Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park

On top of Cadillac Mountain

Arrived in Bar Harbor for a week of healthy living - thought it would be a bit of a back water but it’s more like the American version of the Lake District where everybody comes to do their outdoor thing – everything from swimming and sea kayaking to hiking and climbing. Glad it has passed the busy season though and all of the kids have gone back to school, it must be really busy in the peak season. Everybody is gearing up for the Fall colours and the visitors now mainly consists of more mature people (?! ) relaxing and taking in the views . The weather has been brilliant apart from today (Thursday) which has been like Loch Ken on one of those dull rainy days when the kids would settle down to a day of card games whilst the more hardy of us would be braving the elements. The kids will have fond memories of those holidays.

Emery's Cottages by the Sea, bar Harbor

Our shed (2nd left)

We are staying in a pretty basic cabin in a lovely setting on the seafront at Frenchman's Bay - we've even got seals swimming in the bay.

Pretty average sunset at FM's Cove

The facilities are pretty rudimentary – a laundry, some barbeques, a stony beach and as you would expect special facilities for cooking lobster.

It’s located close to Bar Harbour and Acadia National Park so everything is nearby and the sunsets are quite spectacular (maybe not quite Crosby  or Seal Beach though!). The only dodgy thing is that the mosquito's have been voracious and unusually, they have been eating me rather than Mary. We bought some homoeopathic repellent but the only thing it has worked successfully on is Mary - It is made from essential oils  you can smell me coming from a mile off.

Mary conquering another climb

We have been walking a lot in and around Acadia National Park and have traversed Cadillac, Arcadia and Mansell Mountains. The mountains aren’t particularly high but are a bit more technical in places than most walks that we are used to in the UK. This has honed Mary's scrambling skills though so there will be no excuse next time we take the straight up route to Haystacks.  The landscape was formed in the last Ice Age and has a similar feel to that of the Lake District; the rock is quite grippy so scrambling even steep ascents is fairly straight forward even in the wet.

Getting too easy now - just wait 'til the White Mountains

When we did Cadillac we took a bus to the start - buses are free and we thought we should go eco. The idea was that we ascend via the North Ridge and then descend by the South ridge routes and pick up another bus at the other end so that we could return to our parked car. Unfortunately by the time we got down we had missed the last bus (I only looked at the summer timetable!) and we were 12 miles away from the start point so we had to hitch a ride home. Some kindly souls stopped and took us right back to the car park making a 6 mile detour for us - true knights of the road!

Bar Harbor is a busy place, it is a stopping off point for cruises up and down the coast and because of the deep harbour huge ships drop in and disgorge all of the passengers on to the streets of this small town. It’s obviously really good for local business but the town loses its intimacy. The ship pictured is the Caribbean Princess which cruises up and down the coast from Newfoundland to the Caribbean; it dwarfs the harbour and is one of the biggest that visits with a capacity of 3110 people. 

The only bad day we had - still looked good in the mist

Top of Cadillac