Day 6 - Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor

Traditional park entrance picture with the kids!

The weather was not looking good for us today and tomorrow, lots of rain in the forecast. Since  today didn't look to be too much of a washout, we loaded up the cars and headed into the park. First stop, the Visitor Center to get our pass and some maps.  We weren't exactly sure what we wanted to do, but we knew it couldn't be a long hike since it could rain at any moment.  We decided to head to Cadillac Mountain (the highest point in the park).

View of Bar a Harbor from Cadillac Mountain

The views were amazing and the kids had a blast hiking off trail as far as they could see.  They all thought it was awesome, comparing it to the Badlands a few years ago. They loved that they could go just about anywhere they wanted to.  It was a tough call as to which was better, Badlands or Acadia.  We did get rained on, but just sprinkles here and there.  Then as we were about to leave it rained a bit harder, but still not a day ending rain.  The kids never complained, in fact, I think they were bummed that we were leaving.  They all asked if we come back to do more hiking, so it was clearly a good start for our tour of Acadia.  My guess is they will all sleep well tonight!

Our next stop was lunch in Bar Harbor.  We found a small place called Finback Alehouse that looked to have some great food.  So we enjoyed some seafood for lunch (lobster roll, clam chowder and a crab cake burger), and the kids had some great looking burgers. We were stuffed!  Once we were done, the rain seemed to stop, for a bit!

Next stop was a trip to Bar Island, which is only accessible by foot during the low tide. We had about a 3 hour window to get over there and back.  It was a nice hike, it was still sprinkling here and there, but under the trees, you didn't notice.  We got a nice view of Bar Harbor from here. With binoculars, you could even see the people at the top of Cadillac Mountain (admittedly, our binoculars aren't that great!).

By now we were getting tired and since the rain was still coming and not giving up, we went back to our trailers.  I took a short nap, the guys were working on getting cable set up. Tomorrow is going to be a soaker (and the USA v Germany game will be on), so we wanted to make sure we had something ready to pass the time.  I just hope the weather doesn't get too ugly.

Marc - the mountain man!

Driving through the park reminded me a little bit of Yellowstone, just without the snow.