June 27, 2023 Happy 94th Birthday in heaven, Mom! I know how you loved to read my blog, so I hope you are reading this in heaven!
The morning was foggy and chilly at 52 degrees. We made plans for a day in Bar Harbor with Mary and John. We left about 11:00 and picked up Mary and John for the drive into Bar Harbor. As we drove along the coast, we could see that the tide was out. Much of the beautiful coastline was obscured by fog.
The tide drop today was 10 feet.
As we neared Bar Harbor, I did see a moose . . . statue.
We arrived in Bar Harbor and drove down to the waterfront.
We drove around looking for parking, but the 2 public parking lots were full. We happened upon someone who was leaving their parking space on the street and we were lucky enough to come by at the right time. From there, we walked up to the entrance to the sandbar.
The Bar as it is called and the namesake of Bar Harbor is a natural land bridge accessible up to 2 hours before low tide and 2 hours after low tide. We arrived at the right time and made the trek across the bar.
Along the way, we saw kelp and remnants of shells.
We were able to walk all the way to Bar Island. Once at Bar Island, we could see the line of kelp marking the high tide line.
There was a collection of driftwood and cairns that others had created there.
We added our own rocks to the cairns or hoodoos there.
Many people were taking advantage of the low tide opportunity.
We also took the opportunity to drive on “the bar” which is allowed as long as you pay attention to the incoming tide, but there is no parking on the bar at all.
We continued our walk on West St. along the waterfront stopping in a few stores looking for painted buoys. Bob tried on this hat at one of the stores for fun.
We couldn’t see out into the harbor where the tour boats were docked.
The boys were looking for oysters and a beverage, so we stopped at the Fish House Grill on the water.
We sat at the bar and ordered raw oysters and mussels in white wine sauce.
I had an Old Soaker Root Beer made in one of Bar Harbor’s local breweries.
Bob’s oysters came from Mackerel Cove near Portland and he said they were very good – nice and salty.
After lunch, we walked up Main St. to check out the shops. I found a nice buoy that I bought.
Mary was still on the search for a special hand-painted buoy that we saw at the restaurant we went to for lunch. We needed to find the shop where they were sold. There were lots of people in town around lunchtime, but it cleared out after that. We kept on popping in and out of shops seeing all thing “Maine”.
We left town with time left on the meter to make a stop at the Acadia National Park Visitor Center to get some information on biking trails and things to see within the park. The ranger was very helpful!
We got back to the campground around 2:30 and sat outside. The sun had begun to peek out of the clouds and burn off some of the fog. The temp had risen to 69 degrees. We sat outside until it began to cool off once the sun disappeared, so then we went inside. Neither of us was too hungry for dinner, so we had leftover pizza, potato salad, and a lobster roll. Auggie and I took our walk. It started to rain at the very end of our walk, but we made it back in time before we got too wet. The forecast is for off-and-on rain for the rest of the week, so we’ll make plans to tour the park and do other sightseeing things accordingly.