Day 29: Walking the Ocean Path in Acadia National Park

Most of Acadia National Park is located on Mt. Desert Island. There is so much to do in the park and on the island, including in the main town, Bar Harbor, that even if you're there a week, you can barely scratch the surface on all there is to do.  We know this because we were there for a week that seemed so fun and full of activity, and yet we left with both happy memories and a list of "what we want to do next time."

Our first day there we walked out on the bar near low tide. On our second day there, we were joined by Petunia's grandparents, who left their idyllic camp to come spend a few days with us near Bar Harbor.  The main activity of the day was walking the breathtaking-at-every-turn Ocean Path.

The Ocean Path is an easy walk along a 2 mile stretch of shoreline that delivers above and beyond what it asks of the hiker.  In fact, you can opt to stay on a flat or very gradually sloping path the whole time, if you choose; although there are many options for short detours that provide for a little more exertion and even more stunning sightseeing angles.

Scenes of this path are so varied, too!  You start at a sand beach, go by Thunder Hole, of course see sweeping views of the water with all kinds of boats, take a short walk through a forest, and end up on a cliff!  How is that for a little variety?

What a magical hike we got to enjoy in perfect weather!

The Ocean Path starts above the sand beach in the background. We had walked a while, obviously, to be able to turn around and get this shot.

What does Mark see through his lens?

This cute fella taking a nap in the sun on the rocks below!

Petunia and her Nana love sharing adventures together!

Some "bunny" was here with her crew watching Thunder Hole in awe! We got some good waves that day. Thunder Hole is active because of a small cave below sea level. When the waves come in and the air pushes them out *technical talk* anyway...sometimes there is a big, loud sound like thunder. It's fun! We even got sprayed a couple times.

These are the views from the path out to the deep blue sea.

Mark turned his camera over to Petunia and climbed a few rocks.

As you can see here, most of the path is flat and easy.

Until you decide to go down to Boulder Beach, anyway.

Cairns are used as trail markers along several of the hikes in the park and so they have popped up even along the beach and other places in the park. There were several standing on Boulder Beach when we down to it, and Petunia built a small one herself.

And then you walk through the forest! What magical light!

And our final destination was the tip of those cliffs! We went right out and I sat close enough to see over so I could look for rock climbers who sometimes scale the cliff.

Here is the rewarding view from atop Otter Cliff!

With all that beauty, these are my favorite...

...views of the day!

To get a perspective of how big the island is, take a look at this map.  If you're looking at the map as a clock, then just a little "past 3:00" you will see Sand Beach and can follow it to Otter Cliff. All that scenery and adventure took place in that small percentage of the island.

We had a wonderful walk and worked up an appetite for our delicious seafood dinner in Seal Harbor, where Martha Stewart has her summer home. We ate at the Lighthouse and our butter was served in real half shells. Now that's my kind of whimsy!

Day 16: You win some, and once in a Blue Moon you lose some

As I've written about our travels to the north, I have shared that I only had reservations in one place between where we left home (Texas) and our destination for August (Maine.)

We have had a lot of luck, which I am calling Grand Adventure serendipity, on our side, and even though we've been winging it with almost no reservations in the middle of a beautiful summer, we have had no problems finding a comfortable place to stay.

When it was time to end our most delightful stay in Watkins Glen, New York, our idea was to head to the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont. Besides wanting to experience its beauty, legend has it (along with lots of websites and rv camping forums) that there are plenty of places to stay for free or nearly free in federal lands, as long as you don't need a full hook up with electricity and water.  That seemed like a great plan for us since we only wanted to spend one night and get back on the road fairly quickly.

My best guess is that we were getting a little too comfortable with our "winging it" luck. Because we loved the state park we were leaving, we did not leave very early in the day. Then we had to drive across New York and into Vermont.  Even though the National Forest is right there on the border, it takes some time to get where you are going. They don't call them the Green Mountains for nothing. Those mountains are legit!

We drove up and down, coaxing (the-yet-to-be-officially-named) RV who did a great job, but was kind of saying something like..."Umm...what??"

Cloud level driving in the aptly named Green Mountains

We still haven't fully figured out if the following story is due more to this particular National Forest, our status as newbies, or the nighttime arrival into the camping areas.  Whatever the reason, this was our experience...

I had tried to do a little reading about where a motorhome could camp for the night in the Green Mountains and we headed to a camping area. When we got there, we saw that we had arrived at a "normal" campground--albeit with very tight spaces--not the primitive wide-open fields we were expecting.

Not wanting to disturb anyone further at the late-ish hour we had arrived by unhooking our car and backing into a space, all while shining lights in every nearby camping spots' location and in general attracting more attention than a lightbulb at a junebug convention, we decided to pass on that area and look for a new spot.

We didn't know where we were heading and we were off to find a place in the wide wild forest.

In God's provision, it happened to be the night of a Blue Moon.  We sure would have had it rough without those moonbeams!

I know this is not the caliber of picture normally found here, but I wanted to give just a sense of of the wonder we felt when we saw this full, bright moon pop up right between those mountains out of nowhere!

To make our long night's story shorter, I'll just say we drove around for a couple hours. At every potential spot, we spotted homes or private businesses. Is this normal in a National Forest? We were expecting much more deserted land. We'll do a bit more homework before we plan that again.

We finally decided to "give up" our idea of roughing it in the forest and headed for a state park campground we discovered located within the forest. We made our way there and found out that it, too, was full. When it rains, it pours.

At this point we needed to stop and rest.  We pulled into a thankfully large and empty parking lot of the state park, turned around to be ready to head out as soon as possible, and settled down to a dinner of Honey Nut Cheerios with banana slices before grabbing a few restless hours of sleep.

We pulled out very early in the morning before anyone would have to tell us to leave. We put a good number of miles between us and our less-than-ideal camping spot before turning into the quintessential, small town diner for a large breakfast. We got reset, and headed out ready to tackle the new day's adventures.

My eggs florentine with breakfast potatoes were scrumptious!

You win some. You lose some.  You gain experience either way.

Day 12: The Gorge-ous Trail at Watkins Glen

If Helen of Troy is the face that launched a thousand ships, the internet picture of the waterfall-enchanted-gorge in Watkins Glen is what launched a family of three to Central New York.  I saw a picture and knew I had to see it in person.  So we came and oh, my, did we see. The views and the experience were worth all it took, too; and that was considerable.

For serious hikers, this would be an "easy" trail in that there aren't a lot of difficult or tricky challenges to climb.  Just about 850 stairs. Really.  So, it's not just a walk in the park, even though it is.

I crack myself up.

This hike was the main reason I wanted us to come to this area, so we did it on our first full day here.  We thought the weather was beautiful!  High of 84 degrees was very comfortable for us, although all the New Yorkers were complaining of the heat. Maybe it's not normally that hot here?

The stairs and trail were all in a series of levels, so you got a chance to rest and enjoy the view at one part before moving on to the next.  Around every corner was natural beauty.  We took our time, gave ourselves (okay, me) time to rest, took plenty of pictures and had a grand time.  I'm so glad we did this hike!

For readers who do not know me well, you probably don't know that I have a neuromuscular disease called Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis. (If you're really interested, you can read more about it here.) What this disease means for me is that while "on the outside" I look normal to others probably 95% of the time, I often experience varying levels of weakness, right up to and including full body paralysis.  Fortunately, the full paralysis is very, very rare. Like I can count the number of times on my hands.  However, severe and debilitating partial paralysis, like in my legs and/or arms where I can't walk or get out of bed, is a little more frequent.  I feel incredibly blessed, actually, because I know there are many who have my particular "disability" who cannot even lead an independent lifestyle.  My version has been relatively mild, all things considered, and I've enjoyed just about as close to a normal life as possible. In fact, I believe the knowledge of what I almost couldn't do spurs me on to get even more out of life!  There is no guarantee that I would have been able to do these adventures at this point in my life (I was diagnosed at age 6) much less 25 years from now at normal retirement age.  All of this was certainly one factor, though not the biggest one, in deciding to take this journey now.  None of us are promised tomorrow, and I believe I'm more acutely aware of that fact than most.

Which leads us back to a hike with over 850 stairs. Whew. Physical activity is one of the things that brings on muscle weakness and paralysis, but God has been so gracious and I feel like I've been stronger than ever since departing for our Grand Adventure.  I certainly admired every vista without taking anything for granted. 

I hope you enjoy our (mostly Mark's) pictures. If you ever find yourself with the opportunity to make it to central New York, we give this place a hearty thumbs up!

Thank you, God, for being so creative and letting us enjoy your work!

We really couldn't have asked for a better day for enjoying such magnificent scenery.

I'm so grateful we could all do this together!  This also gives an idea of how the stairs are in levels with plenty to view at each stop.

There really were a lot of people on the trail that day, which makes this gorgeous picture with only Petunia and I going up the stairs, quite a feat.

On the bridge and another splendid waterfall. God shows off his glory in this place!

Hi!

"In her eyes"

We'd come quite a ways up by this point. Petunia's gymnastics training was showing because she wanted to cross this log. Ummm...no!

This is one of the few pictures in this whole post (or blog) that I took myself, and it's pretty much just like the shot that compelled me to come visit this place! 

Underneath one of the waterfalls.

Mark under the same waterfall.

I wasn't so sure about playing in the water, but they won me over.

We did it! No one was as surprised as I was! Or as grateful!

Post-hike? Kicked back and enjoying a book is about the norm.

We've had a wonderful time here in Watkins Glen State Park and feel so grateful for the gifts of rest and beauty, activity and adventure, and time together!

Some adventures are more pleasant than others

Petunia had a loose tooth for a long time.  This one tooth just did not want to leave her mouth, so it hung on and on, no matter how much she worked on it.  In fact, this particular tooth kind of became its own character in our family, it stayed around so long.

"Is he still there?"  "Yep." "You working on it some more?"  "Yes, but it gets looser and then tightens up again."

These were our conversations about The Tooth That Wouldn't Leave.

So imagine our surprise when we're eating lunch in a little pizza place in the village of Watkins Glen and Petunia comes back from the bathroom with bleeding gums and tooth in hand!  We all celebrated!! 

After being admired, the tooth got set down on a napkin as we finished up.  Ok, let's be real...that pretty much made us want to finish up anyway.  Here the details get a bit fuzzy, but I believe the general consensus is I am the one at fault for scooping up the tooth-holding napkin along with the others and throwing them into the trash.  We walked out to our car, everyone thinking someone else had the tooth.

Fortunately, before we even got in the car, Petunia asked to see her tooth.  After a short round of "Who's on first?" we realized what must have happened. This was unfortunate because Petunia really wanted to keep this tooth.  In fact, she had already decided she was going to write the Tooth Fairy asking if there was any way that she could keep this one instead of giving it up because she had worked so long and hard on it.

Mark said we had to at least know we had done everything we possibly could to recover the missing tooth. So, we marched back inside.  I was not feeling extremely enthusiastic right about this point, if you're wondering.

Knowing we had just left, we tried to do a cursory, nonchalant glance inside the top of the trashcan.  

Just writing that sentence makes me laugh out loud. Better than crying, I guess.

Much to our chagrin, that wasn't going to cut it.  We spoke to some employees and got permission to take the trash bag outside for a full inspection. They even volunteered gloves!  Bless you, pizza employees with hearts!

So, we started The Search.

Might not go down as my favorite memory of the whole year.

Fortunately this was a delicious eatery and people pretty much cleaned their plates! We were removing lots of empty plates and pizza boxes.  It could have been much worse.

Petunia was a full participant. She really wanted this tooth.  I was a participant, too, but was the only one taking pictures. We didn't exactly want to drag this out any longer than necessary.

Mark was the hero who found THE napkin with the tiny little tooth still safely ensconced within its folds.  

There was much rejoicing in the land!!

So, yes, some adventures are more pleasant than others, but some things are worth unpleasantness.

And the journey begins! Or does it?

Nope. Not yet. More stuff to do. Wait a couple days. By "wait", I mean, work your hineys off.

Ok, ready? Let's leave tonight! Oh, we lost the key to the tow hitch for the dolly and have to call a locksmith. Not yet. We don't want to leave for our Grand Adventure "hangry." Let's go to IHOP instead. (True story.)

Let's leave this morning! Loaded up and oh-so-ready to pull out and...guess what? We're missing the adapter so the brake lights will work on our towed car.  No kidding, Petunia and I just waited in the RV while Mark ran to the autoparts store to get one.  

I think at that point I was afraid to go back inside the house. The whole crazy idea of this adventure had started to feel un-real; like we somehow weren't going anywhere, but instead just crossing off a never-ending to do list to be ready to go on a 'someday' that kept moving and becoming ever more elusive.

Somehow, though, on the afternoon of July 16th, we actually set off!  Destination? Didn't have one.

We were seriously spending every moment getting ready to go instead of seeing where we'd go. Well, we did have plans for our original first two nights on the road. When those days came and went with us still at home, though, I just couldn't stop and plan one.more.thing.

So I did some interneting on the road and found Queen Wilhelmina State Park in the Ouachita National Forest. It is amazing!  I feel like after all we have been through the last few weeks, God led us here for a respite. We are spending our first two nights here and I look forward to telling you more about what we are seeing and doing.

We have learned some lessons already:

1. This is not easy. At least we can say with certainty that getting ready to go is definitely not easy.

2. We're not in charge of all the details (like the timing) but God is and His has proven better.

3. It's worth it.

We had  some pretty great driving conditions! Open roads where rolling hills turned into mountains; greenery, a beautiful lake, clear sky...so grateful!

"Journey of the Ligntning Bug"

This photo was taken by Mark, but we know the "welcome" was sent by God.