Only west from here

July 17-21

Although it was a state I had written off years ago as just too far away to visit, I made it to Maine last weekend. Now I have at least driven in all 48 continental states. (I can't remember if I got out of the car in Mississippi or Alabama.)

We drove to Acadia National Park all on the first day and camped that night at Seawall Campground. Unfortunately I had a raging sinus infection headache and crawled right into the tent, but the campground was humming with life. Chad and the kids walked over to the neighbor's campfire to roast marshmallows. They were playing guitar and singing songs, so we figured they wouldn't mind sharing their fire with us.

The singing campers also owned a DeLorean, so we had to take some pictures.

Saturday morning we drove into Bar Harbor to attend the Dive-In Theater with Diver Ed. It may be the coolest thing that we have done...it is at least in the top five. We went out on a boat where Diver Ed dove down into the bay with an underwater camera and showed us the sealife he could find. While he was down there he picked up lots of creatures and brought them back up to the boat. They made touch tanks right there on the boat and we all got to hold the animals before sending them back down. We held sea cucumbers, urchins, seastars, blood stars, crabs and lobsters. 

 

After lunch (lobster-based, of course) we went on a ranger-led walk around the ruins of George Dorr's mansion. He was responsible for Acadia becoming a National Park, and when he died his house was demolished and became park land. 

We wandered around Bar Harbor for a while until the tide went out. Then we walked across the bar to the island in search of tide pools. We didn't find any good tide pools before it started to rain too hard to be out. 

Sunday morning we went and found some better tide pools. We really noticed a difference between the Pacific Ocean tide pools that we've seen and these colder Atlantic pools. There was lots and lots of seaweed here and no anemones or seastars. We found crabs, and lots of mussels and snails.

We ate lunch near the Bass Harbor light house and then drove around the park loop road. We stopped at the top of Cadillac Mountain and the other notable stops along the loop. The walked a little on the carriage roads before making dinner back at camp. After dinner, we looked at some more tide pools and then attended a ranger program on animal sounds before returning to camp for a fire and s'mores before bed.

Monday morning was foggy and cool. We headed out of Maine and headed to New Hampshire for a beach afternoon. It was 70 degrees in Acadia, and 90 degrees in Hampton Beach by the time we got there. We did some ocean swimming and beach sand play. It is a very different place than Acadia, but the kids enjoyed getting to have a "beach day". After cleaning up, we ate dinner at Smutty Nose brewery and returned to watch the LEGO Movie on the beach.

Tuesday was a big driving day back to Ithaca. From now on our eastern travels are done and we will only be going west from here. We'll enjoy the next few days at local concerts and events and then head back to Lincoln.