Enjoying Bar Harbor, Maine

Days 76 and 77 of trip, Sunday and Monday, August 24 and 25, 2014

We've had beautiful weather for several weeks now. The days are in the mid 70's, and the nights are cool. We just love being in the north in the summer. It's been 6 years since we had this experience (since we moved from Idaho to Texas in 2008), so this has been just delightful for us!

Yesterday, Sunday, started with a worship service right here in the campground. The current owners of Hadley Point Campground are the 3rd generation of owners here, and they've always had a family tradition of offering a Christian worship service on Sundays. Apparently the first owner, the grandfather of Allison, the current owner, led the service himself for many years. Now that he has retired, the Associate Pastor and the Worship Leader from the nearby Calvary Chapel come out to the campground on Sundays for the service. And that's what we were treated to yesterday.

A small group of campers gathered (about 12-15 of us). On the right is Ross, the Associate Pastor, and his wife. Below is John, the worship leader and his "helper", daughter Natalie. It blessed me to see Natalie singing along with every song her dad led. 

We really enjoyed John's worship music, and then Ross delivered a wonderful sermon. He gave us so much to think about that we found ourselves discussing it on and off throughout the day.

In the afternoon we returned to the shuttles to take us back into Bar Harbor for lunch and a little more browsing around. This time I was able to catch a photo of one of the shuttles pulling a trailer designed especially to shuttle bicyclists around. This really is an amazing public service they have here!

Here's another one loaded with bikes, ready to be removed:

Another lovely place that we didn't see on our previous trip to Bar Harbor:

Today, Monday, we got in our truck for the first time in 4 days! We headed into Acadia Park...

....and up Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the east coast. This is the first place that the sun hits in the U.S. every morning. (We weren't up there quite that early!) The views are spectacular here when things aren't fogged in, and we hit it on a beautiful, almost totally clear day.

Some of the islands in Acadia National Park:

Down on the coast there you can see the town of Bar Harbor. If you look closely, you can even see some of the boats in the water that I photographed on Friday.

We hiked around and found the benchmark that the US Geological Service places on significant mountain peaks throughout the country. Here it is imbedded into the pink granite of the mountain:

And on that benchmark we made a new friend, Steve Huson from Chicago:

Steve and Curt are standing on the VERY highest point on the East Coast.

We also met another great family that we enjoyed visiting with: Zaire, Mustafa, and Karen from Philadelphia.

They kindly took a photo of us as well:

 

One last look at an amazing view.

We spent a fair amount of time at the Acadia Visitors Center, getting information for tomorrow's adventure. There are many carriage roads throughout the Park, which were built and later donated to the park by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. So armed with our maps of the Carriage Roads, we plan to take our bicycles out tomorrow and join the other adventurers out there. 

Love these birch trees that we find all over the Northeast:

After returning to camp from our Cadillac Mountain expedition today, we spent the afternoon in the pool. Ahhhhh, how refreshing! Early to bed tonight, so we can get our bicycling in before it gets too hot. Good night, all!