Acadia National Park-Day Two

Since I came home from work a little early today, I thought it would be nice to get a blog post in before I have to start back to working on the revisions for my first manuscript.

So, today brings us to our second day in Acadia National Park. The day started with us getting up again at 6:30. Breakfast that morning was what we call pancake surprise. What is pancake surprise? Well, you cook up some breakfast sausage links, and then pour pancake batter around them, so the sausages are surrounded by pancake to make a hand held breakfast treat. It is one of hubby's favorite camping breakfasts.

After breakfast (and a short rest), we checked the tide charts and saw it would be low tide soon. I really wanted to check out some tide pools. I had been tide pooling before as part of a class I took at Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington state, and it was pretty awesome. Sea life was a plenty in the tide pools, and I had high hopes for finding some pretty awesome stuff.

We found out the day before at the visitor center that one place to see the tide pools was on the western side of Mount Desert Island. We headed first to the Ship Harbor nature trail, a 1.3 mile loop.

The trail went a long a rocky inlet from the ocean, which had several rocky areas for the forming of tide pools. We searched and searched for something wonderful and interesting. Nothing by seaweed and snails. No fish, no starfish, nothing. I was disappointed, and hubby sure seemed disappointed, especially since I talked up the awesomeness of tide pools. Oh well. Here are some pictures of the area we searched. It was still pretty.

After we finished the hike, we went to the only lighthouse accessible on the island, Bass Harbor Lighthouse. A member of the Coast Guard actively lives there with their family, even though the lighthouse is automated.

After we saw the lighthouse, it was lunch time. We headed to the Pretty Marsh picnic area. Oddly, we could only find one picnic table, at the handicapped parking area. For lunch, we had salami, port salut cheese, and crackers again, with some banana chips to finish it off. We took a short nap in the car before we headed out to canoe.

We got to National Park Canoe & Kayak Rental around 1:45 pm, which I guess is considered late since we got the last canoe available. This establishment is located at the northern tip of Long Pond. We only planned to canoe for a few hours, especially since we already had a busy day. We canoed to a place where we could look for loons. We saw a group of them at a distance, all of them diving and looking for food. After seeing some other people swimming, hubby insisted that he have a chance to swim in the lake. We found a place to pull up on the shore. Hubby got into the lake, and quickly got out of the lake. Let's just say it was a little cold. While pulled up on the shore, we saw some fish fry in the lake near the shore, which is always fun to find if you are a fish lover. Here are some photos from our canoe expedition.

Cold, huh hubby.

After we made it back, we went back to the camp to cook dinner. That night we made hobo stew. You take ground meat and put it in a pie tin. Layered with the meat are carrots, onions, potatoes, and mushrooms. We sprinkled on our favorite cajun seasoning, Tony Chachere's, covered the pie tin with aluminum foil, and let it cook over the coals. We followed that with s'mores for dessert.

Next time, whale watching and a hike around Jordan Pond.