It started relatively early, somewhere in the 7 AM hour, but it also started slowly. So slowly, in fact, that the girls just had to jump into the heated pool before 10 AM. Man, to think that we drove all the way to Maine for them to swim in a pool felt hilariously appropriate.
But by 11, we needed to start getting every person and dog ready for a Beech Mountain hike. The plan was to meet my parents at the trailhead and small parking lot at 11:45 AM. The plan was to also have the girls eat their lunch on the 10 minute drive over to the trailhead with hopes that it would cut down on the number of "I'm hungry" groans we'd get.
Cara and I hiked a variation of this summit way back in 2019 with a baby Acadia. The sights and sounds blew us away, and we just knew that we'd have to return to this trail. This time, however, we wouldn't venture to any trail extensions and instead stuck to the 1.3 mile loop up to the summit, where there's an old fire tower, and then back down with incredible views of Long Pond (this is a different Long Pond than what we did yesterday after arriving).
A few hundred feet after you start the trail in a typical northeastern forest mixed with massive boulders scattered around, there is an option to go 0.5 miles or 0.8 miles up to the fire tower lookout. The shorter path is what we chose and includes quite a few scrambles that every person and dog were eventually able to manage. It made the ascent moderately difficult, but allowed for a much more peaceful descent.
The climb is classic Acadia (the park not the kid). There are huge granite openings that suddley cut down to narrow paths among pines and other trees. Sometimes there are rock scrambles and other times its smooth sailing up some man-made steps. Most importantly on this hike, however, are the insane amounts of blueberry bushes that border most of the trail. The bushes aren't too big and are at a perfect height for a 6-year-old and 4-year-old.
The constant need to collect and eat these wild blueberries, which Acadia says are "way better than blueberries from the store," is probably why this 1.3-mile hike took almost 2 hours to complete. Combine this free and delicious snack with breathtaking views of Long Pond, Southwest Harbor, and who knows what other parts of Mount Desert Island, and it's easy to see why nobody was in too much of a rush to just finish this hike. Thankfully today there wasn't a misty fog like yesterday. The fog never fully lifted, although the sun was doing it's best to get rid of it. But with the coastal breeze and a mostly cloudy sky with temperatures in the mid- to upper-60s, this was one of the best hiking days we could have imagined.
Oh, perhaps the best part of this hike was that Acadia and Aspen did this hike completely by themselves (note: Aspen may have needed a very brief carry by the end, but she still crossed the finish line on her own two feet. Maybe the bush wee she did in the final quarter-mile gave her the relief she needed).
Once done, we decided to loop around Echo Lake and head into Southwest Harbor to the Charlotte Rhoades Butterfly Park. This was a new stop for us, but something that we knew the girls would enjoy. We saw tons of bumblebees, a bunch of monarch eggs, and even a monarch butterfly flitter around.
After the Butterfly Park, we continued south into Bass Harbor, where we checked out the Bass Harbor Lighthouse. It was here that we knew we were starting to push the girls to a limit as Aspen reminded us that she's 4-and-a-half years old, which is pretty much 5, which is next to 6, so really she's 6-years-old and can scramble across rocks along the Atlantic Ocean. Hard to argue with that logic.
After the Lighthouse, we looped around to the Ship Harbor Trail in hopes of giving the dogs a chance to cool off in the water. But low tide made things quite mushy and stinky. Plus, Cara needed to carry Aspen like a backpack, while I did the same for Acadia for portions of the hike.
At this point, it was 5 PM, and we knew that we didn't have much left in the tank. We drove straight north, past our campground, and to Atlantic Brewing Company. The girls were thrilled to see a mini-playground, while the adults were thrilled to take in a drink and apps. The place was hopping and the service was quick and pleasant. We had made it about an hour at ABC before verifying our plans for tomorrow morning and going out separate ways.
By the time we got back to campground, it was frantic dash to get shows and snacks before heading to bed. The girls were pretty much out by 9 PM. That's huge because morning will come quickly. The plan is to be at the Jordon Pond House Restaurant by 9 AM. We'd like to do a couple of hours of biking (Acadia has been missing out on that because of the layout of our campground, while Aspen has been looking forward to some tandem biking) before returning to the restaurant for some blueberry lemonade.
All of that said about tomorrow, you never really know how things will go. But with tomorrow being our last full day in the park, we want to make the most of it.
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