June 23rd, Day 27: Our plan today is to first explore the Village of Bar Harbor, Maine and then spend another three hours or so driving around the coastline of Mount Desert Island that we did not cover yesterday when we drove through Acadia National Park. Admittedly while we have not travelled through much of Maine, it is hard to imagine anything more beautiful in Maine or in our whole country for that matter, than Mount Desert Island and its rocky shorelines, high mountains, and small fishing villages.
It is probably foolish on the other hand to refer to Bar Harbor as "a small fishing village." While the village has a full time population of only a little over 5,300 residents, its main focus is tourism and not fishing plus the population during the summer months probably quadruples. The downtown area is loaded with hotels, stores, tour boats including sailboats, and dozens of seafood restaurants. There are also many old homes within the village and along the coastline that if for sale would be in the multimillion dollar range. This was a fun place to visit especially in the morning before the crowds started to arrive.
Of course one of the prettiest things about the village of Bar Harbor is its location on Frenchman Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The harbor is loaded with boats most of which are small fishing boats although as can be seen in the background in the photograph to the left (of the handsome soldier with cannons) there are also large sailing boats used to take passengers out to view the many islands off the coast including Bar Island, Sheep Porcupine Island, and Burnt Porcupine Island.
Perhaps we will find out later if Cabo likes lobster although we already know that he loves ice cream. We suspect that ultimately regular dog food will be his least favorite dinner especially if we spoil him by feeding him a delicious Maine lobster.
One of the fun things about driving around the coast of Mount Desert Island is visiting the little towns and their small harbors filled with small fishing boats. We must have passed through four or five of these small villages including Seal Harbor, Northeast Harbor, Northwest Harbor, and Bass Harbor and the views from each of these towns was very similar to this photo to the left. Kathy and I both agreed that anyone of these villages would be a fun place to spend the summer months especially if the weather is as good as it has been these past few days.
Despite the fact that we were on a narrow and winding two lane road, we pulled our car over so that it was at least half off the road and we took about five photos of this lobster boat stopping and checking their cages in what we noted on the map to be Somes Sound. This was our favor of the photographs since when the photograph is enlarged, the buoys and the seagulls can both be seen. (The photo can be enlarged by clicking on the photo.)
We ended our tour of Mount Desert Island by visiting the lighthouse at the southern tip of the island. This lighthouse named Bass Harbor Head Light was built in 1858 and stands about 58 feet above the mean high water level. While this photograph does not really show its location with respect to the water, the lighthouse stands on a rocky cliff within fifteen feet of the waterline and the crashing waves at high tide. As far as we could determine the lighthouse still functions and is overseen by the United States Coast Guard.
For dinner tonight Kathy and I agreed that it was time that we both enjoyed a good Maine lobster and since lobster rolls seemed to be the local favorite, that was what we ordered. Kathy seemed particularly ready for tonights feast as she was dressed in her new lobster hat complete with her new Maine sweatshirt with a new embroidered lobster patch. Dinner was excellent.
After dinner Kathy joined with a group of local campground artists (mostly little kids) here in our KOA campground to make colorful tee-shirts which from what I could see consisted of dipping with an extreme amount of talent a white tee-shirt into various buckets of different colored paints. The end result of all this talent is reflected in this photo. Kathy will wear her new shirt with great pride in the future. A cute souvenir tee-shirt in any case.
It was a really good day for us and as an end result we went to bed early. Tomorrow we become Canadians for at least a month.
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