who cares about pluto…

Wow. Acadia is beautiful. Complete photos here…

I arrived late on Friday evening, after the visitor center had closed. I manged to find my way to the summit of Mt Cadillac on my way to the campsite. At 400 or so metres it’s the highest on Mt Desert Island and had great views of smog from Boston and New York, with some nice scenery of the surrounding countryside behind.

I moved on to the “first in first served” campsite, and found a nice piece of dirt to call home for the next few days. The next day was time to conquer some of Acadias massive peaks in the west, but not before a little coastal walk around Ship Cove near my campsite. The coastline in that area is beautiful! I noticed that I was taking photos with less sky in them, the foregrounds are beautiful too!

Packing bottles of water and a few sandwiches, and of course my faithful camera, I set off on a trek along the edge of Long Pond (pond = lake), and up and over the top of two of the peaks. Every man and woman and both of their dogs were there in the lower parts, not that it was crowded, every one just seems to use the national parks as big dog walking areas. This is one of the views, complete with the contrails that appear everywhere in the USA.

After my four hour walk I was thoroughly wasted and smelly. Thankfully there are places to swim (some ponds are water supply so aren’t swimmable) such as Echo Lake, where I had a dip in my undies and a nap in the sun before it disappeared behind the cliffs. I took a roundabout way home, and happened past Thurston’s Lobster Pound, where they show you the crayfish and then whisk it away to be cooked. Mmmm yummy and cheaper than in Kaikoura by miles.

The next day was another hill, this time on the east side of the island, and driving around the roads there. I didn’t have a bike with me. If I had there are heaps of carriage roads just for bikes and walking, very friendly for those not able to walk up the trails. I was surprised at the trails in places, with very steep climbs and a bit of scrabbling needed, just what I like. Some of the steeper bits were fashioned into lovely granite staircases, a lot of effort to build but very easy to walk up and down…

The last thing I did before leaving was to drive around some of the park roads, stopping at various ponds, streams, and other wonderful looking vistas, such as this pond…

After walking and driving around a lot of roads I was feeling Acadia’d out and thought I could squeeze some more out of my quickly disappearing weekend, I headed off the island and east, in a mad dash for New Hampshire before it was too late…