Exploring Tidepools

Before arriving in Bar Harbor, we made reservations to attend a tide  pool program through the national park. I like to attend programs sponsored by our local metro parks and have attended programs in the Smoky Mountains National Park before. There was a fee to attend this program, but based on our previous experiences and since we were unfamiliar with Acadia National Park, we figured it would be worth it. The rangers were nice but the program wasn't anything we couldn't have done on our own. Thankfully the fee wasn't too much. Once the rangers gave us time to explore on our own, we decided not to rejoin the group. This program took place along the Wonderland Trail. Having an underwater camera proved handy for some nice pictures in the tide pools.


I felt bad for the rangers in those long pants. It was at least 95* & very humid.
This ranger is a school teacher in New York the rest of the year.

They found some quartz and were convinced they could make a little $ if they managed to break some off.

Later during vacation we explored the Bar Island trail. It's a sandbar between Bar Island and Bar Harbor that is exposed for 4 hours around low tide. You can actually drive across the sandbar to Bar Island and hike over there, but we stuck with exploring the trail. It was another foggy day, as you can tell by the cell phone pics I took. It was a really good day for finding tide pool treasures, though! The time we spent exploring this area was probably my second favorite part of our vacation. (Fishing was #1 for all of us. More on that later.)

 

This guy was trying to hide again after we discovered him:

Made it to Maine

Some pictures from our first evening in Bar Harbor.

Our Vacation House

We did not go through an agency to rent our vacation house this year. We found a beautiful home on TripAdvisor and then cross referenced it on a few other sites like VRBO. The house we rented was built 2 years ago by an Italian couple. When they are in the states, this is where they live. When they aren't, they rent it out and use a local contact to arrange housekeeping services. This has to be the most beautiful rental home we have ever stayed in.

The house sits on several acres of woods and is bordered by Partridge Cove, which is connected to Frenchman's Bay and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean. It was extremely private, and the woods were thinned out just enough that we could walk through the woods to explore if we wanted to. We were really hoping to find tidepools around the house, but this really wasn't the right area for that. Occasionally there were a few crabs left in the puddles, but that was about it. The tide is between 8'-12' in Maine, which means a muddy patch of ground at low tide could be under 12' of water at high tide. (Further north past the Bay of Fundy the tides are as high as 50'!) The tides don't seem to fluctuate that much where we usually vacation, so it was interesting to watch the water come and go.

The house itself was decorated very nicely and was very comfortable. We only had 3 complaints - 1. no lobster pot (how can you live in Maine and not own a lobster pot?!)  2. no blinds in the master bedroom, which really stinks when the sunrise is at 4:55am!! and 3. no air conditioning or box fans. A lot of places in Maine don't use air conditioning because there are really only a few weeks every year that it's needed. I understand that, but it would have been nice if there had been a box fan or two sitting in a closet somewhere. For the first two days we were there, the temps were in the 90s, and the house was very warm. A fan would have been a nice addition. But, we survived without those 3 items and enjoyed the house & property. Overall it was very comfortable and was a nice retreat at the end of a full day.

Looking for Moose

We decided we wanted to see moose while in New England, so we planned a route to Maine that would take us through Gorham, New Hampshire. Gorham used to be home to one of the largest paper mills in the US, but several years ago it was bought and sold and now the mill is just empty buildings on a lot of land. (There are plans for some of the buildings, but I wasn't paying close attention to our tour guide and don't remember all the details.) Now a lot of the town's income revolves around tourists searching for moose or visiting nearby Mt. Washington.

I booked our tour through the city of Gorham. I wasn't sure how well the kids would do taking a moose tour after riding in the car all day to get to Gorham, but they did great. The tour was quite boring at first, but the kids were troopers.

We spotted 1 moose and it seemed like that would be it...after 3 hours of searching! We were all pretty disappointed as we headed back to town. Then we spotted a moose trotting along side our van. We got a good look at him before he veered off towards the woods. We stopped once more to scan the area beside the road and were pleased to see an entire moose "family". The bull, cow, and calf were munching on some vegetation at the edge of the woods. I wasn't able to get pictures of any of them, but I'm glad we got to see them! The kids ended up having a good time after all, and I'm glad we rerouted our trip to go through this little town. Ron and I wished we could have spent another day in Gorham, fishing in the beautiful lakes or searching for more wildlife.

Falls on the 4th

We spent July 4th traveling through New York. Our route took us within 30 minutes of Niagra Falls, so we made a last minute decision to stop for a couple hours at the American side. I really wanted the kids to have the opportunity to see them, even though we couldn't cross to the Canadian side. It was a nice break in the 8 hours of driving we did that day.

I got in trouble for snapping this photo. Apparently I was supposed to be helping plan our route. We ended up going the wrong way, just about wilting from the extreme heat & humidity, and finally crawling to a trolley stop. The trolley took us to the observation tower, which was only a couple blocks from where we had originally parked. Needless to say, this pit stop was not very well planned.

The kids agreed it was worth the stop (although maybe not worth the lengthy walk).

Fireworks!

We celebrated the 4th with Grandma & Grandpa before leaving for vacation. The kids enjoyed their traditional smoke bombs in Grandpa's backyard before leaving to watch fireworks. It was a nice way to start our vacation!

Grandma's Pond

Tyler's Dives & More

Here is a video of clips from several videos Grandpa took and a few more pictures. (We were a little limited on our soundtrack choices. I find this one annoying!)

Welcome to Hell

Grandma & Grandpa took Tyler to Hell while they were on vacation. Hell, Cayman Islands, that is. My MIL has a nice write up on her blog today that explains a little more about it. Be sure to check out her post . Tyler thoroughly enjoyed all the jokes that gave him an excuse to say the "h" word, and he proudly wore his new tshirt the day he came home.