At 8 this morning, I heard Graham putting on his shoes. I am beginning to believe that he possibly was switched at the hospital because the rest of us could have slept until 10 or 11 this morning but instead that boy was ready to go bright and early. Though if we would have gotten up a bit earlier this morning, we possibly could have seen a few more things today.
Robby had briefly thought that this hotel didn’t have a breakfast but we were delighted to see that they had a decent motel breakfast. Bagels seem to be the new breakfast choice for most Dennies but this place also had some huge muffins which we gobbled up. After eating, we let the kids play on the playground for about 5 minutes and then took our picture on the big chair out front.
We loaded up and headed to Acadia National Park. We are on motel/hotel row and Robby and I remembered staying at the hotel next door years ago. Early this morning, we could tell that the Labor Day holiday was going to provide Bar Harbor with lots of crowds and that it did. The visitor’s center at the park was crazy, crazy! It was so nuts that we didn’t even feel that we could wait around to watch the movie-for some reason the kids are all into the films whenever we visit some place. It didn’t seem like it was too long ago that we would avoid watching the movies because no one would sit still enough to listen.
All 4th graders can have a free National Park pass this year-saves us about 80 dollars to buy a pass for the family. Anderson was very proud of his pass and listened to everything the ranger told him. The crowds were pretty thick on the Park Loop Road but we were able to see the beautiful view. We wanted to stop at the beach area but there was no way to park anywhere around there so we headed on to Thunder Hole. Once we have been here when Thunder Hole was really crashing and was pretty awesome but today was not that day-the thunder was more like a crackle but it was still almost hypnotizing to watch the waves go in and out. They did say that Thunder Hole would definitely be crashing on Monday with the hurricane coming through.
We stopped at a garden area of Acadia and walked around there and then we headed on towards Jordan Pond. We found a great parking spot with a picnic bench right nearby. We ate our picnic lunch and then walked to the Jordan Pond House. It is the cool thing to have tea and popovers there but unfortunately it was an hours wait. I tried to just buy a popover because I have been here 4 times now and have never had a dang popover. I just want to know what a popover taste like! They don’t let you order take out for popovers so I guess that I will just never know. Once when we were here, we did buy popover mix but it was an epic fail.
But even without my popover, I was still happy because we headed to the Jordan Pond Trail around the lake. It was over 3 miles and we weren’t going to do it all but we were able to at least walk to the planks which are just boards to walk on so you don’t damage the area. It was absolutely beautiful-seriously, words can not describe. After we finished our short trek around the pond, we headed back to the car and drove up Cadillac Mountain. Robby and the kids searched the top of the mountain until they found the highest point of the mountain (thanks to me.)
After walking around the top of the mountain and going through the bookstore there (they have passport book stamps at every bookstore here so I have stayed busy stamping the kids NP passport books) we headed on back to the hotel. We unloaded the car and then went down the trail behind our building. It led to a small road that is now closed to cars and this led to the carriage roads built by Rockefeller. There is one of the famous bridges over on this side and it was right there. We were able to look at it and the big kids went down to the bottom to take some pictures. The last time that we were here, we had 4 little ones and road a carriage ride around the carriage roads. That is on my list to do again because it was just beautiful. This bridge today and the carriage roads were just as pretty. I think that this is another place that we could stay for a week and explore further.
After our walk, we came back inside to freshen up before supper. Robby had a place that he wanted to eat but the wait was pretty long. We thought we could wait that long and even put our name on the list. While we waited, we walked around the streets of Bar Harbor and around some of Frenchman’s Bay. We even stopped and ate some fudge-the kids just gobble it up and not take tiny bites to savor it. By this time, Whitman was asleep and we headed back to our restaurant.
They said that we still had about an hour to an hour and a half to wait and that just wouldn’t do. The kids were getting tired so we left. There was a bbq restaurant next door but it was completely empty which even though we were hungry, we were a bit leery of eating in a completely empty restaurant-do local people know something that we don’t know. We drove around a bit but it was now too late for us to try to sit somewhere and eat. Robby really couldn’t find any take out food anywhere nearby and we definitely wanted something hot to eat. He stopped at the grocery store and bought chicken fingers, which were already hot, and mac and cheese and mashed potatoes that needed to be heated up. We went to the lobby of the motel and heated everything up and sat down the eat.The food was delicious or maybe we were just all starving. Whitman was still sleeping and snoozed right through supper.
He did stir just as we finished. We asked him if he wanted to go to the playground with the rest of us or go back to the room with Robby. He picked the room so off they went. We played on the playground for a little bit and then walked back to our room. Whitman was already taking his shower and the others all started rotating through the shower before bed.
The kids are tired tonight and will probably be more tired in the morning since tomorrow is an early day (we hope). Reagan has a bit of a cold and I might possibly be getting one too but hopefully a good night’s rest will cure that. I think that we will all sleep well tonight-or at least I sure hope so.
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