Maine – Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island

View from the top of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park is the oldest National Park east of the Mississippi River, established in 1919.  Cadillac Mountain shown above is the highest point on the Island and has great views in all directions.

View of Bar Harbor Village from the top of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park

A shoreline "Cottage" on Mount Desert Island

About 1/2 of Mount Desert Island is inside the National Park.

There are miles of scenic Maine coastline in Arcadia National Park

Herring Gull and crab parts

Sand Beach,  Acadia National Park

Other parts of Mount Desert Island include the Bass Harbor Lighthouse

In all of our many Lighthouse visits this is the first time that the Lighthouse Keepers house was still in use.

Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse’s Red light

Lobster fisherman on the way to work

Another part of Mount Desert Island is the harbor and village of Bar Harbor. Bar Harbor is a true “tourist town”; a lot of Motels, B&Bs, place to eat and T-shirt shops.

During our second week at Bar Harbor the Island Shuttle system started its Summer Service. It is an absolutely free amazing service that cover the entire island. The bus came right into our RV Park to pick us up. Although the buses have many regular stops; outside of the actual village of Bar Harbor shuttle bus will also drop you off and pick you anywhere that you request. Since parking both in Bar Harbor and at the various scenic points and trail heads is at a premium it was great to have this service available for everything from getting groceries, going to church and going on hikes.  The buses also have bike racks and they have a special  “bikers bus” that pulls a trailer that carries bikes to the bike and carriage only roads. As we found out in Zion National Park last fall bus shuttle service make for great point to point hiking.

 

This brand new perfectly straight boardwalk continued on for 1/2 mile on one  of our hikes.

Scenes from our hike on the boardwalk:

Our site at the RV Park during Mid-week:

Birding notes:

We spent 4 weeks in Maine and it is now our favorite state east of Rockies. Maine has an amazing amount of water, they have miles of huge rives and lakes. Near where we stayed in Augusta there is Long Pond. This “pond” is 2 miles long and 1/2 mile wide. Shockingly what we didn’t see were any fresh water birds at all! Not even Mallards, Canada Geese or even American Coots. We did see a couple of Bald Eagles and one Great Blue Heron. Maine has 3,000 miles of shoreline but, we didn’t see any shorebirds at all. I can understand that the Maine shoreline is very rocky and may not be the best place for shorebirds. However, I would have thought it ideal for Turnstones and Oyster Catchers. We did see a few of the following birds: Common Eiders, Great Black-backed, Bonaparte’s Gull,  Herring Gulls, Great and Double-crested Cormorants, on the ocean and bays. However, considering the amount of ocean and the number of bays and coves we really didn’t see many birds.

The bird that seemed to be everywhere and singing while we were on Mount Desert Island was the American Redstart.

photo courtesy of BirdForum.net

More pictures on the slideshow