Acadia National Park

I forgot to mention that when we arrived in Bar Harbor it was raining. Friday morning dawned sunny and cool. After solving our latest problem ( the battery disconnect button) we and the dogs were off for a day in the Park, and what an awesome park it is. We started at the Visitors center. You have several options on how to tour the park. LL Bean operates a free shuttle bus service throughout MT Desert Island including Acadia National Park.The bus will drive you all around the park loop allowing you to get off to view an area and then you just get back on another bus to go to the next site. There are also other tour guide busses that will guide you around the park or you can do self guided tours. We opted for a self guided tour driving around the park loop, stopping at places such as Thunder Hole where you can watch the ocean waves crash on the rocks and spray water up into the air. We took a short hike to Sand Beach the only sandy beach in the park. We had a picnic lunch at one of the picnic areas and then we drove up to the summit of Cadillac Mt.( good thing we were in the jeep and not the Bus) where there is a spectacular  view of the park and surrounding area.
Friday evening we drove into Bar Harbor for dinner at Stewmans Lobster Pound.We started off with Blueberry Margaritas then Bob had a seafood combo and I had a Lobster roll,yum. After a stroll up and down Main Street where most of the shops are we stopped for dessert at Ben and Bill's (not Ben and Jerry's)Chocolate Emporium and Ice Cream Shop. We had heard from our friends Dave and Lynn that they served Lobster ice cream. Bob chickened out but I decided to try it. I thought it would be ice cream with little flecks of lobster if any at all,but it turned out to be vanilla flavored ice cream with big chunks of frozen lobster. It didn't taste the least bit fishy. There was quite a lot of lobster in it and before I got to the bottom of the dish I had had enough. Somehow ice cream and lobster don't really belong in the same dish.
Saturday was another beautiful, sunny day, so we decided to take the dogs out in the canoe. We drove into the park again up to Jordan's Pond and offloaded the canoe at the public boat ramp, then proceeded to canoe around the pond foa a couple of hours. The water was crystal clear and cold, much as you would expect from a mountain lake. We also enjoy the comments we get from people walking along the edge of the water when they see the dogs in the canoe: "Oh, isn't that so cute? Hey, there's two of them! How precious!" The dogs just take it in stride.
After completing our paddle we drove down to the southern part of the island and visited a couple of the picturesque towns on Mt. Desert Island, Northeast Harbor and Seal Harbor. Many of the homes in these areas reminded us a lot of some of the homes in Watch Hill, and the harbors themselves were filled with dozens of moored boats of all types and sizes.
We woke up Sunday morning to rain and wind, pretty much a nasty day all around, so that would limit any outside activities that we may have wanted to do. So Donna did a little research and found out the general area of Martha Stewart's vacation home in Seal Harbor, so off we went to find it. We don't know how you can hide a 35,000 square foot house that overlooks the ocean, but hide it she did. We think we came close to where it is located, but we realized we would not be able to find a mailbox with M. Stewart on it. So we brought the dogs back to the campground and then took the free L.L. Bean bus to downtown Bar Harbor for a lunch of chowder, lobster salad, and clam roll.
The rain never let up all day, so Sunday afternoon was a hang around the campsite and do the laundry kind of day. Tomorrow, Monday, we head out and back down to Kennebunkport for a few days.