Mainely Vacation: Day Eight - Acadia National Park

Day Eight was going to be a big day.  I got together early with my long time friend Westie and we headed to Acadia National Park.  I grew up less than two hours away from the park and think I may have only been there about twice.  This makes the seventh National Park in 13 months and the eighth in 2 years.  This was going to be a fun day.

We stopped at the visitors center to grab a map and headed toward Cadillac Mountain.  We heard the hike up was only about 45 minutes.  As we were driving down the road, we saw a bunch of folks climbing out of a trailhead.  We asked them if it was the Cadillac Mountain trail and they confirmed that it was.  We packed some water and a banana each and headed off for a short hike.

Nearly two hours went by before we reached the top of the Mountain.  Apparently, we were on the wrong trail.  It was a great hike all the same but it was going to limit our time to get other hikes in.  We still really enjoyed the time and had some great conversations.  As we climbed the rocky cliffs of the Mountain face, we got amazing looks of the bay, there was a bit of fog, topping all of the islands.

We did not pack enough to eat so we had to find wild Maine blueberries on the trail.  By the time we got back to the car we are starving.  A quick drive got us to Sand Point beach area, where we climbed up on some rocks to have a small dinner.  Hummus and pitas go a long way on a hiking adventure.

When we were done eating, it was dusk and we still wanted to go visit Jonny.  It would be my last chance to see him before I left.  We decided to take a quick trip to Thunder Hole and see the sun set.

We really needed some dinner so we headed out of the park into the tourist town of Bar Harbor.  We spotted this vegan restaurant called Eden Cafe.  It was a bit pricey but we decided to splurge and it was well worth it.  We shared two appetizers, cornbread battered oyster mushrooms with a creamy sauce, and tofu spring rolls.  We also split an entree, soy seitan cutlets, they came with some potatoes also.  We each for our own deserts.  Westie had a peanut butter cup pudding, and I had a slice of blueberry cheesecake.  It was a great meal and I think we added to the decor as it was fairly ritzy and we stunk like hikers.

We spent a few hours with Jonny and his new wife Leeann.  Then we headed back to the mainland.  It had been a long.