Exploring the Quietside

On Saturday, we ran errands.  We tried to find a Farmers Market but, despite advertising that it operated on Saturdays, it was nowhere to be found.  We stopped and bought replacement headlamps for the truck and then swapped out one of them for a defunct headlight.  On our way home from errands, we decided to stop at Atlantic Brewing Company in Southwest Harbor, where we could taste their scrumptious beers and then partake of "Manly Men Barbeque."  We could have had "all you can eat," but discretion was the better part of valor and we shared a Sampler Dish with pulled pork, BBQ chicken, ribs, smoked sausage, potato salad, cole slaw, baked beans and cornbread.  Even sharing a dish was plenty - and we had to consider not violating the weight limit on our RV :)  Oh, yes, and we also had one of the best big beers we've ever tried:  Brother Adam's Bragget Honey Ale (Barley Wine Style), which, as it happens, we had found at a beer store in Bennington, VT, but this tasted even better on tap.

Then it was playtime.  We decided to bicycle around our part of the island between Bass Harbor and Southwest Harbor, which is called "Quietside" because all of the crazy Bar Harbor tourists aren't here.

We decided to pedal to three scenic spots in Acadia National Park:  the Natural Seawall, Wonder Land, and Ship Harbor.

The Natural Seawall is exactly what its name implies.  Boulders and stones piled up on ledges of granite form a natural seawall, and there is more rock hopping that you can throw a frog at.  Here is a photo looking landward from the seawall, across a sea of bleached, rounded stones:

Looking seaward, the view is slightly different.  The small, rounded stones give way to larger boulders, and then flat granite shelves against which the sea crashes instead of a sandy beach.  Here's a photo of Kathy making friends with one of the many Inuksuk figures that have somehow mysteriously grown up among the stones on these beaches:

Just to prove that the Inuksuks come in all shapes and sizes, here's a photo of David making friends with three more.  Some of the little figures appeared to be so off-balance we wondered how they stayed upright:

It's hard to capture the quiet, rhythmic drama of waves crashing onto the rocks, using just photographs and words.  So we took short videos of some wave action at each beach we visited.  We'll post those videos on the next blog entry as we're able to achieve enough bandwidth to get them uploaded.

Bicycling on to Wonder Land, we had a hike of about 1 mile out to the beach, which, again, was just rocks, boulders and granite ledges on which the waves crashed.  Here, however, there were many tide pools formed in the hollows of the granite ledges, and some of the tide pools were a riot of color and shapes:

Looking toward the ocean, we could see seaweed-encrusted ledges taking taking a pummeling from the incessant waves, right at our feet.  Once in a while, we looked up from photo-taking to realize our feet were about to be flooded by an incoming tidal wave.

As we hiked back to the parking lot from the point at Wonder Land, we encountered a family walking our direction.  There were five of them:  two parents, three kids.  Oh, yes, and two standard bred poodles - one was an older white female named Mia, and a three-month-old copper-colored puppy named Layla.  The mom said that she and her family had been taking this same hike every year when they visited Mount Desert Island, continuously since she was three years old.  Each year, they took a photo at the same, small gnarled tree along the trail.  It reminded us of our traditions of the "rock photo" during Rug Rat Camping each year, and "bookshelf photo" on every visit to Laird and Risa's house in Albany.  We obliged them by taking their photo.  The only trouble was, Layla the puppy is not fully trained and did everything except follow instruction to join them in posing for the photo!

As beautiful as the Natural Seawall and Wonder Land were, Ship Harbor gave us the best at the last.  We hiked a figure-8 trail about a mile out along the harbor shore toward the point.  Each of the four sides of the figure-8 passed through a different eco-system, including, alternately, an drier, sandier inland environment with large outcroppings of flat granite; a dense rain-forest environment with moss-covered forest floor; a walk along an estuarial bay with views of waterfowl; and, utlimately, the seacoast with all the beauty we've described.  As we got out near the point, the trail took us along a small cliff of spectacular pink granite slabs.  The sound of waves crashing against them was a constant companion.  Here's a photo looking out at the point across the cliffs of granite:

As we approached the point, a sailboat came into view and, as it crossed in front of us, we snapped a photo of it beyond the granite ledges of the point at Ship Harbor.

We hiked our way back around the other side of the figure-8 trail to our bicycles, and happily pedalled home to our cozy little RV at Bass Harbor Campground.  Dinner was easy:  warmed-over rabbit chili and one of the big beers we purchased at Oak Pond Brewery in Skowhegan.  The beers we selected this day at Atlantic Brewing Company are to be saved and savored some future day.