After Tanja and the kids got back from Miami in August, we drove north to escape the heat for a week in Bar Harbor, Maine. We loved our time in Maine when we were there four years ago, but the kids were too young to remember much of the trip then, so it was a good time to go back for a return trip. We spent most of time that week in Acadia National Park.
Our kids love climbing on rocks and Acadia was great for that. Here we are wandering around on rocks along the coast near Otter Point in Acadia.
I think the scenery in Acadia along the coast is very pretty.
Lydia and I both liked the different layers of rocks and the different colors created by them in this section of the park.
Derek wore his pirate shirt and pirate bandana every day that week as it was new and had become his favorite shirt. Many fellow hikers we found on the trails made pirate comments to him, which he usually responded to with a hearty "Arr...Matey!" or "You scurvy scallywag!" Derek has an 'X' on the trail here made with sticks to mark where the treasure is hidden. On other hikes during the week, Derek talked on and on to us about his secret pirate hideout and random adults we came across would sometimes ask him if they could go to his secret hideout where the treasure is. Derek said he doesn't let bad guys know where it is. One lady insisted she was a 'good guy' and Derek said then he would let her know where the treasure is.
Before the kids were born, Tanja and I went on a whale watching cruise in Boston and we loved that experience. The kids were too young to appreciate or cooperate on a whale watching cruise the last time we came to Maine, but we decided to give it a try this trip at Lydia's insistence. We headed out into the ocean for an hour (reasonably close to shore apparently) on our cruise and saw a couple pilot and minke whales in the distance and the main highlight, a juvenile humpback whale that we kept following around for the duration of the cruise. The humpback would surface every 15 minutes or so and our boat kept following it, waiting for it to resurface, and then rush towards it. Because we found whales only 20 miles out, we didn't go the standard 40 miles offshore that the whale watching cruises often go. That avoided any seasickness for us, so it was probably good.
When it got a little chilly out on the deck, we kept good seats inside. Here are Tanja and Derek in our upper deck indoor seating.
Here are some of the pictures we took of the humpback. One time Derek and I were right next to it when it blew out its blowhole; its breath was really stinky!
One of the biggest mistakes of the week was that due to the early 4AM start of our long drive from our house to Maine, we pulled the kids out of bed to sleep for a few hours in the car. We completely forgot about Lydia's glasses since she came down from her room without them and got in the car. After several hours of driving when we were in Connecticut, she asked for her glasses and it dawned on us that we left them at home. Fortunately, Lydia's prescription isn't too much different than Tanja's though they obviously have different pupil distances and other things. So Lydia wound up wearing Tanja's glasses for the week. I think the frames look good on her.
At the end of the whale watching cruise, we listened to a marine biologist talk about the whales we had seen and she had some whale baleen for people to touch and hold. We had front row seats for her presentation, but then were dismayed as she worked her way around the cabin in the opposite direction and some other people were asking her lots of questions - it wasn't a good environment for impatient children. When she made it to our table (the last one in the cabin) we finally got to hold the baleen too and it was really cool to feel it. It was a lot more brittle and firm than I would have thought, though admittedly it had dried out a lot compared to how it would normally be when inside the whale's mouth.
The next day, we hiked the Great Head Trail. The kids liked climbing on the rocks as we climbed the mountain sitting above the coast.
The mountain overlooks the only true beach in Acadia, Sand Beach, seen above Derek's left shoulder in this picture. We promised the kids that we would play on the beach after we finished the climb up and down the mountain. Notice Derek the Pirate wearing his uniform.
I think the scenery in Acadia is breathtaking.
As promised, we spent some time on the beach. The kids made a large pool with an island and sealed it off from the tide. I'm disappointed we didn't take any pictures of the finished product as it was impressive, but here they are during construction.
Lydia wanted to be buried in the sand.
And afterward, she was covered in sand and had to go jump in the cold ocean (supposedly rarely above 55 degrees Fahrenheit in summer).
The next day, we hiked up to Bubble Rock, a huge boulder that the last glacier in Acadia left deposited seemingly precariously on the edge of a cliff. Four years ago, we tried unsuccessfully to push it off the cliff and crush everything below us (a common silly picture to take when visiting Acadia). Here's that picture from 2017:
Obviously we had no effect then. Even with kids older and stronger, we didn't get it to budge this year either.
More pictures of us being silly with Bubble Rock.
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