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.
We awoke in the Villager Motel around 5am. The weather was set to be completely clear on this day, and it was. Not a cloud in the sky. I wanted to get out and do some sunrise/golden light photography in the Crawford Notch area.
After a quick breakfast of instant oatmeal and instant coffee we made our way north on route 302. My goal was to hit the visitor center, and hit a couple of hikes there. We stopped at a few spots along the way, but due to this being a valley, there was not much early morning light yet. Not a big deal.
Arriving at the visitor center, which is actually called the Highland Center, it was rather active with hikers. They have a lodge here, called the Highland Lodge, which looked very nice. Perhaps it would be worth staying here at some point.
We looked at the map at the Highland Center, and decided to do a couple of shorter out and back type hikes. We wanted to get a taste of hiking in the White Mountains, but nothing too intense. One of them was Mt. Willard, a relatively short summit hike. It was supposed to have amazing views at the top, so we decided to try this first. The trail-head was a little ways down from the Highland Center at a train depot. The interesting thing about Crawford Notch, is that there is a train that runs the length of it. At the notch itself ( which is a rock formation with a "notch" blasted through for the road), there is a tunnel that the train enters and exits rising up the side of the valley. Further down you can actually take this train to the top of Mt. Washington, but I digress.
Summit of Mt. Willard
The hike was a relatively moderate rise of 900 feet in about 1.6 miles. The trails here are really well maintained, with some nice wide spots that 2 or 3 people could walk side by side. It was still relatively early in the morning, around 8 or so, so the temps were nice and cool. Since both of us have been working quite hard at running lately, and I have been ramping up the cycling training, our legs and lungs can handle a nice steady output. Personally, I am also down about 20 lbs from last summer, so that makes a huge difference. We got to the top and we were alone. Before us was a beautiful panorama of Crawford Notch and the valley spread out below. The presidential range was to the left, with Mt. Jackson in full view. It was quiet and serene. After about a 1/2 hour of relaxing we started to descend. As soon as we left, other hikers started arriving en-masse. We timed this one right.
We next decided to do a waterfall hike. There are a number of beautiful waterfalls in the area, but we (foolishly) chose the most popular one, Arethusa Falls. This was a steady and relatively short hike, at 1 and a 1/2 miles out. We hit the trailhead and followed a large group of adults with a brood of children in tow. Now, I really enjoy seeing children out hiking. Kudos to the parents for actually getting them out there. I recently read a frightening article that children are reaching their peak of physical activity by age 10, replaced by sitting on their ever widening rear-ends on a couch, glued to a video game. I can appreciate the effort put in. But, I also have a low tolerance for screaming children. I am sure when they are your own, you don't mind, maybe you do, I don't know. But really, just talk lower, everyone can still hear you.
We passed a number of groups, and somehow got in the middle of others. This wasn't quite as bad as our hikes in Yosemite Valley, but it was getting close. We made it down the steep embankment to the falls, and they were beautiful. However, there were people everywhere enjoying them. The camera gear I lugged was going to be wasted effort. I setup my tripod anyways, and got down to the business of framing some shots of the falls. There were some people that were standing right in front of me, in the waterfall. They kept looking at me, knowing what I was trying to accomplish, and still stood there, oblivious. As soon as a group of children came up and surrounded us, pretty much sitting on my tripod, it was time to go. It was not a big deal, as it was brightly sunlit, and long exposure waterfall shots just don't work in sunlight.
We enjoyed our hike out, and ended up going back to the Crawford Notch campground to pack our gear. Before we left for the day, I talked to the old fella at the counter at the Villager Inn, and told him we wanted to stay another night. "No problem... I fix room up for you!". Ok then. We packed our gear at the campground, still keeping an eye out for bears, and checked out. I decided that the tent was going to be a no-go situation. I was going to have to invest in a new tent before we got to Maine. The rest of the evening we relaxed, and found a picnic table to cook a few burgers on our portable cooker.
Last week, Heather and I decided that the time was right to take another vacation. I had been saving my time diligently until the summer, so I have a number of weeks to play with. We looked at the calendar and chose this week, as there was nothing scheduled for the weekends or during the week. Our adventure of choice was the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and later, go further east and spend time in Acadia National Park. We visited Acadia in the summer of 2009 and loved it, but we have never been to the White Mountains.
We did some pre-trip planning, and decided to camp for two nights in the Whites, and two nights in Acadia. The rest of the days were going to be spent in motels. However, little did we know, more days than originally planned would be spent in motels. Our campground in the Whites was at the Crawford Notch Campground. I checked trip-advisor and the reviews seemed really good, so we booked two nights there for Sunday and Monday.
The summer of 2013, we went out west for a three week vacation. I made notes for that trip, but I am rather angry with myself that I never added it to this blog. It's wonderful to look back on some of these entries and relive the adventures( and sometimes misadventures). Hind-sight being what it is, moving on to the present. The reason I mention last year, is that every year we learn more and more about long term road traveling. One of the best investments we made last summer, was a very expensive Pelican cooler. The investment has paid for itself ten-fold, as we have used it for long term food storage. The cooler is supposed to keep food cold for days on end, and it really does work well. You can spend a large chunk of money on food when you travel, with the cooler, we have saved a ton.
I also mention last year, because we never camped once last season. The tent was never removed from the bag. For this trip I did a cursory check of the tent to make sure that everything was still there, but never really fully opened it to check on it's condition. This ultimately was a mistake, as you will find out later.
The car was loaded on Saturday, and we ended up using the Thule cargo carrier from the 2010 west trip. We packed all of the camping supplies in the Thule, and everything else in the vehicle. We left Sunday morning fairly early and had a rather uneventful 7 hour drive to the Crawford Notch campground. Checking the weather often, we were between storms, so never really encountered any rain to speak of. As we drove east through Troy New York, we quickly crossed over into Vermont. Vermont seems gorgeous, with rolling hills and deciduous forests aplenty. It has to be beautiful in the fall. We drove across the Green Mountains, and soon crossed a river into New Hampshire. Interstate 91 north took us to Route 302 East which leads to the White Mountains. We didn't stop along the way for photo ops, as we were quite focused to get to our campsite before the looming rain was upon us. We followed the Saco River through the valley into the White Mountain national forest. The mountains loomed on either side of us, it was quite a sight.
We arrived at the campground and went inside to check in. The lady in the campstore/registration building was pleasant and upbeat. She engaged us in chit-chat and handed us a small green slip of paper. "Make sure you read this, you don't want any critters getting into your food". Critters? "Keep your camera ready!" she said. Not one mention of the word 'bears'. Just a laugh and a smile and a no big deal attitude about it. She talked about the fact that our site was beautiful and it was right within walking distance of the Saco river and the trails. Cool! Not really.
After finding our site, it started raining, and fairly hard at that. We put up our pop-up tarp first , so we could at least have some shelter from the deluge. Then we setup the tent. I immediately noticed a strange musty type smell coming from the rain-fly. There was some sort of weird melted residue on the outside of it. Not good at all. We made a quick dinner of spaghetti and meatballs ( ok we just had a dehydrated backpacker meal ) and had some snacks. We then drove back to the camp store to get an LED lantern and some fire-wood, and I noticed an article cut from a local paper under the plastic of the counter. It was about the local bear problems. I asked the kid at the counter if this campground has an issue with bears. He shrugged his shoulders, and hung his head as if he was just caught in the cookie jar. "Yeah, we do. There was a late berry season, so the bears are coming across the river and foraging for campers food." Seriously? Great. I shared this information with Heather and we both weren't too pleased.
Arriving back at our campsite, I quickly got a fire going and we started to relax. Heather asked me what time it was, I replied that it was 7:48. Just then, out of the corner of my eye I saw some movement. I turned to look, and literally 15 feet behind us, walked a female black bear with two tiny cubs in tow. She was walking along our campsite line. Not making a sound. I said "Holy Sh*T .. bears!" Heather got up and went for the vehicle front seat. I just stood there in shock and watched her and the cubs move along the drainage next to our site. Easily the closest I have ever been to a bear in the wild. She was fat, but not very large, maybe the size of a very large dog, and looked well fed. The cubs were adorable. But this was a really bad precedent. First off there was no fear of humans. She is also teaching her cubs that this is the way to get food, rather than naturally foraging.
After getting over the shock of what just happened, we tried to settle down. I noticed a little boy playing along the road at one of the river sites, and his parents enjoying the fire up at the site. I walked over and told them of our encounter, they were shocked, thanked me, and told their boy that play time was over. Around 8:15 or so, we got our headlamps out. Heather started shining hers around the site just for giggles, and said "There's the bear coming right at us!!" I looked, and sure enough there was a bear. Except this was not the female. This was a MUCH larger male. He was walking along the drainage to the right of our site. right towards us. I quickly set off my panic button on the vehicle, and the horn started blaring. He changed course and went up the road, right towards another campers site. I watched him go towards their car, get up onto the back of their truck and grab a loaf of bread. You would think with the yelling and the car alarm I was setting off, these people would have been aware, they weren't. Finally I heard some yelling and clapping and the bear went off into the woods with his easy meal. So now we have campers who are not bear-aware. Excellent. The bear then started lumbering back towards our site again. Another panic button hit and yelling, but this time I did have camera in-hand and took some video. At one point I yelled and he just stopped. Looked at me, as if calculating if it was worth it, and quickly started running away.
We had a quick discussion and realized this place was just not safe at all. The tent was in really rough shape, and the bears were accustomed to getting their meals from ignorant campers. Our first time camping in a while was turning out to be a dud. So we just took our chances, leaving our gear to be picked up later and left. We drove down route 302 south towards the town of Conway. Pulling into the first place we saw that looked decent, called the Villager Motel, in Bartlett. The place looked pretty empty, so there were rooms available. I told the Indian lady at the front counter of our adventure at the Crawford Notch campground and she just kind of shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps this happens often? So day 1 of the trip was complete, and already we had a good vacation story to tell....
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.
