Woo hoo! We’re here!
7/7/10: Let’s start with the fact that Mount Desert Island is fairly large as far as islands go – at least compared to my experiences in the Keys and Bermuda anyway. The upper crust resort town of Bar Harbor is on the eastern side of the island with the huge-ish Cadillac Mountain and the College of the Atlantic. The rest of the island is dotted with quaint fishing villages and lots of water. Acadia National Park covers a lot of the island, here and there.
Our clan got there fairly early, stopping by the information center at Thompson’s Island to help us decide our day. The people were very helpful and recommended a restaurant for lobster, a location for tide pools and the Dive In Theater for a boat trip.
We found our campsite in the Seawall campgrounds then made our way to Thurston’s in Bass Harbor for a lobster lunch. Brad and I both got lobsters and I ordered clams & mussels to round out the meal. The girls were unimpressed, and Brad got tired of his lobster pretty quickly. I think we’ve been spoiled by bite-sized crawfish for all these years. I thought the lobster was sweet and tasty but it filled me up REALLY fast. I also had had dreams of super-cheap lobster meals but this lunch cost us over $70 so I was a wee bit disappointed.
From lunch we headed to the tide pools to be found down a nice hiking trail to the water. The girls, particularly Grace, loved looking for all the cool critters. She found sea urchins, some sort of eggs, crabs, periwinkles, barnacles, hermit crabs, and some kids nearby found an eel. The scrambled all over boulders and had a pretty cool time.
The College of the Atlantic was the next stop. Diver Ed and his Dive In Theater leave the dock at the college and there’s a great museum there so we had to check it out. They had a really great guy working the touch tank. He was perfect with the kids, letting them handle just about everything and telling them all sorts of information (this came in handy later!). The exhibits were pretty neat and they had a cute gift shop. Outside the museum there is a huge finback whale skull which really puts the size of a whale into perspective. There’s also a geocache – the only one I’ve done the whole trip.
While we were waiting at the Diver Ed sign outside, a blonde woman walked up and asked me if I went to Buckingham Friends School (I was wearing a sweatshirt). I said yes and we started talking, eventually figuring out that she, Jen Jones and her husband, David Hollenbaugh, had graduated from New Hope-Solebury the year before I did. Being such a tiny school we knew of each other and we started remembering people from our pasts. Oddly enough, Jen, David and their four kids had walked down to the tide pools at the same time we did, and planned to eat at Thurston’s for dinner but had considered it for lunch. Weird! I really wanted to get a picture of the four of us to post on facebook but totally forgot.
On to the Dive In Theater. WOW. If you have kids under 10 this is a must-do for Mount Desert Island. It was a blast for the older kids and adults, too, but I think this boat trip is totally ideal for those kids who would be bored on a long, possibly uneventful, whale-watching trip.
We boarded the Starfish Enterprise (great name – good sign to start with) at the College of the Atlantic. We all had to make name tags and we were introduced to Diver Ed’s Newfoundland dogs, one of whom demonstrated how to wear a life vest. Then as we motored out past the Porcupine islands Ed donned a dry suit and showed the kids how it all worked with the underwater microphone too. The kids pushed him overboard and Captain Evil (his wife?) showed us the camera equipment while Ed collected specimens to bring back onboard. Evil dropped the camera overboard to Ed and he and “Mini Ed” wandered the ocean floor having encounters with lobsters, shrimp, crabs and sea stars, all of which were shown on a big movie screen on the boat. Ed reboarded after a little while and taught the kids all about the creatures he had found while also involving the kids in kissing sea cucumbers and crabs and letting sea stars grab their hair. Grace even got to wear a sea star as an earring, while Caroline got “peed” on by the sea cuke.
All the while we were enjoying the gorgeous scenery. The islands are lush and green and the water is dotted with sailboats and fishing craft. One enormous, 4-masted sail boat came out of the rolling fog right in front of us. Way cool.
There was never a boring moment on this trip. Not one. It was the highlight of this trip to Acadia.
After leaving the Starfish Enterprise we said goodbye to Jen and David and headed at their suggestion to Rosalie’s for pizza. It was yummy and going there allowed us to see a bit of Bar Harbor and realize we’d like to visit it again.
It was off to the campground at this point. Full and exhausted from a long day of fun activities we all passed right out and slept great in our little old tent.