told me to call back this morning at 8:00 and it is possible that they would add an additional carriage therefore offering more seats.  I called them and they indeed had additional rides available so we made our

reservations.

After breakfast, Janine and I walked to the little carryout in the village of Somesville to get some bread and ice.  We noticed that there was a road construction sign indicating that one lane would be shut down in the middle of Somesville.  Man, does that ever cause havoc on this road.  There is so much traffic that the

Cobble stone bridge built in 1917

lines back up in both directions.  We needed to catch a bus to Bar Harbor to make a connection that would take us to the carriage at a place called Wildwood Stables. Times were critical for that connection and, because of the traffic tie-up, we made it with about 2 minutes to spare.

Our carriage hauled 10 people and our team was a beautiful pair of Clydesdales driven by a young lady.  She had been doing this for about 5 years and was a wealth of information. 

The majority of the carriage roads are gentle up and down trails with slopes of up to 6% grade except for the one leading from the stables to the first trail. That one was a 12 % grade and was quite a pull for the horses. This particular tour was called the bridge tour and we passed over or under about 5 of the 16 bridges that John D. Rockefeller, Jr built between 1917 and 1936. The first bridge that we saw was the first one that he built and it was made out cobble stones that he collected on the island.  It took so many stones that he ran out of suitable rocks and had to import a more from Italy.  

Gate keepers home. 

Each bridge was unique in its design.  One bridge had three arches, one for a motorcar road, one for a stream, and one for a trail used by the local Indians when they came down the ocean to fish.  Another had 4 “weep-holes” located near the four corners of the bridge, the water from which poured down on the base of 4 trees he planted.  When he built the roads, he made sure that every so often there was a level spot on which the horses could be rested and at those spots, trees were planted to make sure they

Gate at highway crossing

rested in the shade.  The 4 trees at the weep-hole bridge were planted for that purpose.

When he came to a spot where he needed fill, he used slabs of granite sometimes many feet thick as his fill material.  When he crossed a small stream, he built culverts out of granite slabs and according to our guide, they basically don’t have washouts anywhere on the roads.  For his surface JDR,Jr used crushed granite from the island but when the Park Service took over maintenance of the trails, they started using crushed

Road fill with granite culvert

shale because of the expense.

The tour took about 2 hours and was a most pleasant experience.  The view and history discussed made the trip most worthwhile.

We caught our buses back to Somesville where we prepared a meatball and faux spaghetti dinner.  Our hors d'oeuvre for the evening was kipper snacks on crackers with a cold beer.

Reading and bed as per usual.