Bar Harbor

Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island (MDI) which is home to the Acadia National Park encompassing lots of trees, countless lakes and ponds and a fjord is a very popular Maine vacation spot and as we scheduled being there for the Labor Day weekend we booked ahead. Heading north and east on Hwy’s 1 & 3 was a pleasant scenic drive which took us through the town of Belfast. We were fascinated by the very noticeable changes once across the bridge onto the island, it truly is a different world, no megastores, malls etc.; small wonder then that the main town was once known as Eden. Since arriving in the eastern US I have discovered why so many people ride around on their little John Deere tractors cutting their grass - if they don’t - trees will pop up as trees seem to grow like weeds here, just love the rich soil. The town and harbor of Bar Harbor are quaint and inviting with many tourist-oriented shops and restaurants; both are kept busy by the visiting cruise ships (during the season on Wednesdays and Sundays) which disgorge close to 4,000 passengers each week. On the day we visited there were 2 cruise ships in, one docked and the other so large they had to use tenders to bring the passengers ashore.

MDI has an excellent FREE (LL Bean are big sponsors) transport system which we utilized for the 4 days we were on the island, just using the car once to go grocery shopping. There are 5 bus routes four of which travel to different scenic attractions and points of interest, the 5th collects passengers at the various RV Parks. Our park was bayside on a pebble beach which afforded us wonderful views of the sunset. A local enterprising fisherman visited our park daily between 5 and 7 pm selling lobsters while another entrepreneur drove around the park tinkling a bell to announce that he had pies for sale.  Much to my chagrin we did not get to hike MDI as my knee was still out of action and I was still putting both feet on each step I climbed.

Wednesday we headed back to Eileen’s and Carl’s in monsoon like rain for our pre-arranged and scheduled visit; our shelter from the hurricane was an unscheduled stop that was much fun and greatly appreciated. On Thursday Eileen, her friend Jean and I went shopping and treated me to a tour of the close by lakes and towns while Tom and Carl installed a new door for Jeremy. Later on we emptied our refrigerator into Eileen’s as on Friday we were traveling to Boston on the first leg of our 6 week UK, Israel, and Ireland trip.
Friday afternoon Carl & Eileen dropped us off at August Airport in sunny, blue-sky weather for our Cape Air Cessna flight to Boston; traveling at about 5,000 feet we had a bird’s eye view of the Maine and Massachusetts shoreline, ending with a thrilling landing over downtown Boston. We stayed at the Hyatt Harborside that night as our transatlantic flight was early on Saturday morning. During dinner and a walk along the harbor side afterwards we enjoyed a lovely sunset.

Saturday morning we were up before the dawn to witness an amazing sunrise and a cruise ship entering Boston harbor - I was very tempted to call the Barth’s as they think we’re sleepy heads – well…we are definitely not early morning people. The only downside to this trip was that I hardly slept a wink Friday night, my nose was running and swollen and it took me 2 hours to realize that I was having an allergic reaction the feather pillows.

We are posting this from Jennifer’s.

Perhaps we’ll post something from here, Israel or Ireland…we’ll see, no promises.

Definitely more in late October!