Mt. Desert Island day 1

Day 7, July 5, 2015

We had a calm peaceful night and slept well.  I am amazed that regardless of how windy it is during the day, we have always arisen to calm glassy waters.  It makes for much less stressful sleeping when you don’t have to be concerned about a dragging anchor.

Calm morning in the anchorage

We prepared a bacon and eggs and carrot cake (for our starch component) breakfast.  I spent the next hour or so getting caught up on my blogs stuff while Janine spruced up the boat.  I also went on line and found the bus schedule so we made our plans for the day’s travels.

We caught a bus at about 10:30 and this bus took us on a 2 hour ride to the village of South West Harbor. Along the way, the driver stopped at a number of interesting trail heads, campgrounds and ports. These driver folks are amazingly accommodating.  They stop anywhere there is someone waving their arms and will drop you off virtually anywhere along the route.  Our driver for this trip was a retired postman who

Bald eagle in the tree

moved to the area a number of years ago.  He was a wealth of information and most willing to share it.  This route is a one way trip to the southern end of the island so on the return trip, we had him drop us off at the Seafood Ketch restaurant in the village of Bass Harbor where I enjoyed a lobster roll sandwich and “ketch fries” which are quartered deep fried potatoes.  The lobster roll was suggested to be the best way to eat lobster.  It is a split hot dog type bun piled high with lobster, lettuce, tomato and in my case drawn butter.  SUPER!  Janine had a shrimp roll and sweet potato fries.

While we were eating out on the patio overlooking the harbor, we heard on a number of occasions some really loud engines roaring in an area of the bay the view of which was blocked by a large building.  After speculating as to the source of the noise by, we asked the waitress and she told us that they were having lobster boat races. By the time we finished eating and had walked to a place where we could watch, the races had ended.  Perry County Ohio has their tractor pulls and Maine has her lobster boat races.

We caught the next bus north and road back through Somesville on to the Village Green in Bar Harbor.  Here we had a 30 minute wait for our next bus so we made our way along the crowded street to a little ice cream shop where we each enjoyed a scoop of their delicious locally made delight.

Sand Beach  Water Temp 52 degrees - No local folks swimming

 We next caught the No. 3 bus to Sand Beach.  This beach is an anomaly in Maine.  The rock base of the island is granite so it doesn’t make sand like places in which the bed rock is sandstone.  But here, the beach is made up of very finely ground up shell fragments that have been deposited over thousands of years.  I walked on the sand and it felt and looked just like any other sand beach.

Janine and I took the challenge hike a 1.6 mile Great Head Trail from

Great Head Trail decending sharply

sand beach along the cliffs that overlook the ocean.  The trail was well marked but the signage at junctions was poor and difficult to decipher so we ended up walking significantly further than the 1.6 miles.  The views were truly spectacular but some of the climbs proved to be somewhat challenging for us ole folks.  Describing beautiful scenes and landscapes is difficult so I added a bunch of pictures to better illustrate it.

We finally found our way out to the loop road that leads to Sand Beach and flagged down a bus for a trip back to Bar Harbor.  We got back to the Village Green at 7:15 and had a 45 minute layover until we could catch the last bus of the night that would take us back to Somesville.  We found a deli that made fabulous sandwiches

Sand Beach from Great Head

so I bought another lobster roll and Janine got a tuna salad sandwich. 

 

While waiting for our bus, a great story unfolded.  On our trip to Sand Beach, our bus driver was a really pleasant retired school bus driver who had a great personality.  Traveling with her on her bus were her son and her granddaughter.  I talked at length with the son and he told me that his mom did this in the summers and was hoping to go to Alaska and drive next year.  As we were departing the bus, I went to her and told her that I was a retired principal and I felt school bus

Proof that we indeed made it to the top

driving was one of the toughest jobs in the schools and I valued them highly. And, that if she had any trouble with the kids on this bus to let me know and I would take care of them.  She just cracked up!  So, as we were sitting on a bench waiting for our 8:00 bus, she pulled up at the bus stop and when she saw us, she waved.  She parked the bus and walked back to where we were sitting and talked with us.  It turned out that our bus was parked around the corner from our bench so we walked over and got on board a few minutes before 8:00.  Just

as the bus was set to leave, the lady school bus driver came running onto our bus, all out of breath and told us that while she was gone, she realized that we were sitting in the wrong place and she wanted to make sure we got on the right bus.  Amazing.

Our bus back to Somesville was packed full of a group of Jewish high school students who were on a summer camp trip that went from central Michigan to Acadia then down the east coast to Virginia before returning to Michigan.

  One of the 8 counselors was sitting across from me.  She was a really spry bright young lady who was on her 4^th year as counselor for one of these trips.  The boys and girls were ages 14 to16 years and were most well behaved and courteous.  They were a refreshing group.

We had a cool dinghy ride back to the boat.  We were both foot sore and pleasantly tired.  It was a great day.

 

 

Looking almost straight down