Picking wild flowers and watching clouds come and pass though the gigantic windows of the living room have become our favorite pastimes while chilling at the vacation house.
Found another “sandy” beach on Mount Desert Island.
A park operated restraint that is famous for its view and popover. It’s a great place to grab drinks and snacks after the Jordan Pond hike but it was only open for takeout when we went. It has a large lawn area that opens up to Jordan Pond - the lawn is usually filled with outdoor dining tables but you can see it was completely empty.
A really cute garden with beautiful flowers. The only thing was we saw no butterflies! We enjoyed it regardless because we were the only visitors. It had a nice water view overlooking the golf course on the other side of the water.
Played a round of tennis at the public tennis court near the town center. The courts in Northeast Harbor are much better maintained than Bar Harbor
First attempt at making our own lobster bisque ... it was pretty good but so much work!
Cadillac Summit in Acadia National Park is the highest point of the Northeast Area of the United States. So it’s supposed to be the place to see sunrise first in the US. We took the easy way - drove up to the summit instead of hiking all the way. We still had to get up at 4am and made it to the peak by 430am. The sun rose at ~4:45am and it was one of the most beautiful sights!
We were invited by our Airbnb hosts, N & M, to an afternoon drink at their house (next door). We also met D & J, a lovely retired couple who happened to be our neighbors too.
The little one had a blast with the hosts’ dog. And we came away with a big block of homemade sourdough bread and some freshly harvested arugula from their garden. It was one of the most fun social moments we had had since the start of the coronavirus pandemic!
Had a big and delicious lunch at home - soy sauce chicken wings, scallops and portobellos mushroom stew.
After a few moderate trails under our belt, we felt eager to try Beehive trail which is marked as difficult level. Beehive and Precipice are probably the two most famous difficult-level trails in Acadia. Precipice was closed due to endangered peregrine falcons nesting until Aug. We have also heard that Precipice was technically challenging so you really need to be an avid hiker to give it a try (people have died from hiking it). On the other hand, Beehive is just scary-looking due to its vertical ascend along the exposed cliffs but nothing too challenging technically. Don’t take your little ones on this trail though - I think they need to be at least 8 or 9 years old.
The Beehive trail started out relatively easy. The first 5 minutes of it shares the same path as the Gorham Mountain trail we went on in the previous week. Once we passed the infamous yellow warning sign (basically tells you to turn around if you have fear of heights or don’t feel completely ready), the trail quickly became more difficult. It’s literally a vertical climb with a think edge of safety along the cliffs. I was leading the way as hubby has a bigger fear of heights. But when I got to the first flight of iron rungs for climbing up a segment of the cliffs, my legs started shaking and I said to him “if you don’t want to do this, I am ok with turning around right now”. To that, he responded “I think it is too late ... it’s more difficult to go down now than continue up.” I know he was right but I couldn’t move my legs at that point. Luckily there was another group right behind us so we let them go ahead first. Watching them climbing up the iron rungs with ease calmed me down a bit. We followed their lead.
The hike was relatively short. With a lot of rock scrambling and climbing on all fours, we finally made it to the top. My legs felt soft the whole time as I looked back and down a few times to check on hubby and took photos. If you have any fear of heights, don’t look back when you climb up. The view on top was great but probably not the best we have seen so far in Acadia. So this trail is more about the experience of the vertical climb than the view. We are glad we did it and came down in one piece. Having done this experience, we think we will stick with the moderate level trails for the rest of our stay 🤪.