Castle in the Clouds

Sometimes the Getaway Van tackles a trip nearer home.  We wanted to do some hiking in the Lakes region, and a quick google search turned up a suggestion for Castle in the Clouds.  Despite our many years in NH, we've never been there, so we decided to give it a try.

Those who know me well (or have spent any time reading this blog) are aware that I am definitely a planner.  Usually, whenever we go somewhere, I am pretty well aware of how to get there, where to park, and what we'll see.  This is a result of my tendency to want to maximize each experience -- I want to make sure we don't miss anything.  However, on this trip I only had time for items 1 and 2 on that list, and so we parked at the trailhead and set off with no real idea of what we would encounter.

The Falls of Song

We wandered up the path through the forest.  Eventually we began to hear the sounds of rushing water in the distance.  The sounds got louder and louder, and eventually we could see a rushing stream in a ravine far below.  After a mile or two we saw a sharp right turn off the trail labeled, "Lower Brook Walk".  The kids wanted to take it, and we had no agenda, so we said, "Sure" and headed off.

Bridal Veil Falls

At first this appeared to be a mistake.  We'd spent the past couple of miles climbing, and now we found ourselves undoing all that hard work, sliding down a steep trail that perversely appeared to go not only downhill, but also back the way we'd come from.  However, the trail soon leveled out and curved around again, and we found ourselves alongside an extremely scenic brook, winding through the trees and cascading down rocks as it made its way down the mountain.

For the next hour or so we traveled alongside the brook, with the kids jumping in and out of the cascades and pools.  Every now and then we'd come to a substantial waterfall.  Signs along the trail told us that this used to be a summer resort for the wealthy, and showed pictures of the ornate bridges that used to span many of the falls.

Zeus's little brother?

Eventually we came out onto the castle grounds on top of the mountain.  These were pretty extensive, with a pond a several buildings.  The pond provided much entertainment, since it was stocked with large trout that would leap up partially out of the water when food was thrown to them.  There was also a stable, which of course was of great interest to Nadia.  When I mentioned Castle in the Clouds the first thing she said was that they had a giant horse there.  I knew nothing about this, but it turned out she was correct -- the castle was the former home of Zeus, supposedly the largest horse in the world!  Sadly, at the stable we discovered that Zeus had died this January, but we did see a couple of other massive horses that may have been his relatives.  We made a donation to the Zeus memorial fund.

At this point we set off across the hilltop to find the castle itself.  (At this point I should mention that we did not fork out the $52 that it would take to get a tour of the castle itself.  So if you were hoping for lots of interior photos and detail you are sadly out of luck.)  We saw it in the distance and were remarking on its cool appearance when we arrived to find it was only the carriage house.  We also discovered that we were not in fact on top of the mountain -- next to the carriage house was a steep upward path labeled, "No castle access".

We took the path anyway, hoping for a nice view, and found the sign was rather a lie, since we came out in the castle's backyard.  We were rewarded for taking the final climb with a sweeping vista of Lake Winnepesaukee and the mountains beyond.

So, I have to admit that the best thing about this day was that we never knew what would be around the next corner.  From the series of waterfalls, to the trout, to the giant horses and the great view -- everything was a surprise and made us feel like explorers making new discoveries (even amidst one of the larger tourist attractions in the area).  My takeaway from this trip: Leave the planner behind every now and then.

Days 3 & 4 – Sea, sun, & salt

South Carolina is not a bad place to be in the winter time, especially if you’re from New Hampshire and have a generous notion of what constitutes “warm”.   High temperatures have been around 70 degrees yesterday and today, which is just fine by us.  The sun is unexpectedly strong too – as evidenced by my bright red lobster legs.

Seagull & pelican

We are staying at the Sea Pines Resort way out at the end of Hilton Head Island.  It covers a large amount of territory, all of it crisscrossed with bike paths and surrounded by ocean.  Our first order of business, upon arriving yesterday, was to hop on the bikes and find our way to the beach.  It was high tide and there was only a thin ribbon of sand down at the tip of South Beach, but we had a nice walk to the breakwater and the girls were able to work on their shell collections.

We’re staying near the South Beach Marina, which is a quaint little village (“Just like New England!” the reservations lady gushed) way down at the end of Sea Pines, and home of the famous Salty Dog Café.  I thought it would be nice to have a little town with shops and restaurants within easy walking distance – but had not reckoned on how quiet this place is in February.  We were almost the only people out and about when we walked down there after dinner, and found much of it was closed.  We did get to see some cool tropical birds inside Jake’s Cargo, and luckily found that the Salty Dog ice cream parlor was in operation (though I can’t imagine why since I think we were the only customers all night).

Macaws and parrot in the middle of a souvenir shop

Today was a wonderful day.  Bob and I went for a run along the beaches and bike paths, then we all headed out for the day.  Based on the weather forecast this was to be the warmest day, so we headed for the beach.  This time it was low tide, and there was a huge strip of exposed beach.  The beaches here are very hard-packed, and so are wonderful for bike-riding.  The bikes they rent down here have fat tires and a single gear, and are just right for riding on the flat sand.  Within five minutes of arriving we were watching a dolphin swim just a short way offshore.

Of course, after a few miles of riding, the girls had worked up a sweat and it didn’t take them long to dive into the water.  The locals, dressed in their sweatpants and windbreakers, looked on in horrified fascination.  I could only shrug and say, “We’re from New Hampshire”.  At fifty degrees, the water wasn’t much colder than Hampton Beach in midsummer.

We rode home on the inland bike paths, making a stop at Lawton Stables.  Nadia’s dearest love is horses, and the stables also has a petting zoo with various farm animals – plus a friendly deer that’s free to roam around.  (Helpful tip: if you are going to a petting zoo and want to get lots of attention (in the form of licking) from the animals, it is a good idea to go for a swim in the salty ocean first.)  We also spied several gators lounging around the various lagoon and canals, but we did not attempt to pet those.

Our package here included a $50 coupon for a fancy restaurant.  We did some research and found that they had a children’s menu, so spruced ourselves up as best we could and headed over to Harbour Town, the center of Sea Pines.  The Topside Waterfront is on the second floor at the base of the iconic Harbour Town lighthouse, and we got a corner table looking out over the ocean in both directions.  We needn’t have worried about the kids, since we were pretty much the only people in the restaurant – also, kids don’t get to antsy in restaurants if they can watch a beautiful sunset and frolicking dolphins while waiting for their food.

Air temperature: 68.  Water temperature: 50.

***

From Bob:

This was a pretty predictable day.  The Sea Pines employee sitting on the rocking chair outside the Welcome Center yesterday proved it.  He overheard this conversation between me and Lanie as we sat on another two rocking chairs outside the Welcome Center:

Lanie: Do they have oak trees here?

Me: I think so. They have a special kind of oak tree here that grow really big and have lots of branches.

Lanie: Do they have maple trees here?

Me:  I’m not sure about that one.  We’ll have to keep our eyes open as we ride around and see if we spot any maples.

Lanie: We’ll have to see if they have any ferns, too.

Local fauna

Me: Yep.

Lanie: Do they have any pines?  Oh yeah, it’s Sea Pines!

Me: We can see some pines right here. And palm trees.

Lanie: I love palm trees.

The man looked at me and said, “You’re going to have a good time here.”

And so we have, looking at all the kinds of trees (not a lot of maples, though).  We’ve rode our smooth Beach Cruisers up the beach this morning, picnicked, rode across to the horse stables/petting zoo, then rode home on among the forest bike path.  It all got better as the day went on.

Friendly, salt-loving deer

Other things we could have told you yesterday:  the girls would go In the water, no matter how cold it was (of the hundreds and hundreds of people we saw on the beach today, only one person not in our family got in over their waist – virtually no one else went in even up to their ankles); we would cover a lot of ground (Jen hit her fitbit steps goal by early evening, even though fitbit does not recognize cycling as a worthy activity); we would wind up needing something we wished we brought from home (aloe lotion for sunburn -- $8 a bottle).  

Days 1 & 2: Escape from the snow

This seems ill-advised.  Fortunately, I was not there to
spoil the fun.

We’re settled in here at the Sea Pines and we’ve started to get the lay of the Hilton Head.  As nice as it is, it may not live up to Watkinsville, GA, and our friends the Byers.   Of course the value of good friends is difficult to quantify, and the Byers’ hospitality was top-notch.  But it really was Abby the puppy who stacked the deck. 

Unlike Lanie, Zoe and Nadia managed to successfully
clear the stream.

The girls spent the last day and a half frolicking in the woods behind our hosts’ home with their friends Riley, Cole and Connor, and with Abby the dog.  The tree house and trampoline were barely touched, but the stream and ravine were thoroughly explored and the grove of bamboo was harvested for building materials.  At some point Riley offered up an “arcade” with real prizes (Lanie garnered a fistful of candy and Nadia is taking home a prized ice cream scoop with a handle fashioned like a pig).  They seem to have developed a few new types of tag along with a game that consists of jumping from the six-foot bank of the ravine over the river onto the sandy shore beyond.  Lanie does not seem to have the leg strength to carry her all the way over the stream.  Luckily, she took her sisters’ advice and put on her bathing suit for this game.

Saturday was devoted largely to travel -- including a 6 am bus ride from Portsmouth to Logan, a two-hour flight to Charleston and a four hour drive into Georgia.   We appreciated seeing Tyra, Jeb, and their kids, and we definitely took to maneuvering around outside without stepping over snow banks, or without the need for boots, or even shoes in general.   We agreed when Zoe pointed out that the green grass and blooming trees gave us signals of May even though there’s a week left of February to go.

Sunday’s highlights included a trip to a small Zoo in Athens, then to the University of Georgia’s main campus, where all the kids spent about an hour climbing up inside a gigantic magnolia tree.  Athens is a true college town, with a beautiful campus and an active downtown offering many appealing lunch options.  We decided on pizzas at the Mellow Mushroom.

One highlight from the zoo was watching a bunch of ill-fated
crickets being fed to hungry frogs.

The big adventure of the day (perhaps it will eventually stand as the biggest adventure of the whole trip) was a walking excursion along and in the creek that runs through the Byers’ back yard.  Jeb said they had once before completed the trip from their house downstream to the junction with the Middle Oconee River.   It seemed like a fine idea until Lanie’s teeth started chattering.  She and Cole started running out of gas about two-thirds of the way to the big river, our way made more difficult than Jeb expected because of multiple trees that had fallen in the creek during last week’s ice storm.  We managed to follow the creek to the junction and then hike back via the high country (including some time walking on train tracks and a few cross-country treks across private property) and make it home in time for everyone to have a hot shower, eat some dinner and collapse into bed.

Lanie caught an escaped cricket, whom
she named "Hoppers" and carried around
for the rest of the day.  She was very
disappointed that I would not allow
 Hoppers in the car for the ride home.

Monday is an early morning for the Byers – 6:40 school bus for Riley and Cole.  As a result, we were on the road early and had a relatively uneventful four-hour drive to Hilton Head (second biggest adventure of the trip so far – lunch at Estill, SC’s China Town restaurant).   Without too much navigational trouble we made it to the Sea Pines resort and are ready for the good life.

***

From Jen:

When we realized our friends the Byers lived only four hours from Hilton Head, we gave our kids a choice.  We had promised them a week at a beach resort with very little driving.  We told them that instead we could spend the first couple of days with our friends, but it would involve 4+ hours in the car each way and NO COMPLAINING.  They didn’t hesitate for an instant – the unanimous decision was to detour to Georgia.

How many kids can you spy in this tree?

So, we’ve added another state to our list.  I think this means that the kids have now been in every state on the eastern seaboard except for North Carolina.  And due to Google’s very creative maneuvering (I think I must have accidentally checked off “Avoid towns of more than 1000 people” or something), we saw a fair amount of Georgia (and South Carolina) countryside. 

At the Mellow Mushroom.  Much less sketchy than China Town.

The “NO COMPLAINING” part didn’t entirely work out, but this was partially due to the fact that on both driving days we hit the lunch hour with nary a restaurant in sight.  Saturday, having stupidly passed up the Chile’s that was right outside the airport gates, we found ourselves, hours later, gratefully staggering into a combination Subway/Domino’s/gas station in some nameless small town.  En route back to South Carolina today, we had almost resigned ourselves to a gas station Blimpie’s when we spied a sign for a Chinese restaurant just off the main road.  This place appeared extremely sketchy, with a single employee eyeing us in a puzzled and suspicious manner and a single restroom with an “Out of Order” sign on it (which fortunately turned out to be a lie).  Zoe, who was starving and loves Chinese food, took one look at the place and said, “Maybe we should keep going.”  However, in the end it seemed to work out pretty well – there was no food that was actually prepared since there were no other customers at the time, so everything we got was fresh made.  It took a little longer, but I think improved the quality.  Also, no negative digestive repercussions as of this point.

In any case, all are agreed that the detour was well worth it.  Even if we had done nothing more than sit outside in the sunshine in short sleeves, catching up with friends and listening to the kids frolic in the stream out back, it would have been worth it.  And now, relaxed and invigorated, we can plunge into Phase II of this trip and hope it goes equally well

I could get used to this.

.

We fought the rain and the rain won

The weather did not improve overnight.

 

However, we still counted ourselves somewhat lucky, since the torrential downpours that we'd heard pounding on the tent overnight had ceased and we were back to drizzle and tree-rain.  Nadia greeted me in the morning with this: "Mom, there's a huge puddle of water in the corner..."  Turns out they SPILLED A WATER BOTTLE INSIDE THE TENT.  As if we didn't have enough water problems.

 

The chill persisted and a hot breakfast and tea were called for.  Bob made a delicious hash and the smell was sufficiently good to pull reluctant girls from their warm sleeping bags.

 

The "summit" on Bar Island

Outdoor activities didn't seem too promising, so we headed for a touch tank activity being held at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.  Unfortunately upon arriving we discovered that I'd incorrectly remembered the time and the Natural History Museum, where the touch tank was, was not yet open.

 

Theoretically, a beautiful view of Bar Harbor

So, despite half-hearted protests from Nadia and the fact that Lanie had left her raincoat in the tent (also, did I mention that both Zoe and Lanie left their sneakers outside the tent overnight?), we went into Bar Harbor and set off for Bar Island.  At low tide, the island is connected to Bar Harbor by a sandbar, and you can walk across on the sand.  The kids would have had a ball tide-pooling here if they weren't so cold, but Lanie still managed to find a large number of shells to collect (which I believe are still sitting in my raincoat pocket).  On Bar Island we took a little hike to the summit, and saw what I'm sure would have been a beautiful view across the harbor in less foggy conditions. 

 

Back in Bar Harbor, the rain started in earnest.  We had ducked into a tourist information center and were bleakly thumbing through a newspaper, looking for things to do in the rain, when I came across something exciting.  The local microbrewery, which Bob and I had given longing glances as we passed, had an ad for beer AND SODA tastings.  To me, that said - "Kids welcome!"  So we walked through the pouring rain to the Atlantic Brewing Company, where Bob and I tried four kinds of beer and the kids tried homemade root beer and blueberry soda.

 

By this point the rain had become a deluge, and we realized we were unfortunately a fair way from the car.  By the time we got back we were all drenched.  The kids in their wet sandals were now all far better off than me in my sodden sneakers, which had felt so warm and dry that morning.

 

Rather than enjoying a scenic view, we ate our ragtag lunch in a parking lot, rain pounding on the car all the while.  Luckily it was by now the correct time for the touch tank presentation, and we spent quite a while listening to the ranger and exploring the little museum.  (As with the water bottle inside the tent, Lanie managed to compound our water issues by getting the sleeves of her sweatshirt entirely drenched in the touch tank.)

 

When the rain let up a bit, we set off down the park loop road and stopped at Sand Beach.  The park had been regularly taunting us with pictures and postcards of this beach, drenched in sun, with happy bathing-suited people frolicking about in the water.  The scene was rather different for us -- in fact, we had the whole beautiful beach to ourselves.  We didn't stay too long.

 

At Sand Beach

Since it was not really raining at this point, we set off on a walking trail along the rocks of the coastline, toward Thunder Hole about a half mile away.  It was a LONG half-mile, but the views were gorgeous and Thunder Hole was worth the trip -- though it wasn't actually thundering at that time, Zoe and Nadia loved climbing around on the rocks and splashing through the water.  Lanie at this point (still having no raincoat) was too cold and tired to want to do anything but go back to the car.

 

Yes, as a matter of fact we DID manage
to get Junior Ranger badges!

Bob and I had spent a fair amount of time debating plans during the day.  We kept consulting different weather forecasts and trying to decide whether to hang on or throw in the towel.  Eventually we'd seen that the little Bar Harbor pizza restaurant/movie theater was showing Monsters' University at 5:30, so we decided to tough it out and head there at dinnertime.  By the time we got back, we could just go to bed and hope for better things the next morning.

 

Unfortunately, when we went back to change into drive clothes before the movie, we discovered that some kind of calamity had befallen our tarp/tent setup and the tent was now half-full of water.  Well, you don't have to hit us over the head with a hammer -- this was the last straw and we were out of there.  Nadia and Lanie were very disappointed -- Lanie cried and cried -- while Zoe seemed happy enough to go home to a warm house.  (This is the exact opposite of what I would have predicted, by the way.)

 

At Thunder Hole

Nadia and Zoe were great, though -- they really rallied to help us break camp in record time.  Within an hour of when we'd discovered the wet tent, we were on the road, heading toward home.  (The car was an utter disaster, with wet clothes and towels and tent parts everywhere, but that couldn't be helped.)  I couldn't help but pity the poor saps who were lined up to enter the campground (this being the Friday night before the 4th of July).  And the huge platters of Chinese food that were put before us at the Noodle House in Brewer, Maine did much to raise everyone's spirits.

 

Lest you worry that the kids were too scarred by this experience, they spent the next night at home -- sleeping in the tent in the back yard.

****

From Bob:

We left Acadia with a lot more to see.  Truly.  We spent a lot of time telling the kids things like: "Right out there, where all the fog is, there a beautiful ocean."  Many sentences started: "On a clear day, you would see..."  Sometimes we said: "If it wasn't so wet..."  

As a testament to how wet we were, check out the picture of the girls at Sand Beach.  They stayed on the stairs and didn't even go onto the sand.  Normally, it would have taken the National Guard to keep them from getting knee deep in the water by the time the shutter on the camera closed.  The kids were troopers, but the elements really kept us in check.

I could tell Jen's optimism was flagging as the day dripped on, as was mine.  The kids, to their great credit, were against leaving.  They wanted to stick it out.  So, when the tent collapsed and provided the final straw, there was some release for the adults and much disappointment from the kids.  Lanie cried the whole time we took the tent down.

It didn't take long for everyone to make peace with our fate.  It didn't hurt that our fate included a stop at Noodles and Company.  It might not look like much, but for $50 we got totally filled up with good Chinese food for dinner, and then we got filled up again for lunch the next day.  

We're definitely swinging through Brewer, ME, on our next trip to Acadia.  

And, we're definitely going back to Acadia to see all the stuff we didn't see this time...and maybe pick up a few more popovers in the process.

"The Vacation State"? Ha!

The view of the Atlantic, a short walk from our campsite

Alert readers of last year's cross country trip blog may recall that we had almost freakishly good weather.  Honestly, over the whole five weeks I'm not sure if we ever took our raincoats out of the car.  Almost like someone had made a deal with the devil or something.

Well, apparently the time has come to pay the piper.

As we were driving northward on Wednesday evening, heading toward our campground in Acadia National Park, squinting through the torrential downpour and watching water from the semi-flooded highway fly up to window height in our heavily-laden van, Bob and I were quietly talking about plan B.  What sort of hotels might there be in Bangor, ME?  Soon, though, the downpour slowed to a drizzle and so we pressed onward.

At Blackwoods Campground, everything was dripping.  Especially the large number of trees that hovered over our campsite.  So while it wasn't actually raining, every time a breeze blew splatters of water fell on our heads.  Nevertheless, we managed to set up the tent, eventually get a fire going and even cook some chicken and rice, and later s'mores, over it.  The girls and I walked down the shore path to see the ocean at night, roaring away far below the rocky coastline.

We were awakened multiple times by heavy rains beating on the tent, but by morning we were back to just the tree-drizzle, so we counted ourselves lucky.  (At this point we were also counting ourselves foolish for not having packed more warm clothing.  Will we never learn?)  We warded off the chill with a fire, bacon and eggs, and hot tea, then started planning our day.

Acadia is rather large, like many national parks, but unlike most of them has only one visitor center, up near Bar Harbor by the entrance to Mount Desert Island.  We didn't really want to spend the morning retracing our steps in the car, but we did want to get some park information and a good weather forecast (as well as -- of course -- the Junior Ranger program books).  We'd planned to do some bike-riding on Acadia's famous network of carriage roads, and we saw that we could get to the visitor center on them, so we decided to kill two birds with one stone.  The visitor center looked to be  about 15 miles away, but we did not let that daunt us.  "Your friends the Brookses do that kind of mileage before breakfast," is what we told the children.  Also, we packed a couple of Hershey bars.

Bob's bike seat was soaked
from the car ride.  This was
his elegant solution.

Hauling our bikes up the stairs to the
carriage road

It's good that no one told us in advance how hilly this place is.  Even before we got to the carriage roads, we had to do a couple of mostly uphill miles on the Park Loop Road, rapidly causing the girls to start stripping off raincoats and fleeces.  When we got on to the carriage roads (which we had to access via a set of stairs -- what kind of joke is that for roads that are largely meant for cyclists?), the hill continued.

I should say here that I had by far the best of this deal.  Bob and I have decent road bikes but not mountain bikes, so I was riding on a bike borrowed from our friend Craig Haskell, which was miles better than our old rattletrap that Bob was riding.  In addition, Bob had the "tagalong" (one of those third-wheel things that kind of makes a bike into a tandem) hooked on so Lanie could ride behind.  The weight of this whole contraption was such that if Bob stopped on a hill, there was no getting started again.

Another wonderful thing about the carriage
roads was the excellent signage at every
intersection.

Lanie was the most cheerful of the lot.  She sat there with a smile, occasionally pedaling, sometimes attempting to give Bob an aneurysm by making statements like, "I like pedaling backward better than pedaling forward -- it's much easier!" or "If I drag my foot against the wheel, the wheel tries to take my foot with it!"  Sometimes she would stand up to pedal, her whole body listing to one side then the other, which I know from experience makes the bike teeter terrifyingly.

Luckily, the carriage roads were beautiful -- car-free and uncrowded.  In our ride we passed through gorgeous views of ocean and lakes and ponds and woodlands.  We had a picnic (good old peanut butter again!) on the shores of Eagle Lake, and thanks to our excellent map didn't get lost even once.  (I should add here more praise for this map.  I find that I enjoy a trip like this more if I know exactly where I am, and what the name of that body of water that I'm passing is, and how far it is until the next turning.  Also, Acadia has such interesting and poetic names.  Breakneck Pond.  The Bubbles.  Witch Hole.  Aunt Betty's Pond.  I wish I had a history on where they came from.)

Our lunch spot on Eagle Lake.

Eventually, we did make it to the visitor center.  And all those miles and miles of uphill travel were undone in an instant, as we made a sharp and steep descent to the parking lot.  I didn't ruin the children's fun by reminding them that we would need to go back the same way.

Wishing to avoid a mutiny, Bob and I decided to alter our homeward journey a bit.  While our new route would be a little longer, it had the immense benefit of passing by the Jordan Pond House, a beautiful place where you can sit on the lawn overlooking the pond and gorge yourself on their famous popovers.  With visions of popover sundaes in their heads, the girls were able to keep on moving.

Unfortunately we didn't have a topographical map, so we again didn't realize that our new route would be even more uphill than the last.  Really unrelentingly uphill.  But apart from an incident where my chain came off and got stuck and I had to be rescued by a passing Good Samaritan with pliers (luckily, since Bob was way ahead of me up the path and there was no way he was going to ride that thing back down the hill again -- I could have died back there and he wouldn't have known) we had a pretty successful ride.  And the popover sundaes were worth every minute of it.  Seriously, their homemade ice cream was the best ice cream I've ever had.  Maybe the best thing I've ever had, period.  (Bob thinks that my opinion may have been skewed by low blood sugar but I'm sticking to it.)

Jordan Pond

After sitting outside in the cold mist for a while, and eating ice cream, we were all freezing.  Fortunately, a few minutes on our bikes had solved that problem.  The ride home was a bit tricky because the Park Loop Road is one-way, so we couldn't retrace our steps entirely.  We ended up going back on the regular roads, which were not nearly so pleasant and were STILL very hilly.  Luckily it was only a few miles or we would have had a mutiny on our hands.

Despite the huge popover sundaes, we were all famished by the time we got dinner ready.  Sausages cooked over the fire had never tasted so good.
***
From Bob:

Nadia started a game last summer that goes like this: whenever you see a license plate from a new and unusual place -- let's say Guam -- you say in a funny Nadia voice "Guuuaaaam license plate" and try to tickle someone near you.  There was a lot of tickling and funny Nadia voices around on this trip.  Acadia packs 'em in from all over -- Tennessee, Texas, Maryland, Florida, Colorado, Virginia, we saw them all.  The van next to us in the campground was from California.

So you can feel proud, fellow New Englanders, that we have a gem here in Acadia, and it draws folks from all around.  I'd say roughly 73 percent were there at least partly for the popovers. We saw  the most diversified array of car tags in the parking lot of the Jordan Pond House.

And let me tell you, it was nice leaning the gray beater and tagalong against a tree* and walking past all the Massachusetts and Connecticut cars waiting to find a parking space.  Bike riding has many advantages.  Another one is that you can eat ice cream and chocolate sauce with impunity -- especially if you've ridden a good portion of the park's carriage road system.  I figure we must've covered about half of the 45 miles they have.

Seeing the old US Park Service arrowhead and all the people in ranger hats brought me back to last summer.  So did our camp plates and our fold-up cooking utensils.  One nice surprise was that we did a good job putting things away last year.  Just about everything we needed was waiting of us in the two Tupperware bins that hold our camping gear-- even a tarp and bungee cords, which I forgot we had and bought a whole other set.  A few things we do need to add are: a hatchet for turning camp wood into kindling, some dish soap, and a larger water vessel.  Another box of matches would be good, too.  The people in the van across the road gave us a box that was about 1/8th full because matches was another thing we forgot to put into the camp boxes.


* No one is likely to want to abscond with my bike, and even if someone tried, they would expire on the first hill unless they had my thunder thighs or a five year old who knew how to pedal.  The bike lock we brought was saved for Craig's bike.