We left the Blackwoods campground of Acadia National Park to catch a 10am tour boat with a Park Ranger out of the Northeast Harbor. The cruise was the Islesford Historic and Scenic Cruise which lasts about three hours and includes a 45 minute stop on Little Cranberry Island to visit the small Post Office that is struggling not to be closed by the Federal government, the traditional boat building workshop, the local lobstah co-op, the Islesford Historic Museum, and a local church that doubles as a seasonal art gallery. While we were there, it displayed stain glass windows created with found sea glass. The Ranger did a good job delivering the lay-of-the-land…er sea with how the lobster fishermen and women work to preserve and grow their industry, what it’s like to live along the coast, local wildlife like seals, cod, Osprey and other birds of prey, how the park came into being, the difference between the Rustics, the Cottagers, and the Summa-People.
From the National Park Website: “It was the outsiders—artists and journalists—who revealed and popularized this island to the world in the mid-1800s. Painters of the Hudson River School, including Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, glorified Mount Desert Island with their brushstrokes, inspiring patrons and friends to flock here. These were the “rusticators.” Undaunted by crude accommodations and simple food, they sought out local fishermen and farmers to put them up for a modest fee. Summer after summer, the rusticators returned to renew friendships with local islanders and, most of all, to savor the fresh salt air, beautiful scenery, and relaxed pace. Soon the villagers’ cottages and fishermen’s huts filled to overflowing, and by 1880, 30 hotels competed for vacationers’ dollars. Tourism was becoming the major industry.
For a select handful of Americans, the 1880s and the “Gay Nineties” meant affluence on a scale without precedent. Mount Desert, still remote from the cities of the east, became a retreat for prominent people of the times. The Rockefellers, Morgans, Fords, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and Astors chose to spend their summers here. Not content with the simple lodgings then available, these families transformed the landscape of Mount Desert Island with elegant estates, euphemistically called “cottages.” Luxury, refinement, and large gatherings replaced the buck board rides, picnics, and day-long hikes of an earlier era…“
After the cruise it was lunch time or…wait for it, don’t say it yet, okay, go ahead, Lobstah time! This time we went to Beals Lobster Pier which is located on the Southwest Harbor. It had five or six different versions of the Lobstah Roll. Douglas had the garlic butter and Lisa had the traditional (just a touch of mayo on a toasted buttered bun). They also had lobstah nuggets (aka chunks of lobstah deep fried with a remoulade sauce). It rocked! You can see in the photos below that the best place to store a lobstah is in the water that it was caught in (after first securing their claws to make sure they don’t fight each other). We also learned that you can tell the difference between softshell and hard shell lobstah by squeezing or shaking hands with a live lobstah’s claw. And finally, Amazon still delivers to islands of the area.
After lunch we checked into our new campground, the Seawall Campground. It is still served by the free park bus even though it seems really remote from the rest of the park. It really isn’t too remote since there are parts of the National Park that require a boat to visit. And of course there was a lobstah stand nearby :-).
The coast of the area along the campground is called a natural seawall. It is an area where the ocean and its tides actually deposit rocks along the shoreline with the smallest ones being pushed up the highest. When the tides are out, there are a lot of tide pools to be explored. A little crab attempted a hostile assault on Douglas’s big toe! Lisa met a geologist who was pointing out the origins of some of the rocks there.
We read that the sunset at Bass Harbor lighthouse was beautiful so we headed that way. It turns out that everyone else had read or heard the same thing, so it was a small army of amateur and semi-pro photographers clambering all over the rocks in an attempt at getting the shot. After visiting there, we drove back our local coast near the campground and feasted on the beautiful solitude night rising.
The next day, Douglas and Lisa still felt to the need to do at least one more hike, so they hiked up Acadia Mountain to take in the views. Afterwards Douglas stripped down and took a dip in Echo Lake. It was time for lunch and you know by now, that means a lobstah stop:
