See also my Maine Photo Album
and the essay Cadillac Mountain Sunrise
(For our daughter's detailed account of our trips to Maine, click this link:  cjmmom)

(Above) View of Bar Harbor from atop Cadillac Mountain, the highest peak in Acadia, looking toward Frenchman's Bay and the Porcupine Islands.  A road, with scenic vistas of the Park, leads up Cadillac, where one can view sunrises and sunsets.  Cadillac is far enough east that its summit is the first place in the continental United States to be touched by the sun every morning.

BAR HARBOR / ACADIA

At this writing, we are anticipating a two-week family vacation in Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park in Maine.  "Family" here refers to my wife and me and the Arizona Five – our daughter, son-in-law, and three grandsons (ages 7, 5, and 3) – who will be flying out to New Jersey and then driving up with us to a place that we have always considered a little corner of paradise.  During the weekend in between, we will be joined by my wife's family for a family reunion.

These are familiar stomping grounds.  Before our daughter went away to college, we used to go there every summer.  This year's trip represents, we hope, the beginning of a new tradition for another generation.  In fact, our daughter, Kate, has compiled a DVD out of old photos and videotapes of previous trips as a memento of years gone by and will this year be putting together its sequel.

We always stayed at the Edgewater Cottages on Salisbury Cove (depicted to the right).  We selected Edgewater completely at random on our first visit, and we've stayed there on every trip since then; we're convinced that there is nothing comparable in the area, and it's right on the water, not far from the entrance to the park or from Bar Harbor itself.

The adults, even our son-in-law who was with us one year, will be treading familiar territory.  For the boys, raised in Arizona, it will be a new adventure – with forest, mountains, lakes, and the ocean right there or five to ten minutes away.  Only Christopher, the oldest, has ever seen the ocean (when he was three), and that was in the New Jersey shore, which Grandma and Grandpa insist is not really the ocean.  At least it's not the ocean as it is in Maine, where waves crash against the rocky coast.

Indeed, the Maine coast is not designed for those who love sandy beaches (though there are some such beaches, as shall be noted later).  It is far too rugged, and the water – even in midsummer – is too cold for even the hardiest swimmers.  The sea can be hypnotic, and the rocky shore is a place to sit and wonder and to listen to the percussive music of the waves as they beat against the rocks.

Highlights of the Loop Road

But I am getting ahead of my story.  The best place to start is to glance at a map of Mt. Desert island.  From the top of the map, we cross from Trenton to the island.  We go to the left (to the right on the map) on Route 3, and the second indentation across from a hook of land is Salisbury Cove, where the cottages are, set off on the cove side of the highway.  Route 3, running near the water of Frenchman's Bay, leads to town; on the way is the entrance to the park (the Visitor's Center). The red and yellow road on the map is the Park Loop Road that encircles the main section of the park.  Now that we have our bearings, it's time to explore.

We take the highway to Bar Harbor, and we bypass the entrance to the park and the Loop Road (we'll do that on our first full day).  And this is when we have our first view of Frenchman's Bay, the Porcupine Islands, the docks and ferry landing at Bar Harbor, and a glimpse of the open ocean beyond.

On our first full day, we observe a tradition that began with our very first visit – a drive around the Park Loop Road.  We always play a tape (nowadays it's a CD) that I've made especially for the trip, comprising instrumental music appropriate for a drive through the woods and along the ocean.  We will discover that, in years to come, we will never be able to listen to this music without thinking of Maine. 

One of our early stops on the drive is the beaver pond (right).   As many times as we stopped there, we never saw any beavers, except for occasional imagined ones.  Okay, I may be contradicted about this because we have seen ripples in the water, and others have claimed to have seen beavers.  But the only evidence of their presence that my old eyes have discerned is the beaver lodge (to the right just above the center of the picture).

The Loop Road at first travels through the forest but eventually opens to an expansive ocean view.  The drive is different each time, partly because of the ocean's many moods.  At times it can be completely calm, without even a trace of surf.  At other times (when I like it best) the waves beat against the rocks and hurl white clouds of spray skyward.  It's curious that I can derive serenity from such turbulence, but I do.

A popular stop on the Park Loop Road is Sand Beach, something quite unusual on the rocky Maine coast.  This stretch of white sand swarms with "bathers" in July and August, though few of them actually go into the water – it is too cold.  When there's so much else to do in Acadia, we always wonder what motivates these "Sand People" (as our daughter scornfully calls them) to spend their time at the "beach."  It's a lovely spot, though – when it's nearly deserted.

Here's another view of Sand Beach, from Great Head, a rocky promontory that juts into the sea on the north side of the beach.  The mountain in the background is the Beehive, which boasts one of the more challenging climbing trails in the park.  I've never hiked the Beehive (nor, with my fear of heights, do I care to).  However, I've walked the trail on Great Head many times.  Actually, there are two approaches, but my favorite starts at Sand Beach, swiftly ascends some boulders (the only hard part) and then goes along the ridge of Great Head.  If the beach is crowded, one starts out hearing the raucous cries of the Sand People, but they are soon drowned out by the sound of waves against Great Head and the cries of seagulls, who are, I think, more civilized than the Sand People are, and certainly more in tune with nature.  Interestingly, at the end of Great Head, we found the ruins of what was once a tea house.  Apparently, there was once a road or carriage path out to the point.  Now all that remains is a magnificent view.

Beyond Sand Beach is another popular stop called Thunder Hole, a long rocky recess that alternately empties and fills with sea water.  When it empties dramatically and a large wave suddenly fills it, the spray leaps up as shown in the picture to the right.  However, the ocean must be fairly rough, and one must get there at the appropriate tide.  As many times as we have stopped at Thunder Hole (perhaps twenty), we hit it only once when it was high enough for anyone to get very wet, even when we stood on the railed walkway beside the recess.  We never saw it doing what the first photo shows; it was more like the picture to the left.  Maybe this year – and I wouldn't care if I got soaked to the skin.  Still, the rocky ledges around Thunder Hole are among the best places on the island to observe the surf.

From just before Sand Beach past Thunder Hole, the Loop Road runs very close to the ocean.  Then it rises slightly to ascend Otter Cliffs, which we have seen in the distance from Thunder Hole.  From the lookout atop the cliffs, we have a sweeping view of the open ocean.  Although the cliffs are strictly for rock climbers, one can easily access a shore trail that extends in both directions from here.

After Otter Cliffs, the Loop Road follows the ocean a little further and then cuts through the forest, passing the stables where one can rent horses for horseback riding or sign up for a carriage ride.  On the way, we pass under one of the many stone bridges in the park.  The bridges are where carriage roads (ideal for biking too) pass over the Loop Road.  After the stables, we drive through woods at the southernmost part of the loop until we are headed north on its west side, betwen mountains and lakes, toward Jordan Pond, the Bubbles, and Cadillac Mountain.

At one end of Jordan Pond, with a view of twin mountains known as the Bubbles, is Jordan Pond House.  Though we've eaten meals there a couple of times (they're overpriced – one pays for "ambience"), the main reason to stop here is for afternoon tea and popovers, served on the lawn.   The light but filling popovers with incomparable Jordan Pond jam are just the ticket before completing the drive around the Loop.

Jordan Pond is actually to become the scene of many activities in our visits to Acadia.  Daughter Kate and I will bicycle on the carriage trails in the area, and we will take a canoe out on Jordan Pond in what may well be remembered as one of Acadia's leading comedy acts.  We will climb the Bubbles.  The North Bubble has one of the best moderate trails in the park, with platforms of open rock yielding vistas of the full length of Jordan Pond and the surrounding mountains.  Or one can hike up the South Bubble, at the top of which is Bubble Rock, a boulder that, seen from the Loop Road, appears to be precariously balanced on the summit.  Actually, when one reaches the summit of the South Bubble, one can safely stand on the mountain side of the Bubble without fear of tumbling off the edge – though the feat seems death-defying to those viewing it from the road.

Beyond the Bubbles, the Loop Road cuts through a wooded area and descends gradually until it passes a small parking area to the right.  Many people, I think, miss this stop between Jordan Pond House and the turnoff to the road up Cadillac.  However, nestled here between the mountains is one of the most tranquil spots in Acadia – Bubble Pond.   We arrived here late in the day on our first circuit of the Loop, so our first visit was brief.  But I was instantly enchanted.  "We must come back," I said, and we have many times.  Although there are often several cars in the parking lot, we rarely see anyone else at the pond itself.  (We later learned that this is a juncture of many hiking and bicycle trails, including a major trail up Cadillac, so people park here before starting out – just as Kate and I were to do on one of our more ambitious biking adventures.)

After Bubble Pond, the last stop on the Loop is the road up Cadillac Mountain.   At 1,532 feet, Cadillac is the highest point on the North Atlantic seaboard, with a spectacular 360-degree view of Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island, the mainland to the west, and large expanses of open ocean to the south and east.  Since I fear heights, I had misgivings about driving up this road; however, even though there are a couple of points where the road seems to lead to a precipitous drop, it's not that scary.  One is better off being a passenger, though, for the views en route to the summit are breath-taking, in a way even more so than those from the summit itself.  Since the summit is a large, almost flat expanse of bare rock, one can walk around it and enjoy views covering all points of the compass.  A cement path (between a half mile and mile in circumference, I would estimate) encircles the area, but most visitors wander off the path because there are hardly any precipitous dropoffs (a real blessing for an acrophobiac like me and a comfort to people with small children).

With stops at all the key sites, driving the circumference of the Loop Road can take a full day.  Even though we filled up on popovers at Jordan Pond House, we're hungry again as we leave Cadillac's summit, so we head into town for supper.  Then we'll probably return to the summit to watch the sunset from the western slope.  And one morning we'll get up early enough to drive through morning mist, up Cadillac again, to watch the sun rise, for every ending has a new beginning.

(Jump to my essay – Cadillac Mountain Sunrise.)

                        

FOR MORE PICTURES. INCLUDING SOME CANDID SHOTS,
SEE THE MAINE PHOTO ALBUM #1.

May 2003

Rich Turner