Acadia NP

Posted on 13 Jul 2021 by Steve Markham

The next stop on the Awesome Camping Trip was Acadia National Park. Which I must say, was the worst of the three campgrounds we visited on the trip, though still perfectly adequate.

Lots of rocks to climb on, this time by the ocean!

Lest my children accuse me of favoritism for always posting pictures of Lewis, please recall that I am only posting pictures from my own phone. It’s not my fault that my other kids can hike ahead without an adult:)

On Friday we moved from FNSP to Acadia National Park. It was a lovely drive. When the kids got tired of being plugged in, Kyle played hangman with Lewis and the girls played Polly Pockets in the back.

It started raining pretty heavily during the drive. We stopped at Target for a re-supply and got soaked just walking across the parking lot. The Youngs decided that one night in a hotel was worth it.

We got very wet setting up camp, but luckily we're tough.

The rain never stopped, exactly, but there were periods of more or less deluge. We set up a tarp, then set up the tent under the tarp so it stayed mostly dry inside, then moved the tarp to cover the table, then dried off the table and had dinner (canned tacos). There were a couple of car trips with A/C going full-blast to dry us off, and we eventually got to sleep, all 6 of us in one tent, sometime before midnight.

Saturday was a beautiful day. We laid out some things to dry in the sunshine, then went on a tour of the ocean in a lobster boat. It also stopped by a lighthouse with lots of seals and seagulls.

Janet didn't love the boat ride in general though.

Everyone got to hold a lobster, with a little prodding.

Once the Youngs arrived, we hiked to Eagle Crag.

The kids were NOT happy to hike more, though they were happy to be together again.

I thought it was a lovely hike, with a different horizon than I'm used to seeing.

I can't emphasize how nice it felt to see the big kids helping the little kids, both in a don't-fall-off-this-cliff sense, and a hey-look-up-at-this-gorgeous-view sense.

The kids had lots of fun pretend play in the woods back at camp. I took this picture standing right in the Youngs' site.

Kyle called Lewis the 'fire shaman'. The two-handed fire-fanning does give a sense of worship.

Carina and Dathan made a delicious sweet potato curry soup for dinner, and had naan to go with. Yum!

On Sunday we went to Echo Beach. Then at low tide we walked out to Bar Island and hiked around the island, and the old foundations of the houses there.

The Echo Beach at Acadia was warm and sunny, though the water was hardly warmer than Echo Lake in NH.

No pictures of Bar Island on my phone. It was a casual stroll with interesting conversation. Then quesadillas for dinner.

On Monday we hiked up the coast to Sandy Beach, and then back to camp.

Lewis was very adventurous on the rocks. He did let me catch up when he wanted a hand, though.

We stopped several times to go explore the rocks and tide pools.

The aptly named Sandy Beach was super fun. The kids chased the waves in and out repeatedly.

Short legs were getting tired, so we hopped on a shuttle at Sandy Beach to skip a couple miles of walking. We got off at Otter Point, and pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.

There must be a shallow rock out in the ocean. I found it fascinating, and watched waves crash over it for fifteen or twenty minutes.

You can see Sandy Beach in the background here.

I think we could have stayed here all day.

The hike back to camp from here was short and uneventful. We had walking tacos for dinner. The Target didn’t have an all-doritos 18-pack, so some people had theirs on Cheetos. The bags were too small, but cheetos themselves work just fine for walking tacos, for future reference.

Next Stop: Nickerson!

Tagged with: family outdoors

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