Last post from Acadia

When reading about things to do in Acadia, one of the recommendations was watching sunrise on top of Cadillac mountain. While the view and sunrise were amazing, I couldn't believe the amount of people doing it. And it was the end of season. I don't know what's happening in summer!  It was a great experience, but I much prefer doing it without the crowd. One time driving in California we ended up in mountains somewhere and it just so happened to be sunset. That's my most amazing sunset ever! In the middle of nowhere all alone - just amazing!

Another activity that I planned to do was star gazing. So we headed to Sand Beach with Maurice. I think because of living in towns and having constant light pollution I had forgotten how dark the nights actually are. From the parking lot we had to take stairs down to the beach. And there we sat, listening to the waves and watching stars. It wasn't the best night for star gazing as there were some clouds. In all honesty, it was a bit scary too - us two in complete darkness. As if that wasn't enough, my son begged me to drive to Cadillac mountain to see some stars there too. And a good mum as I am I try to please him within a reason, so we headed there. But it was like a different time zone. There was light from Bar Harbor and the wind that we didn't feel at all at Sand Beach wanted to blow us off the mountain.
I took a few pictures and when looking them at the hotel I was puzzled about the colourful dots. The next day when we visited an Abbe museum, they had a whole exhibition of these kind of pictures! So I'll post one for you too. May be you can find a constellation cause I couldn't.

 Our second hike was planned to be a circular walk from Jordan Pond to Asticou but something went wrong and I adjusted the plans as we went along. 

So instead of Asticou, which is a small garden, we ended up walking towards south next to Jordan Stream, eventually ending up by Long Pond. Our route was through the forest and although there were some signs occasionally, at time to time the footpath disappeared under all the autumn leaves. 

Jordan Stream

Cobble stone bridge

Where is the footpath?

While we were hoping to see some moose (which we knew was quite unlikely), we kept joking about it. The only wild creature who kept seeing was a squirrel. One of them was completely crazy, running up and down the tree just in front of us. And it wasn't a park, but proper forest. But he wasn't scared at all. There must have been something wrong with him. 

We saw some others that acted normally and I even managed to get a relatively good picture of one.

Maurice probably loves climbing as much as the squirrels even if he doesn't have that much choice. But whenever he does, he is up in the tree. And it has been like that since he was little. Picking him up from the preschool - all his friends were running around, playing it, and he was observing them from the top of the tree. 

Find Maurice

Little Pond, which wasn't that little at all!

Our way back was an easy walk along the carriage road, even if it was uphill. There was no way of  loosing the track. 

End of the carriage road.

This is my last entry about our trip to Acadia. If you like nature and hiking, you should go and check it out yourself and be part of that amazing experience. I would love to go back to see the moose and whales (our trip was cancelled), but there are so many other places in the world you want to see and go to, but never enough time or money, so I don't think I will ever go back to Acadia again. But it will always have a special place in my heart.