Acadia

Acadia is beautiful. It's a bit like northern Arizona (I'm thinking of the O RO Ranch, primarily) with a bit more green and mashed with the ocean. Tracy describes it as Arizona crossed with Alaska. The whole "Mount Desert Island" name is terribly misleading — it's about as far from a desert island as I can imagine.


I'm a terrible landscape photographer. I'm pretty convinced it's not the failing of my equipment (one can take good photos with a lousy camera and lousy photos with a good camera). It must be a failing of my eyes — I don't seem to be able to figure out how to compose, in such a small frame, the grandeur of a landscape. That's why most of my photos are of small-ish things: it's much easier for me to envision the final image when there is a clear, compact subject.

To "get around" this, we took mostly panoramas at Acadia. The hope is that in having a panorama, something of the overall grandeur will be preserved. The panoramas (like the image above) don't have a border and have a little bluish arrow in the upper right-hand corner. They are interactive — click and drag to pan around. If you click the arrow, it will full-screen the panorama.

Day One

We camped for the two nights we stayed on Mount Desert Island. Our campsite was small, but reasonably clean. We had neighbors on three sides, but they were very quiet. Actually, all of the occupied sites around us were very quiet.


A short walk from our campsite was the shore — we took this picture on the first day, which was the only day with a completely clear sky.

Day Two

The following morning was cloudy, which was a surprise and a disappointment. The forecast had changed since we had last looked at it: we expected several days of sun in Acadia before it started raining again, but discovered that we weren't going to get much sun and that it would rain the following day.


We took Park Loop Road and drove to Sand Beach — so named because it is actually a sand beach rather than a pebble or rock or cliff "beach."


It still doesn't look much like any other sand beach I've ever seen: there were piles of rock that were absolutely covered in seaweed piled on one side of the beach.


From Sand Beach, we took Ocean Path, which follows the Park Loop Road and the shore. We took frequent detours to walk out on the rocks and see the shore. The shot above is looking back towards Sand Beach. Notice the cave at the left of the frame and the gulls perched on the rock.


We also came across this cascade of fresh water from the recent rains running down to the ocean. It's in panorama here.


While we were playing on the rocks, a tour boat came into the cove near Sand Beach. Tracy got several good pictures of it; this was my favorite because it shows the far point of the cove.


We accidentally found Monument Rock, took this picture, and discovered later that it's a big enough deal that it has a name.


Ocean Path intersects Gorham Mountain Trail after Thunder Hole (which we visited but didn't photograph because it needs to be experienced and not really seen). Gorham Mountain is 525' tall and right next to the shore, so it affords spectacular views of the shoreline, including views back to Sand Beach.


From the summit, we followed the trail down the other side of the mountain back to Sand Beach. We got back on the Park Loop Road and then drove up to the summit of Cadillac Mountain.


At 1530', Cadillac Mountain is the highest point on Mount Desert Island. As you can see from the panorama, it was actually too high to really see anything well with the weather we had: everything below us seemed obscured by haze. I'm sure that in different weather, the view would be spectacular.


After Cadillac Mountain, we drove over to Wonderland. We're not really sure why it was named thus; after the shore line near Sand Beach, it seemed rather anticlimactic.


A bit further on from Wonderland is a still-operational lighthouse that the Coast Guard allows tourists to approach and view.


You can get quite close to the light itself; I also took a partial panorama, here.

Day Three

The second morning was also cloudy, and since rain was forecast, we struck camp and prepared to leave a day earlier than originally planned.


We drove over to Jordan Pond and checked out the gift shop. There is an old gatehouse that appears to be empty.


From there, we hiked around the pond on the Nature Trail.


At nearly the far end of the pond is the trailhead for Bubble Mountain. We decided, on the spur of the moment, to climb it. It has an elevation gain of 750'. You can see how steep it was — we had to climb up that rock wall with the blue paint on it.


We didn't stay long on top of Bubble Mountain because we saw the rain coming (both on the satellite picture — there was signal up there — and looking around). The idea of climbing back down those rocks when they were slick was not appealing to me. It wasn't too bad, even though it did start to rain, since we went down the back side and thus avoided the sheer walls of rock.


Heading down the back side of Bubble Mountain takes you through Bubble Divide, where the pines give way to a large stand of birch.


From there, you rejoin the Nature Trail and cross a cool wooden bridge. After we got back to the car, we left Acadia and started for home.