This is our last post about our adventure in Acadia National Park. It is divided into into 3 posts, mostly to divide up the many pictures from our fun there! For more more about how much we loved the park, and our associated adventures, you should check out Acadia part 1, and Acadia part 2, if you have not already. 🙂
Andy happily standing behind the Beehive trail marker… the last trail of our trip to Acadia.A picture of Bar Harbor on Mt. Desert Island from a Bar Island vantage point.A landscape panorama of Mt. Desert Island taken from Bar Island.This picture is more nondescript than many of our Acadia adentures, but represents something unique to the park: hiking to an island, from an island. It’s made possible by convenient timing with Low tide. At high tide the trail is fully covered!Leah showcasing her excitement for reaching the top of an another splendid hike!And Leah enjoying her moment of the fantastic lake view.Andy happily standing on top of the lake vista.Another picture of an incredible inner island lake.Andy looking down at the lake in which we would later enjoy a pleasant swim.An inner island vantage point… there are seriously so many cool things to see in the park!Steps and stairs… an awesome way to accumulate vertical gain in a short distance!More Andy hijinx on a very tall trail ladder. (Why don’t we have trails like this on the West Coast?)The sign read “low hanging tree” [duh!], so Andy joking climbed up and around to avoid the perils of bumping his head on the overhang. ;-).An early morning picture of the many islands that surround Mt. Desert Island. Notice the cruise ship heading in. There is daily cruise ship visits throughout summer, often with 2 or 3 different massive ships arriving on the same day.The official Acadia Sunrise. I’d begrudgingly say it was worth waking up in the dark to capture. 🙂There’s actually a bit of a story to our quest for sunrise. We initially wanted to do a quick hike to a cliff vista, but were persuaded to instead drive to a look out by the Rangers. Turns out both would have been a fail since on this particular day the fog completely shrouded 80% of the island. So we ended up frantically driving around at 5:30AM trying to find a vantage point before the sun crested over the horizon. We did make it, but barely!Leah has soo much more energy in the morning than Andy!This is something we have actually not done on our year long adventure as much as we would have initially guessed: take pictures of the sunrise.A line up of our FREE beer sample flight on the island!Dusty impatiently waiting for us to hold up to our owner duty of tossing something back in the water. (I should emphasize the word _something_ since Dusty is as happy with a rock as he is a stick!)Dusty doing what he loves most: retrieving objects in the water!Yet another cool thing about this park… after a hot day of hiking, you can retreat to the water. Not only that, but you can pick between salt and fresh water. We let Dusty get his fill of fetching in the cold ocean, but did not opt for swimming here ourselves. We did enjoy a very pleasant swim in an amazingly clear lake inside the island though (which was also about 15* warmer!)Andy scrambling along the trail with Dusty on one of the many dog friendly hikes.Leah at the marker for the Beehive summit. Given all of the cliff vistas and plethora of beautiful pictures, I bet you would not have guessed the peak is only 520 feet above sea level!This is actually a picture of Andy taking a picture, but yet another amazing view nonetheless!Andy continuing the “yoga” session with the completion of a headstand. Because… why not?This is a random skill Andy has: an ability to easily do a headstand. The frog-pose is the preamble to the head stand, and the part Leah struggles with.Andy getting ready to do a mock yoga session at the top of the rocks. This was about 7am in the morning… right before sadly departing Acadia.Leah standing on the Beehive rocks, still enjoying every minute of the awesomeness!Leah climbing the last steep section of the Beehive Trail.Our smiles come incredibly naturally with such spectacular beauty all around us!Andy standing atop the Beehive trail.Andy reaching for the top of a ladder on the trail. It’s awesome to look back along the way to see how much vertical distance is gained on the relatively short ladder trails!Andy climbing to the top of another Ladder trail.There are so many different aspects of beauty here words cannot do it justice!Leah at yet another great view point… I know’s there a lot of these, but the conditions were so fantastic it’s hard not to share!Leah on a nice board walk bridge.Andy standing at an awesome vantage point.Back to another Ladder and Rung trail. The Beehive trail is the one we did twice during our 4 day visit. This section of “ladder bridge” is the only one we didn’t like. It’s only about 10′ off the ground, but just seems like it’d be easy to slip on (it’s really quite safe, but we disliked it nonetheless!)
