We tried to get an early start this morning to beat the heat (ha! I bet you Texans are laughing at me calling 79 degrees "heat!" But we ended up lingering so we could say goodbye to some neighbors here in the campground, and help them with their trailer hitch problems. With our bikes loaded onto the truck, we headed for the Hull Harbor Visitor Center in Acadia National Park. Just as we were getting ready to start out on the carriage road, we met a group of three men who were just coming off it. They made us a little nervous with their stories of long, steep twisty hills "murder to bike up and terrifying to come down"). But we decided to go for it. We figured we'd just bike as far as we wanted to, and as long as we were having fun. We knew we could turn around anytime we wanted. So we asked one of the guys to take our "Before" picture, since it didn't sound like we would be alive "After."
This describes a bit about the Carriage Roads in the Park:
And here's the beginning of the road. It doesn't look so bad, does it?
And that's where the biking photos end. I didn't have a way to take my iPad with me on the bike and record all these terrifying hills. But actually, they weren't nearly as bad as we were led to believe. I had to walk my bike up one short section of a hill (Curt, of course, bicycled the whole thing!), and we found the downhills to be more exhilarating than terrifying. (Though I admit, I was squeezing my brakes pretty hard the whole way down!). All in all, we had so much fun that we plan to go again tomorrow! When we were younger, we used to bicycle a lot...including a 2-week bicycle/camping trip in Vancouver and Gulf Islands of Canada. Though we're not in the shape now that we were then (or, to be more precise, I'm not), bicycling still brings a lot of enjoyment and great memories.
But even though I couldn't photograph the bike ride, you will be delighted to know that I was able to photograph our next big event:
You guessed it...Lobster and clams for lunch! (Well, after all, biking makes you hungry, and this place just happened to be right at the turnoff into the campground. You wouldn't expect us to just drive by, would you?)
We met a couple from Ohio who were doing the same thing, so that kept us from feeling quite so decadent!
Joshua, the fisherman and chef, told us a lot about lobster that we didn't know, as he fixed our meal.
What a lunch after a hard morning of bicycling!
After lunch I noticed a loaded apple tree across the driveway from Joshua's lobster business and asked him if I could pick up a few apples off the ground.
He was happy to share, so I brought back to camp enough to make a small pie. Tonight I made my first apple pie in an electric frying pan. Not bad at all!
The afternoon passed much like yesterday. Some power-lounging, swimming in the pool, and I started drawing in a nature journal that I bought yesterday. And we made reservations for the next leg of the trip.
One drawback to being on the road for so long is that you lose track of dates. Until this afternoon, Curt and I totally forgot that this weekend is Labor Day weekend. Since we're leaving day after tomorrow, we figured we'd better scramble! The first 12 campgrounds Curt tried, online and by phone, were totally booked. But #13 was lucky! They had room, but required us to stay 3 days. At that point, that wasn't a problem! We whipped out our credit card, snatched that campsite up quickly and breathed a sigh of relief.
So tomorrow is our last full day here, and then we'll start packing up to move on down the road. From here we'll head west into New Hampshire. Can't wait to see what adventures await us down the road!
Oh, speaking of traveling, I just remembered this. Last week when we were driving between Lubec and Bar Harbor, we came across this conglomeration of towers. It was on Rt. 191 between East Machias and Cutler, Maine. Does anybody have any idea what this might be? Some kind of secret National security site? Or just a bunch of cell towers in the same place? (By the way, this isn't all of the towers...the lens wasn't wide enough to take them all in).
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