Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, Maine
Paula and Jeff head North to Maine to do some hiking and exploration at Acadia National Park.
Paula and I are back from Maine. It took a bit longer than we expected to get there on Thursday, since Paula’s car wouldn’t start without a jump-start and we hit about 3 hours of traffic in CT, Providence and Boston. But once we got there, it was neat!
We had a lot more outdoors fun than I thought we would. We went hiking in Acadia National Park and Wolf Neck Woods park. Acadia was absolutely great! We probably hiked about 6 to 8 miles in there and saw some beautiful scenery. We went on a shorter hike at Wolf’s Neck Woods, and saw all kinds of wildlife. We didn’t get to see any moose, but we did get to see Loons. It was cool to see the loons, especially since our mystery black-and-white ducks turned out to be loons. They are very neat looking, and I attempted to draw one below.
Lobsters were spendy, too. There was no way I was paying 18 bucks for a lobster roll. I decided to go for the clam chowder instead. I tried the clam chowder in each place we went, and I decided that Darby’s in Belfast, ME was the best clam chowder, as well as the best food overall, in Maine. Both Paula and I got some new clothes at LL Bean and we poked around Freeport for a little while. By the way, if you\’re going to check out LL Bean, go Thursday night at 11 pm. 
Paula took some great pictures of Acadia National Park, Wolf Neck Woods State Park, and Pemaquid Point, here’s her narrative:
We decided that we needed to run away for a few days. It had to be a roadtrip, and we wanted to go somewhere new to us. Neither of us had really been to Maine, so off we went!!
Wolf Neck Woods Park
Our first day we came in late and explored the giant LL. Bean store in Freeport. It is huge! The next morning we went to Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park. This is a small island off the park that is an osprey preserve. You can see the nest, it is on top of the third tall tree from the left. We saw an osprey eat a fish in one of the trees, it was impressive to watch!
Great Blue Herons at Wolf Neck Woods Park
We also had fun watching the Great Blue Herons catch fish and crabs. Jeff was especially amused by them!
Pemaquid Point Bell
These next 3 are from Pemaquid Point Lighthouse. This is probably the most sun we saw the whole trip! Very beautiful though.
Pemaquid Point Lighthouse
Pemaquid Point Ocean View
Penobscot Bay Belfast
As we moved north, we stayed in the little town of Belfast, right off of Penobscot Bay. Here is the view of the bay from our hotel room.
Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, Maine
From Belfast we drove about an hour north to Acadia National Park. It was still early in the year for them up there, but the park was open and quite breathtaking! I wish we had more time to explore it better. The above is the view from Cadillac Mountain.
Acadia National Park, Maine
It was odd, in the park is a big loop you can drive, and 95% of the people would just drive, get out of their cars and take a quick picture and hop back in. There were very few people on even the easy trails. Oh well! The fewer people the better I say!
Acadia National Park Ocean Cliffs
We did the easy hike along the ocean. Which as you can see was quite spectacular! It reminded me quite a bit of home, the Oregon Coast, but was different enough to make me take lots of pictures!
Acadia National Park, Ocean Trail
More Acadia Pictures. These are all from the oceanside trail.
Paula at Acadia National Park
Here we are taking a breather. It was pretty out there and we were having fun watching the sea birds. It was my mission in life to see a Loon, and we did, but couldn’t get any decent pictures of them so I’ll spare you.
Jeff at Acadia National Park
Acadia National Park, Jordan Pond Trail
After the ocean hike we decided to hike Jordan Pond and take a trail spur up to a moderate trail to something called The Bubble…
Acadia National Park, Jordan Pond Trail
It started off very beautiful. The pond was crystal clear. The trails were immaculate. Then we got to the spur to the second trail.
Well the spur was rocky, VERY rocky and very steep. But it said only 0.4 miles to the real trail. As we went up, it got harder and harder, getting to several vertical spots that clearly weren’t “easy” or “moderate” To make matters even more fun it was getting very foggy and raining behind us. We couldn’t go down, it was too slick and there were some 10 foot drops that we could get up, but not down. So up we went, trying to beat the rain. We were not prepared for this. There were even steel rungs in the rocks for the rock climbers to clip onto!! I managed to bash my knee into a boulder and cut it open, and Jeff managed to bruise his foot badly, but up we limped!
The Bubble at Acadia National Park
When we got to the top, this is what met us. The Bubble. A rock perched on the edge of a cliff….hmmmph! It was so foggy you could barely see anything! But we found the real trail to go back down and were much happier. The picture below is what the moderate trail looked like.We didn’t get any pictures of the hard part, we were a bit too panicked by that point to worry about pictures! But use your imagination!
Acadia National Park on the Trail Down
Despite our little “adventure” we had a very good time! I wish it could have been longer, but at least we got to see some of it! *NOTE* for those considering going to Acadia. Beware of spurs going from one trail to another!!