We spent most of our time in Acadia National Park but we did go into Bar Harbor a couple times. Bar Harbor was originally incorporated in 1763 and named Eden after Sir Richard Eden, an English statesman. It was renamed Bar Harbor in 1918 because of a sand bar that is visible at low tide. In the 1800’s tourists were attracted to Bar Harbor by the writings of Henry David Thoreau and paintings showing the Maine landscapes by famous painters. The area attracted families such as the Astors, Fords, Morgans, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. The Great Fire of 1947 destroyed nearly half of the eastern side of Mount Desert Island. Sixty-seven of the 222 palatial summer homes and five grand hotels were destroyed in addition to 170 year round homes. The town’s business district survived the fire. More than 10,000 acres of Acadia National Park was destroyed.
Parking in Bar Harbor is scarce so a free shuttle bus called the “Island Explorer” is available to residents and tourists. The shuttle stops at several campgrounds near Bar Harbor, including ours. There are also shuttle buses that travel throughout Acadia National Park to encourage people not to drive. The shuttle buses are all free and funded by local, state and federal tax dollars, including a sizable donation from L. L. Bean whose flagship store is located in Freeport, Maine.
We usually don’t do many activities geared to tourists because they tend to be expensive, but two activities caught our eye. The first was a horse drawn carriage ride along one of the carriage roads in the park. John D Rockefeller Jr was one of the main contributors of Acadia National Park, donating about a third of the park’s land. In his efforts to preserve the park he had over 45 miles of crushed stone roads built between 1913 and 1940. The roads are sixteen feet wide with crowns that provide drainage. The roads are considered the best example of broken stone roads in the United States. Local workers quarried granite from the island to build the roads and seventeen stone bridges. No motor vehicle traffic is allowed on the carriage roads throughout the park, allowing for a safe and peaceful roadway for hikers, bikers and horses.
We decided to take a one hour carriage ride on a carriage road and made a reservation with Wildwood Stables located in the park. The morning of our ride we arrived early enough to see some of the horses having a morning bath. I must say I have been opposed to horses being used in places like Central Park where they spend hours each day pulling people around in carriages in all kinds of weather. I was very glad to hear that there are 26 horses and only three tours conducted each day. The horses work no more than four hours a day, twice a week. They also only work five months of the year. We were assured they really have an easy life and are very well cared for. There were three families on the tour with us with children ranging in age from twelve years to thirteen months. They were all very well behaved. We really enjoyed our ride along the tree lined shaded road with occasional views of the ocean shimmering in the morning sun.
Our second activity was a two hour excursion on a sailboat. Bill had mentioned he would really like to go on a sailboat while in Bar Harbor, so we were excited to find the 151 foot Margaret Todd, the first four masted schooner to sail the New England waters in over half a century. We knew parking in the afternoon would be hard to find so we took the shuttle bus from the campground into Bar Harbor and then back home after our cruise. So convenient! Our voyage took us around Frenchman’s Bay with beautiful views of Acadia National Park. We saw lobster boats, many many lobster pots, a porpoise and several seals. They are so quick it is impossible to get a picture. We loved our time on the boat!

All these floats are connected to lobster traps

The view of Cadillac Mountain from Bar Harbor and our ship

Our last day in Bar Harbor we decided to drive around the “quiet” side of the island. This part of the island is less visited by tourists and is more like what the island was like before Bar Harbor became so touristy. We enjoyed riding through the small villages finding geocaches and taking a picture of the most photographed bridge in Maine.  We took our last hike of the visit on the Wonderland Trail.  It was an easy trail and we were rewarded with a beautiful ocean view at the end. On the way home we stopped at a restaurant where Bill had a lobster dinner. We left the camera in the car so I missed getting a picture of him with the lobster bib!

Bar Harbor Facts:

• Bar Harbor and two other Mount Desert towns have light ordinances to protect the quality of the night skies.
• Bar Harbor was the birthplace of vice president Nelson Rockefeller.
• The Bar Harbor area was used for naval practices during World War II when nearby Bald Porcupine Island was fired upon by live torpedoes from the submarine USS Piper.
• President William Howard Taft enjoyed playing golf in Bar Harbor.
• Current residents include Martha Stewart and Roxanne Quincy, the co-founder and CEO of Burt’s Bees.

On August 18th we left the easternmost area of the United States and headed south to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. I have mentioned before how bad the roads are in Maine, and this trip was no better. The roads do not seem that bad in a car, but in a large vehicle it is a bumpy and rocky trip. By the time we reached the campground the cap on our exhaust pipe had once again worked loose.
Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park are both located on Mount Desert Island. There are no fast food restaurants, box stores or large grocery stores on the island, so just before crossing the Trenton Bridge we stopped at a Walmart Supercenter and stocked up. Before leaving New Hampshire three weeks ago we planned ahead and bought a month’s worth of any drinks that come in bottles and cans because Maine has deposits on all of them. We also liked New Hampshire’s no state sales tax and stocked up on paper products, canned goods etc, keeping in mind we only have so much room in the pantry and freezer.
We then crossed Trenton Bridge onto Mount Desert Island. The views were amazing. Mount Desert Island is the third largest island on the eastern seaboard and the largest rock based island on the Atlantic coast. It is 108 square miles; sixteen miles wide and thirteen miles long. It also has “Some Sound”, the only national fjord on the east coast.
Our major reason for coming to this area was to visit Acadia National Park. We had so much to see and do, we hit the ground running the next day. We stopped by the Visitors Center first and bought an audio tape tour of the park to listen to as we drove around the Park Loop Road. Unlike most parks, they did not have a free list of hiking trails so we bought a book on hiking trails in the park that listed details such as length and difficulty.
Acadia National Park is the second most visited national park in the country with over two million visitors a year (Smoky Mountain is the most visited) and one of the smallest. It covers over 2/5 of Mount Desert Island and is 35,000 acres in area with 41 miles of spectacular coastline. Established in 1916 by President Woodrow Wilson, it is the oldest American national park east of the Mississippi River, the only national park in the northeast, and the first park where land was donated to the federal government (most notable being 11,000 acres by John D Rockefeller, Jr). The park has a diverse landscape with glacial mountain ridges, rivers, lakes and streams carved from receding glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age, woodland forests and miles of dramatic rocky coastline.
French explorer Samuel Champlain documented the first European record of this area in 1604. Attempts were made to settle the island after his visit but 150 years of war between the French and British made the area unsafe for habitation until 1761 when English colonists established a permanent settlement. Colonists farmed, fished, quarried granite and engaged in shipping. When tourists began to arrive in the mid 1800’s, tourism became a new and important source of income. The small farming and fishing villages were transformed with hotels and large extravagant summer cottages for wealthy summer residents.
This first day our plan was to drive the 27 mile Park Loop Road and listen to the audio tour.

Two Beaver Lodges are across the lake they made

This took pretty much all day because of all the overlooks where we passed some beaver lodges and admired the magnificent beauty of the park.

Bar Harbor is located on the left

Our last stop of the day was on Cadillac Mountain which at 1,530 feet is the highest point on the eastern seaboard north of Rio de Janeiro. Bill and I spent two days in Acadia back in 2011. It was rainy and foggy and we couldn’t see a thing from Cadillac Mountain. What a difference today was! We had a 360° view of Bar Harbor, Frenchman Bay and Cranberry Isles (see our video below). One bit of drama was I left my cell phone in the restroom. Thirty minutes later as we were getting ready to leave I remembered. Fortunately some kind person has turned it in to the gift shop personnel.
We knew we wanted to do some hiking and with 120 miles of hiking trails in the park we had several to choose from. Our first choice was the Ocean Path Trail which we started at Sand Beach, a popular spot in the park. In order to get a parking spot this time of year you have to arrive no later than 10:00 A.M. The trail was an easy hike along the cliff with views of Sand Beach and the coastline.
Sunday was our one foggy day and we drove past a harbor and hiked up 200 primitive rock steps and along a trail to find two geocaches. What we thought was going to be an easy walk turned into a longer hike along a rocky trail with big tree roots in the path. But we found two geocaches!
On Wednesday we hiked the popular Jordan Pond Trail which took us around the beautiful peaceful pond where we saw kayakers.
In the next blog we will talk about Bar Harbor and a couple special activities!
Maine Facts:

• Maine has 3,500 miles of coastline.  That is all the way across the United States and halfway back.
• There are over 3,000 islands along Maine’s coast.
• Maine’s coastline has so many deep harbors, it could provide anchorage for all the navy fleets in the world.
• Smoking is prohibited in a motor vehicle by the driver or passenger when a person under the age of 16 is present.

Our Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEi7pWtz3nk

On Labor Day we sadly left our campsite in Hurricane, Utah and drove to Jacob Lake, Arizona.  Jacob Lake is a tiny unincorporated community named after Mormon explorer Jacob Hamblin.  The town is known as the “Gateway to the Grand Canyon” because the town is at the starting point of Route 67, the only paved road leading to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park.  Jacob Lake strangely does not have a lake but it does have an inn and a gas station.  The closest post office is over 30 miles away.  The only campground anywhere near the North Rim with full hookups is in Jacob Lake which is our reason for camping here.
We had planned on dry camping a few days in the North Rim of the Grand Canyon but their campground was full so we decided to stay at Jacob Lake.  We were a little nervous about the campground because it had mixed reviews.  But no worries as got settled in the midst of tall pine trees in the Kaibab National Forest and were still able to get satellite TV and good Verizon coverage.  Best of all, since our elevation here is over 7,000 feet, the temperature was at least ten degrees cooler than Utah.  One night it got down to 39 degrees but it warmed up quickly in the morning with the sun.
Our main reason for stopping in this remote area of Arizona was to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  We visited the South Rim back in May.  The two Rims are very different.  The South Rim gets many more tourists and is much more commercialized with lodges and several campgrounds, a large general store, and several restaurants and gift shops.  The North Rim gets 15% of the number of tourists as the South Rim. As the crow flies only ten miles separate the two Rims, however the trip by road is over 200 miles.  The South Rim is mainly desert while the North Rim is heavily forested with pine, spruce and fir.  The North Rim is 1,200 feet higher in elevation and has a longer winter season with an average of twelve feet of snow per year compared with five feet on the South Rim. There is one lodge called the Grand Canyon Lodge, a very small Visitors Center, one gas station and limited food service.
We drove from our campground to the North Rim and immediately upon entering the park we saw a herd of bison.
We drove the scenic road stopping at various viewpoints along the way, including Point Imperial, the highest point in the park at 8,803 feet.  

This formation is known as Battleship

We especially liked Angels Window at Cape Royal where we walked the short trail that took us over the top of Angels Window to a spectacular viewpoint.  We were able to see the Colorado River from this viewpoint. There were several really nice short trails that took us to beautiful views of the canyon.
On the drive home we saw so many deer we soon lost count.  Sometimes they were standing right on the side of the road, poised as if waiting to jump in front of us.  It made for a somewhat nerve wracking trip home.
One day we did some geocaching in the Jacob Lake area.  One geocache was really unusual.  It was high in a tree with a string hanging down.  When you pulled the string a tape measure unrolled with the container holding the log sheet for us to sign.  Some people placing geocaches are really creative, making for really fun finds! I told Bill his sunhat hat looked really dorky so he showed me a couple other ways he could wear it.  What do you think?

Sailor Bill

Cisco Kid!

Bill noticed a squirrel with a long white tail running around the campground.  We saw another one at the North Rim.  This kind of squirrel is only found in this part of Arizona!
We really enjoyed our time in the Jacob Lake and North Rim area.  Our last day at Jacob Lake we had a thunderstorm that included enough hail to coat the car and roads like looked more like snow.  The temperature dropped over twenty degrees in less than an hour.  Regardless, the weather was delightful at Jacob Lake and a big relief after the Utah heat.   Unfortunately we are headed back into hot weather since our next location is at a much lower elevation in Arizona.