Today was both productive and rewarding. We were up at 5:15 am and left the hotel parking lot by 6 am (we love the early morning light for taking photos and are willing to sacrifice our morning sleep to catch the very early morning light - as long as we know there's an afternoon nap in our future). We decided to head out for Southwest Harbor.
We had a little incident in the parking lot of a beautiful Methodist Church that caught our eye because it had some very unique gingerbread trim. So we pulled in to check it out. But the church had vinyl siding (in our opinion, too many old New England churches are going the way of easy maintenance and we're losing the character of those beautiful old buildings). When we went to pull out of the church parking lot, I laid rubber, Bev broke into hysterical laughter and started making signs of the cross (don't ask how long it's been since she's been a real practicing Catholic!), and she nearly peed her pants she was laughing so hard. Poor Bob, especially if he reads this blog - he just put two brand new tires on his car before we took off for Bar Harbor . . . and I'm laying rubber with them in a church parking lot. By the way, if that was a Methodist Church, why was Bev making the Catholic sign of the cross???
I do have to tell you about breakfast. We got hungry around 8 am and started looking for some place to eat. Fortuituously, we found Sips in the little town of Bass Harbor. I had the best ever homemade granola with yogurt and fresh fruit for my breakfast and Bev had scrambled eggs with Nellie's organic-grown brown eggs. Maybe we were just very hungry, or just maybe the food was that good. Today's breakfast was as good as breakfast can ever get. Oh, I did I tell you? I had REAL hand-squeezed fresh oj.
As usual, we got off the beaten path and ended up finding our best photos of the day. That's the way it almost always is for us. A beautiful garden of lupines growing up a hill on someone's lawn on the side of the road, three old Adirondack chairs, one blue, one red, and one yellow, all lined up side-by-side on a big stretch of shaded grass lawn located in front of an old inn, the Bass Harbor Head Light beacon still on because we illegally walked into the lighthouse area before 8 am when it didn't officially open to the public until 9 am. Like that scared us off.
Late in the afternoon we found our way back to our hotel, took a long overdue shower (it was 90+ degrees and somewhat humid in Bar Harbor today - who says it's always cool at the ocean), didn't take a nap, but did go out and sit at the pool (in the shade) and watch the boats out on the ocean. Then off to supper at Lompoc's, this wonderful restaurant Bob and I discovered on a previous trip to Bar Harbor, where we had some wonderfully diversified ethnic foods to pick from. From there, we wandered over to Mount Desert Island ice cream where they make their own ice cream, and had dessert. I had a three-scooper: chocolate-orange, vanilla bean and white chocolate.
Then we drove over to Acadia National Park and up to the summit of Cadillac Mountain where we check out the 360-degree views including the easterly view across the Atlantic Ocean to England. I see London, I see France, I see Bevie's . . .
The sunset was beautiful, spectacular, spiritual, and breath-taking all at once. There was a very thin cloud cover as the sun was setting and it was like watching a giant orange beachball slowly sink below the horizon. Bev and I are pretty sure we now know without a doubt why observing sunsets are a part of many native Americans spiritual practices. If one of Bev's sunset photos turns out well, that's the photo we will post with our blog tonight. We will not be adding any extra photos to our Facebook pages today.
Tomorrow we're off to Acadia National Park proper and plan on driving the 27-mile Park Loop Road around the edge of the park and perhaps stopping at Jordan Pond to enjoy one of their famous popovers. See you tomorrow night.
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