Our Trip Blog

          Today we woke up on the top of Cadillac Mountain, the tallest point in Acadia National Park, where we could watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. If you’ve read Mom’s entry, you’ll know it’s the first place in the country to receive the light of dawn. Our amazing parents woke up at 5:46 am and pulled out of our quiet sleepy campground by 6:02. They drove us through the park and up the mountain, arriving at the top at about 6:25. Mom woke us hurriedly, saying, “The sky is pink! We’ve gotta hurry! It’s comin’ up soon! Let’s go, let’s go!” And let me tell you, it was quite worth it getting up before the crack of dawn. The sun made all the clouds a brilliant pink, which then turned orange, followed by yellow, and then white over the two hours we spent atop Cadillac Mountain. However, as it changed colors, the part which enraptured me most was the constant soft purple-ish blue-ish periwinkle color of the rest of the sky, which in turn reflected on the ocean. It was truly beautiful.

          After the sun showed its face and the other hundred or so cars left the parking lot, we Taylors went back to our built-in kitchen and had a body-warming breakfast of warm bagels, cream cheese, and hot chocolate – the first hot chocolate we’ve had on this trip, which is amazing considering how much we like chocolate.

          Then we paid a quick trip to the “visitor center”, which was just a glorified gift shop. Still, the trip was worth it because the “visitor center” had restrooms with strangely shaped toilets, rather like the Swedish water-saving toilets we found in Glacier National Park. After a quick stop there, we drove down the mountain, listening to our audio tour of Acadia on CD. We then made our way to Wonderland, which Abby had learned yesterday was the best place to visit the tide pools during low tide. After a rather short .7-mile hike to the beach, we ambled across what we thought was gravel – until we looked closer and saw that what we thought were pebbles were actually the shells of sea snails. By the way, you’ll have to forgive me, as I will be making up some of these names, because I really don’t know what they were. They were like snails, only typically smaller and in a wide variety of all colors and shapes. And that was pretty much all we saw during the first little bit of our exploration of the tide pools. After awhile, a few zebra mussels appeared; well, at least I think that’s what they were. Then we discovered that if we lifted up the seaweed covering the rocks, we could find more live creatures. Our finds included baby crabs (the tiniest little crabs I have ever seen), baby shrimp (literally miniature shrimp, only black), and a periwinkle (that’s actually its real name). Yesterday, Ranger Kim had informed Abby that if we hummed to a periwinkle, it would come out of its ice-cream-cone-shaped-shell. However, when we tried this trick, the periwinkle was too shy to emerge under eight very vigilant eyes. Both Abby and Daddy also found sea-urchin-like things, circular-shaped, with purple and white stripes and a big empty space in the middle where the alive thing is supposed to be.

          Our next discovery was how to find crabs: pull back handfuls of seaweed, lift up a movable rock, and watch for movement. We found about ten or so crabs using this method. Once we found them, we tried our best to pick them up without getting pinched, and then set them on rocks that weren’t covered in seaweed to play with them. Most we found were too tiny and probably too young to have fully developed claws; however, the biggest crab we found clung to a shiny shell so hard that we could lift the shell and the crab would come with! It’s amazing the amount of force and power in such a tiny little tool claw. We quickly learned which end of the crab was safe to pick up, and we also observed that they either walk sideways or backwards, but never forwards. One crab we played with, we noticed, only walked right or backwards, never left, even when we prodded it in that direction. Could it be that crabs are right- or left-walkers, like we are right- or left-handed?

          After staying at the tide pools for quite awhile, we said goodbye to our crabby friends, walked back to the RV, and drove on to what we had been told was “the best picnic lunch area in the whole park”. It was very pretty indeed, to that very informative ranger’s credit. We quickly discovered that the parking area was definitely not level enough for us to eat inside our RV. Instead, we loaded up our feast and spread it atop the nearest picnic table, whereby the local gulls began to gather jubilantly around us. They proceeded to screech at us and at each other for the entirety of our meal. However, that was the only un-enjoyable thing about this meal. As we ate our full of a very yummy lunch, the tide began to come in. Where Dad and Ben had explored just minutes before lunch was now completely underwater. After thoroughly enjoying our lunch at the best place to eat lunch in Acadia National Park, we drove on to the trailhead of The Precipice, on the way enjoying still more of the Acadia Audio Tour CD.

          Once parked at the trailhead, we got all dressed up in wool socks and hiking boots, with water bottles and extra jackets to spare. A yellow caution sign warned us of what was to come, saying that this trail was not hiking, but nontechnical climbing, and that people had both been seriously injured and killed on this treacherous trail. No worries, we survived all in one piece, or six pieces rather. But Mom sprained her ankle on the way down, and everyone got a wide variety of scratches and bruises. The climb up was challengingly fun, as a good portion of it consisted completely of boulder scrambling. We agreed unanimously that everyone’s favorite parts of the trail were the sections with iron railings and ladders on which to grab and scramble up on.

          When we reached the top, we had a water break and celebrated with pictures by the summit sign. The view of the fall colors and the ocean and the landscape vista was absolutely unbelievable. It was so beautiful. Then I climbed down into a little ditch just tall enough and wide enough to fit me and another body, so Lindsey joined me. I’m sure we looked quite funny, just two heads poking out of the crack between two sheets of solid granite rock. It got even more funny when I accidently dropped my sunglasses down to the bottom of the ditch and had to bend down to get them, as there was almost no room to bend. Soon after, we scrambled out and followed the Northern Champlain Ridge Trail around the side of the mountain, which was when Mom sprained her ankle. This was a rather interesting hike down because we were following very little path. More often we followed little two-inch by four-inch segments of blue chalk or cairns, little piles of rocks that natives and later hikers built to guide one another along the beaten path. Then we followed the Orange and Black Path. Yes, really, that was its name. However, we continued to follow blue markers, although I thought they would be orange and black on the Orange and Black Path. Then we followed a bit of The Precipice trail back to the parking lot. That part was probably the hardest, as we were boulder scrambling down the massive fields of boulders, fighting the pull of gravity to maintain control of ourselves.

          All extremely tired after what we had been warned was the most difficult and strenuous hike in the park, we drove a little bit and parked at the nearest overlook for dinner of spaghetti, peas, salad, bread, and, for dessert, peach Jell-O with diced peaches inside and whipped cream on top. Having jumped from mountaintop to tide pool to mountaintop all in one day, we were all very tired and eager to bed down for the night. Dad had wanted to treat Mom to a motel so she could get lots of ice for her ankle. Soon we were driving all over the Maine countryside in search of a motel, however, a motel in our price range could not be found. After following another rabbit trail into the boondocks in the dark, Mom and Dad decided enough was enough. They sent the kids to bed and as we slept, drove these tired bodies to a Walmart in Brewer, ME for a lot of rest and hopefully a little relaxation and recuperation.