WellsWooster’s Weblog

This turned out to be one of the quietest days and longest nights on the island. The morning was cloudy, with periodic rain. We said good-bye to Roger and Lisa as they were heading home today. I spent most of the morning on the sofa in the bay window across from the fireplace again – catching up on the email and writing on the blog.

Mindy & I headed out to the business district about lunch time and ended up at West Street Cafe. It was in this place we both remember having our first “Bar Harbor” meal in 1998. West Street Cafe has been open all of the ten years we’ve vacationed here. Mindy always gets the shrimp. The very first meal we had on Mount Desert Island was in July 1998 – at the Head of the Harbor Restaurant in Southwest Harbor. Unique. Every outdoor table was furnished with a large water squirt bottle – to deter and deflect the seagulls from swooping and snacking from the table. This made for truly exciting dining experience. Head of the Harbor has been closed the last two or three years, but driving by there on the way to Seal Cove Car Museum last Friday, I noticed a sign posted announcing it was reopening! That’s a good thing!

It rained on and off most of the day. The sun would pop out briefly and warm things up considerably. Mindy, Jane & I decided to cruise to the Park Loop Road and search out the cog railway remnants which we figured would be along the Carriage Path on the east shoreline of Eagle Lake. It was sunny and warm (the rain turned off temporarily) when we left Bar Harbor. We parked at the Bubble Pond parking area and walked the mile or so north on the Carriage Road. We did finally spot two very obscure trail cairns which ended up pointing out the cog railway! You really need to look closely and think creatively to recognize these markers. I’m not going to divulge the details here in case Roger is reading this. It’s his personal challenge to find this on his own next time he’s at Acadia.

It rained again almost all the way back to the car.

By dinner time, rain still threatening, I grabbed the umbrella when we left for Pancho Villa’s. We had a quick meal and headed over to the Criterion to see the new Indiana Jones movie. In ten straight years of coming to Bar Harbor, this was the first time we’d actually been “inside” the Criterion. What a great treasure!

After the movie, we headed back to Aysgarth where we knew Jane and Steve would be planted in front of the big screen TV for game 5 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. As we walked into the room the Red Wings added another goal and things looked great! That’s until the Penguins tied the score near the end of the third period and forced what ended up being two & a half overtime periods. Oh boy did the night get long. The rest is history as the Penguins scored the sudden death tie breaker . It would now be Wednesday before Detroit could bring the Cup to Michigan where it belonged.

I honestly felt guilty about going to Knox Road Grille and Atlantic Brewing Company for lunch on Friday without Jane, Mindy and Steve. That is why I suggested we go again on Sunday.

No, wait. Mindy said we had to get another ABC pint glass for Jake because he had broken his. That is why I suggested we go again on Sunday for lunch.

No, the real reason is because it was a gorgeous day, and what better thing to do but to caravan up the island to Town Hill with the T-tops off in a Camaro and the convertible top down in the MR2.

Regardless the reason (because of the CIA techniques I learned from Victor, no one will ever really know the truth), there we were having Dougy’s Bar-B-Que on Sunday.

Earlier in the morning, Roger & I discussed the Green Mountain Railway book that Jane & Steve have here at Aysgarth. The book “Steam to the Summit” includes a period map of dubious scale that showed the proximity of the cog railway route. The location does not appear on modern maps. It has been abandoned for decades. We decided it would be fun to try to find the actual rail bed. It took the better part of the afternoon searching around Eagle Lake on the Park Loop Road and up on the Cadillac Mountain summit road overlooks. We came up with a few theories where the route might have been along the western face of “Green Mountain.” We did eventually find it above the Park Loop Road. There still are questions we’ll try to answer tomorrow.

We had a Dinner Club tonight. Several rules were broken. It was the first time we held it on a Sunday. Half of the current members did not make it to Bar Harbor. A new temporary “fourth couple” joined the “reunion style” event. It will be the first time we’ll have two Dinner Clubs in the same month (on June 28th, we’ll have it at our house in GR). We had a great time with Roger, Lisa, Steve, Jane, Barry and Susan. Thanks Steve and Jane for hosting!

Yesterday, we all agreed that THURSDAY would be a great day for climbing. The weather has continued to be perfect since Tuesday and today was just beautiful. A little haze in the distance, but that was noteworthy only because Wednesday was the clearest day I can recall ever seeing on Mt. Desert Island.

It was agreed that we would climb Cadillac Mountain’s South Ridge Trail. Seemingly, this wouldn’t be complicated to figure out, but the planning entailed thus…

Barry was going to join us. He would be able to meet us at the trail head at 2:30 p.m. after working. Roger wasn’t going to be able to climb as his knee was particularly painful today. Lisa and Jane were going to climb up, but there would be a car staged at the summit so they didn’t have to go down the trail if they didn’t want to. Steve, Barry and I just planned to hike the round trip … up and down. Roger was going to be at the summit with his car for the possible transport of any one wishing the luxury of another way down.

The South Ridge Trail is 3.7 miles one way – almost 1,500 feet vertical gain. It’s long and fairly gradual. It took us a little under 2 hours for everyone to complete the climb to the summit. On the way we spotted an area in the forested section with wild orchids just blooming. Lisa fired up the camera for some close-ups. Further up, the views and the WIND commenced to bluster. Poor Lisa almost took flight a couple times! Walking sideways against the wind and up hill against gravity was pretty challenging.

Roger met us at the summit. Ahead of everyone else, Barry was the first of the group to attain the summit. At this point, Roger and Barry hadn’t actually met each other face to face, so when Roger happened to be shooting video of “this guy in shorts” racing to the restrooms, it was total coincidence that his subject was actually Barry!

After gathering our collective breath at the top of Cadillac Mountain, it was apparent that only Barry, Steve and I intended to go back down the trail. It was about 4:45 p.m. The incredible views of the Atlantic Ocean, Frenchman’s Bay and the Cranberry Islands were always present in front of us while descending. The wind had disappeared. It was now the clock ticking off that kept us moving quickly. Barry had a dinner commitment at 6:30 p.m. so we had to get back to the cars by 6:00 p.m. at the latest to keep Barry out of trouble.

At some point on the hike down, Barry learned his dinner was at 6 p.m., not 6:30 p.m. It was shortly after that when Barry disappeared from view – lost in the distance below – seemingly in a blink of an eye.

Dinner at McKay’s again this night at the insistence of Roger and Lisa. They, Steve, Jane, Mindy and I enjoyed another thoroughly enjoyable dinner (redundant emphasis intentional).

Roger’s Wasabi ice cream from MDI Ice Cream Company across from the Village Green could be a topic of its own. Suffice it to say that after some thought, Roger declared it not totally unacceptable. A few days later, he further declared if it was the only ice cream choice available, he’d have it again.

Walking back to the inn, we saw Victor & his brown van outside the Mobil station. He had set up a tag sale of sorts in the parking lot. We wondered aloud what Chief Nate would say.

Dinner with Steve and Jane last night at McKays Public House was the culmination of our day (Tuesday). Met Nate, the Chief of Police – at the next table. We’ve been so busy since, that I am just now getting a chance to write.

Many years ago we bought a large detailed map of Acadia Park trails. We’ve diligently marked each trail with the dates we hiked. Even though we’ve hiked some of our favorites trails multiple times, I guess some day the goal would be to hike them all. When we arrived in Bar Harbor Monday, Mindy realized that we had left our big map in GR. So we had to rely on memory. After a nice breakfast Wednesday, we set out to hike the Gorham Mountain trail, one we have never done before. Jane has often mentioned this as one of her favorites.

We drove into the park on Otter Cliff Road and parked at the Otter Cliff parking area on the Park Loop Road. We walked back toward Thunder Hole to the Gorham Mountain trail head. This is a moderately difficult trail with a vertical gain of 521′ and only a couple iron rungs. But the views are great. The trail goes northerly toward The Bowl and The Beehive, terminating very close to Sand Beach. Then we returned to Otter Cliffs via the Ocean Trail and Thunder Hole. A nice practice day for longer hikes later in the week.

Hungry, we decided to have lunch at the Jordan Pond House. It was about 1:00p.m. and we didn’t have to wait for a table. The view from the restaurant is of Jordan Pond with The Bubbles at the far distance. The south face trail of the South Bubble is where Mindy broke her finger a few years ago.

We had dinner with Steve and Jane at Geddy’s Wednesday night. Roger & Lisa arrived from Delaware this evening and we all watched the 3rd game in the playoffs – Penguins won

I almost forgot! I honestly can’t remember if it was before or after the hike. Victor stopped by the inn today inquiring about tickets to the fundraising dinner on Saturday. He didn’t make it a practice of carrying that amount of cash on him, but assured Jane that he intended to come back and pay. Victor went on to describe how he had recently suffered a stroke that caused him to “lose” three days. He didn’t need a doctor though as he believed in self-care health care. He also explained various other details of various other subjects that I didn’t listen to in detail, but recall thinking about how incredibly patient Jane was being in listening to his ramblings. It was curious to hear of his CIA training. Apparently he was intentionally mixing truth with fiction in his everyday conversations so as to make it impossible for people to determine if anything he was saying had any substance in fact. I thought this was an interesting way to live life.