Acadia & White Mountains Trip Day 3

      6:00 am alarm. Today we started the day with a 20 minute run near the motel. Currently, we are training for another 1/2 Marathon in early September in Lake Placid. This week is actually a recovery week, so there are some short runs during the week on the training plan. I chose a simple out and back on route 302. Once we got going there were a number of cyclists that we had to share the road with. It made me miss the Tour de France coverage that I was currently dvr'ing at home, let alone, miss riding my own bike.
     After the run, we showered, packed our stuff and bid adieu to the Village Inn. Heading south on 302, the next order of business was to find the local EMS and get a new tent. Arriving in the larger city of Conway, NH, we found it. This was an EMS on steroids. Huge store with everything you can imagine, including some expensive road bikes. We found a nice tent, a Marmot Limelight 3P, bought a few other supplies, and were off again.
     Driving east across New Hampshire, it was easy to tell that in the fall, this place is a must see. As a budding photographer, I can't wait to come back. Many picturesque towns, rivers, and lakes, with deciduous trees everywhere. Finally making it to 95 north, and into Maine, the trip picked up, and within 4 hours or so we were crossing the bridge to Mt. Desert island.
     Mt. Desert island is a 108 square mile island in northern Maine. The island is host to a number of different types of environments. Mountains, beaches, coastline, lakes, they are all here. It has a number of towns, with Bar Harbor being the largest and busiest tourist town, and places like Southwest Harbor and Bass Harbor that are working fishing villages. Lobster fishing is one of the mainstays on the island. Looking along the coast, you can see colorful buoys floating in the turbid ocean. Each of these are attached to a lobster trap. In the eastern section of the island is Acadia National Park, and the reason that most people come to the island.
      We arrived at our motel in the northern part of the island, the Acadia Pines motel, in the late afternoon. After settling in, we drove south to Bar Harbor. Along the way we could see that most of the ocean surrounding the island was covered in a dense fog. It was eerie and beautiful. Bar Harbor was bustling with activity, despite the poor weather. I wanted to get some shots of the pier and shoreline, so we made our way down near the big hotel, the Bar Harbor Inn. The rocks were extremely wet and slippery. Heather decided to walk up a wet rock with her Tevas on and well, her feet slipped right out beneath her. She fell backwards on her butt to the horror of the people on the rock wall above her. "Are you OK!??!?!" a lady yelled out. She immediately got up and said she was fine. Heather is tough as nails.
      After snapping off some photographs, we decided to search out a meal and celebrate the rest of our vacation. We went to the Bar Harbor Brewing company, and tried some of the local beers in a nice sampler.
Recently we both have expanded our horizons with beer tasting, and found a couple of beers we really enjoyed here. It was an early night tonight, as I planned on getting up early the next day for some sunrise shots of Bar Harbor.