Day 9 - August 5th
The day started humid and hazy. We drove over to Bar Harbor, the main town on the island, where we had breakfast at Cafe This Way and then bought tickets for a sunset nature cruise around the bay. We also stopped off at Radioshack to get a US plug adaptor (we managed to leave the last one in our hotel in Boston, doh!) and an audio cable to plug the iPod into the car stereo. We'd been using an FM transmitter but there are so many radio stations in the US that we had to retune it every few miles to avoid interference.
We left Bar Harbor and headed to the Acadia Park Visitor Centre where we bought a park pass and then started on the Park Loop Road which takes you round the park. This seems to be how all American parks work, you just drive round stopping at any scenic bits to take a few photos and then hop straight back in the car, you can hire bikes but since we were only in the park for one day we took the convenient option (along with about 95% of the other visitors, we only saw a handful of cyclists).
At the first stop were some park rangers with telescopes which it turned out were trained on a pair of Peregrine Falcons perched on the clifftop - usually you can walk up to the cliff but during the nesting season the whole area is off limits so after a brief look we carried on. The next stop was at a vantage point overlooking the bay, although by this time the hazy was turning to fog and we could barely see any of the islands. There was a short path down to the rocky beach and by the time we'd walked down and had a short look around it started to rain - we were glad we hadn't hired bikes then.
We stopped off at a couple more beauty spots but it was raining hard so we didn't stray far from the car, and soon reached Jordan's Pond, the site of the only restaurant in the park, where we'd planned to get some lunch. Unfortunately due to the rain everyone else had the same idea and there was a queue just to get into the car park, let alone get inside and get food. So we carried on to the next attraction - Cadillac Mountain. This is apparently the highest point on the Atlantic Coast north of Rio de Janerio standing at around 1500 feet above sea level - not particularly high but on a grey day like today it was high enough that we'd disappeared into the clouds. There's a road right to the top and by the time we got there visibility was down to a few metres. Instead of dramatic views of the park all we got was a wall of grey.
From there we headed back to Southwest Harbor where we did a bit of shopping and had a late lunch at our hotel, then returned to Bar Harbor for our cruise - which perhaps unsurprisingly had been cancelled. As we queued for a refund we overheard the people in front saying that their cruise had gone out in the afternoon but due to the weather they'd seen nothing and almost everyone on board had been sick.
We finished the day with a bit more shopping and dinner at Maggie's Restaurant before returning to our hotel, although we did then nip back out to get takeaway blueberry pie from the shop across the road... mmm, pie.
We stopped off at a couple more beauty spots but it was raining hard so we didn't stray far from the car, and soon reached Jordan's Pond, the site of the only restaurant in the park, where we'd planned to get some lunch. Unfortunately due to the rain everyone else had the same idea and there was a queue just to get into the car park, let alone get inside and get food. So we carried on to the next attraction - Cadillac Mountain. This is apparently the highest point on the Atlantic Coast north of Rio de Janerio standing at around 1500 feet above sea level - not particularly high but on a grey day like today it was high enough that we'd disappeared into the clouds. There's a road right to the top and by the time we got there visibility was down to a few metres. Instead of dramatic views of the park all we got was a wall of grey.From there we headed back to Southwest Harbor where we did a bit of shopping and had a late lunch at our hotel, then returned to Bar Harbor for our cruise - which perhaps unsurprisingly had been cancelled. As we queued for a refund we overheard the people in front saying that their cruise had gone out in the afternoon but due to the weather they'd seen nothing and almost everyone on board had been sick.
We finished the day with a bit more shopping and dinner at Maggie's Restaurant before returning to our hotel, although we did then nip back out to get takeaway blueberry pie from the shop across the road... mmm, pie.
No comments:
Post a Comment