Bar Harbor Weekend
Monday, August 25th, 2008
This weekend I made the trek up to Bar Harbor, Maine. Despite awesome running trails, beautiful ocean beaches, awesome mountain roads and more glacial lakes and rivers than you can shake a stick at, I did absolutely zero triathlon training.
All about some nice quiet QT with the GF, kids.
Thankfully she puts up with my love for looking stupid in pictures and Sam snapped this pretty sweet shot of me in a lobster hat. Unfortunately, the hat didn’t come home with me.
We bummed around the tiny little downtown area on Friday afternoon and it was beautiful out. Awesome August afternoon, without the summer crowds. (Apparently it can get pretty claustrophobic up there in mid-summer.)
After wasting some time checking out the stupid little tourist-y shops, we aimlessly drove around the island with GPS in tow trying to find the best westward facing hunk of coast to sit and watch the sunset. (Gotta work hard for those brownie points!)
We ended up finding two pretty nice spots. None directly facing the ocean, but still pretty nice. Here is one around Seal Cove somewhere.
And here is the second place we checked out by the sea wall on the south west corner of the island. Both had HUGE mosquitoes everywhere, so we didn’t hang around too long, but it was otherwise a really sweet spot.
Saturday was adventure day! A seven mile kayak tour in the morning had us up early and out on the water with a bag full of PB& raisin sandwiches and a canister of nuun.
After checking out some local wildlife (bald eagles, porpoises, harbor seals and sea urchins), I managed to save the group from the giant star fish attack.
The villagers rejoiced. They gave me a medal and carried me on their shoulders around town. I rocked it.
After refueling with a burger, fries and clam chowder we headed out for a hike straight up Cadillac Mountain. The mountain is about 3 miles from the shore and 1,500 ft high. Because it is so high and so far east, it is the first place in the US to see the sunrise from October through March and is the highest point on the eastern seaboard.
I also snacked on a few wild blueberries on the way up. They were everywhere and were calling my name. Sam yelled at me because she was convinced that they were toxic, but I’m stubborn. I kinda wished that I had a few more…
These are the Porcupine islands just to the East of Bar Harbor.
All along the trail there were all of these very zen-like rock piles that marked the way. Apparently they are called cairns. I kept stopping to put together ones that had clearly fallen over, until I got all the way to the top and saw a big sign warning people not to mess with them since they were maintained by the park rangers. Oops. My rock piles looked better than theirs anyway.
I’m not sure if the steepness of this trail comes out in the picture, but MAN was it a hike. It made the view from the top SO much more enjoyable.
Here is a crappy video taken as we are about half way up Cadillac mountain.
Now I’m back in Bean Town, getting back in the training groove and struggling to find that next race to keep me moving forward.
Tags: bar harbor, cadillac mountain, cairn, maine | Posted in Life, Videos | 6 Comments »
