RoadNotes: Living Life at an Angle

Acadia National Park, ME – September 27-30, 2012 Our Current Location

We had an early start on Thursday because we had an appointment at CMD Performance to get the Onan generator serviced. Fortunately the Pumpkin Patch Campground was only about 3 miles from CMD so we were at the front door at about 5 'til 8 waiting for the service department to show up. They told us to go have breakfast and they'd have it wrapped up in about an hour. So we used this as an excuse to head off to Tim Horton’s again as it's becoming our favorite breakfast place.

We arrived back at CMD after a couple hours. We wanted to give them plenty of time to wrap things up and they were ready for us. We're good for another 150 hours. Frank gave the repairs a thorough going over and found no leaks or other problems so we were on our way.

We drove straight to Acadia National Park and arrived about noon. We saw lots of neat stuff we wanted to investigate, but decided we better do it later. We had checked the park website one last time at breakfast to make sure they still had sites available and we snagged the last site that was open for 4 days in a row.

Although Acadia is a beautiful park whoever designed the campground must of been having a real bad day. Or, they had a bad experience with an RV and this was their way of getting even.

We tried just about everything to find a level spot on our campsite with no luck. We finally got twisted in at about a forty five degree angle and declared that was as good as it was gonna get. Still if you were on a pair of roller skates and started out in the bedroom, by the time you got to the front seats you'd be doing about 30 miles per hour. And we got one of the more level sites.

After we struggled with getting Big Guy set up we went back to the entrance station to get some information. While we were there they filled the last spot available for RVs. That was close.

It was still early enough in the day that there was time for a hike to the top of Gorham Mountain. A moderate uphill climb, once at the top it afforded great views of Bar Harbor and the surrounding waters.

After that hike, we were still feeling pretty energetic so we walked along the shore to Thunder Hole. Although, at the time, we thought it should have been named Grumble Hole instead. The tide wasn’t right for it to make any thunderous noises. But we could still see how it worked and our timing was pretty good as there were no tour buses in sight. That meant there were only 8 to 10 of us on the little walkway looking at the hole instead of 50 or 100 people trying to cram into the same space.

The sun was getting low in the sky so it was time to head back to Big Guy for the evening.

The next day was cold and windy with light rain predicted but we decided to chance it and head over to the Jordan Pond Shore Trail to hike around it and to explore Jordan Pond House. We were lucky that the rain held off. The trail was a 3.3 mile loop complete with bridges and wooden paths through the forest.

Along the way, there was plenty of evidence of beavers that had been hard at work.

Our luck ran out and the rain started, actually more of a miserable drizzle, but we drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain and walked around anyway. The views were great, but not so clear. We found out we weren’t the only foolish people there and others were walking around in the wind and rain just like us.

Saturday there was 90% chance of rain. It looked like it was going to be dark and wet all day. It slacked up a little later in the day, so we took off to investigate Bar Harbor. We made one circle through the downtown area and found the rain hadn’t hampered the tourists one bit. There were no available parking spots, so we found a side street several blocks from the hub of activity and started out from there. One interesting store had a Rambler imbedded in the wall. It is a quaint little town and EJ had a great time shopping. We got a window seat at one of the Pubs on the main drag. Time for a little clam chowder, fish & chips, and some Irish coffee to warm us.

Rain, rain and more rain. On our final full day at Acadia, we decided to venture out and explore the lesser traveled part of the Island, the Mt. Desert area. There we found a jewel, the Seal Cove Auto Museum. This is another one of the great little museums tucked inside a metal building out in the middle of nowhere that we’ve come across this summer. This museum specialized in automobiles of the Brass Era (pre 1914) known for their brass bright work. It also had an excellent history of transportation starting with the bicycle. We spent over 2 hours enjoying all they had to offer.