Maine Day 3 / Poor Planning / Visitor Bus Complaints/Acadia National Park: where the mountains and ocean meet

Day 3: Driving from Freeport to Bar Harbor was kinda weird for us. We stopped in Bath (where we want to retire, maybe) There was an antique car show there. Antique car shows seem to be following me every town I go to has one. Maybe I have been hanging around small town America for too long. I like to look at the cars but they are pretty much the same from state to state.

From Bath, we took a few back roads thru the Maine countryside where all we saw was small pine trees and a few houses. It was beautiful even on a dull damp day. We stopped at a flea market and found the home we will retire to.

Acadia National Park


A beautiful park but we were so unprepared for this. We stopped at the Visitor Center and saw that there were buses taking you around the park. Neither of us researched the park much so we had no idea where to get on or off and what to do in the park. As we quickly found out because we got off at the bottom of a 2.3 mile hike and a 30 minute wait for the next bus. The trip around the park is over an hour by bus and while the park is beautiful we were more afraid to get off the bus then to stay on it. Denise had fancy sneakers on and me in my Birkenstocks. The unfortunate thing is that the bus didn't talk about Acadia so we didn't know the highlights of the park. As we kept on, we realized how well organized and informed everyone else was about what they were going to do at Acadia. Dumb ass is how I felt!

We finally got off at Sand Beach: where the mountains meet the ocesn. See for yourself. Beautiful!!!

And back to Bar Harbor making it all worth it. One thing about Bar Harbor that I found out and didn't like so much was that it is only alive during tourist season. It is not a year round town.

Maine adventure day 2/ How Denise got her groove back

Day 2 started out with us heading towards Booth Bay Harbor for a boat trip to Cabbage Island.

First stop: Bath Maine. As soon as we pulled into this small quaint town, I was comfortable with that at home feeling! As we walked the streets, talked to the locals (who weren't always local, some were retired and chose to move to Bath) both Denise and I felt like we were home.

This is why:

While we were in Bath, Denise and I talked about retiring to that community and started talking to people about that. We met this couple from Manhattan who retired to Bath and have lived her for 5 years. The big question was: what do you do in the winter. He said the first winter, they stayed here and subsequent winters they go off visiting family, friends and whatever for 3 months. So it's just like those Floridians who flee during the summer, only they flee during the winter. Still it's something to think about because I know I am not going to retire where I am living now and I know that I need to get out of there for at least a month in the summertime now.

Off to Booth Bay Harbor for the Cabbage Island Ferry.

The boat ride was beautiful and chilly. I love saying chilly because it was in the high 90's when I left town so chilly was welcomed. The tour took us to see lighthouses and as a bonus we got to see one seal. OMG he was so cute but fast to get away and I actually only saw his head. But I am counting it as a sighting. Lots of sail boats and many barrier islands. It was amazing the hear the tour guide say that most of them were privately owned islands. One of the islands had one house on it and you could rent that house for $10000 a month. Now that would be nice, wouldn't it.

This was our view:

And here is the approach to Cabbage Island, the only way to get here is by boat. This is also how Denise got her groove back.

Need I say more? This handsome young 60 something was the first thing we saw on the island and Denise started talking to him while we were on the boat and he was helping us dock it. He is one of the island owners, one of the brothers and one of the nicest, handsomest men you could meet. Of course, it's his job to be friendly, greet us but it was also so nice to see Denise with her groove again! Go Denise, you got it girl!

Ok, so enough of the "cute old guy". Here are other things we saw on our approach: the clambake, lobster bake pit, and the cute old guys older brother....oh wait....here's the pictures:

So I had to throw the hot cute older man back in one more time because he was definitely a hot cute older man!

and more pictures of our clambake

Today, we head up to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park and if I NEVER see a gift shop again, I will be happy! More tomorrow!