New England #7

Made it to Bar Harbor ME yesterday. Rt. 1 in Maine is a rough old girl in many places and quite a bit of construction. Vickie and I were wondering how they would ever get it all finished before the "permafrost" sets in. You can tell there might be something to the winters here by the way their firewood stacks are often almost as big as the house. Most of our day yesterday was spent at Acadia National Park. This is one of the few National Parks on the East Coast. Basically it is a lot of islands and peninsulas that stick out into the Atlantic from the coast of Maine. Bar Harbor is pretty much completely surrounded by the National Park. Last I was here, many many years ago, Bar Harbor was a sleepy little town where you caught the ferry to Nova Scotia. Well you still catch the ferry here, but boy has it built up. Looking at some kind of local paper we picked up, 9 cruise ships are scheduled to dock here this week. One of the "cruisers" said the Queen Mary 2 was due here next Saturd ay. I was curious where cruise ships would come from to get to Bar Harbor. I asked one lady, and she said her ship sailed out of NYC with stops in Boston, Bar Harbor, Halifax, and some other places. This is really off-season for Acadia Park, but because of the cruise ships, it was slammed yesterday. Nothing like meeting a 48-passenger giant bus coming down the mountain road around a curve at you. However despite the droves of people, Acadia is a most beautiful place. The view from Cadillac Mt. at 1500+ feet above sea level is worth the trip. There is a park loop road that takes in most of the more popular sites. We spent our time on the loop with the roof down enjoying the park. Also there is a bus service that you can utilize to see the whole park. Since it was late in the day, we decided to stay in Bar Harbor. After the cruise ships pulled out around 5:00 (so they could get out past the 12 mile limit and open their casinos) the place was pretty empty. We enjoyed sitting on the ba lcony of our room at the Quality Inn with beautiful weather, and surprisingly few bugs. (oh and on the scorecard—this place didn’t get the memo, the curved shower rods were installed so that the shower area is now smaller than before) We later went across the road to something called The Saltwater Grill, and enjoyed the early bird specials. (makes me feel like a very old tourist to say early bird special) However in this case 1 of the early bird specials was a lobster, fries and slaw for $15.95. Great deal and it was good. I added an appetizer of steamed mussels and was in heaven. Miss Vickie ate the early bird sirloin tips in that she doesn’t do well with shellfish. I rounded it all off with a crisp Maine apple back at the room, and collapsed into a protein coma. Tomorrow, we plan to continue down the Maine coast on Rt.1 and eventually turn back inland before we get into the millions of folks called Boston. Oh and last night, Old Blue didn’t have to sleep alone for a change. He go t to snuggle up to a nice new maroon C6 with the same color top. I was hoping I might find a little Corvette pedal car when I went down this morning but nothing happened. (probably both boys) Ran down this morning to see the departure of the ship called "The Fast Cat" to Nova Scotia. It is this huge all aluminum catamaran car ferry with 38,000 hp (4 engines/9500) that runs from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth Nova Scotia at around 45 knots. Came back and went to breakfast at the same restaurant as last night. Usually isn’t possible to screw up breakfast but they did. Food was bad service was worse. More later.

Wes