Down East

After leaving Dan’s cousin’s house on the shores of South Twin outside of Millinocket, we traveled about 100 miles southeast to coastal Maine. We setup at Timberland Acres RV Park just outside of Ellsworth, ME and a 20 minute drive from Acadia National Park. We had plans in place to visit with more family and childhood friends.

Acadia National Park

We wanted to squeeze as many classic Acadia activities as we could into our short stay as well as entertaining visitors. On our first day here, we brought our bikes into the park in order to ride the famous carriage roads. The visitor center parking lot was our best option for parking the truck and starting our ride. We combined the Eagle Lake loop with the Jordan Pond loop which resulted in a total of just more than 20 miles. If you were to ask us, we’d swear that 19 of the 20 miles were up hill but that just may have been our imagination. As Amy said, the roads were an Escher design and we took our loop in the wrong direction. It was a beautiful, sunny and cool late summer morning; perfect for bike riding along the carriage roads.

We returned to the campground in time to cleanup and prepare dinner for Amy’s sister, Barb, her husband, Gleason and their son, Timothy, to join us for dinner and an evening of catching up. Barb came bearing gifts that included a gift card for Pat’s Pizza, located just down the road from our campground. Pat’s is a usual stop of ours whenever we are in the area and this cemented our decision to dine there later in the week. We had a wonderful visit and look forward to the next time our paths cross.

With the carriage road ride checked off the list, it was time for a sunrise photography expedition on the Park Loop Road near Otter Cliffs. Even with Dan missing a couple turns as he tried to drive to the location from memory, we arrived in plenty of time to catch the sun rising out of the ocean off the rugged, rocky coast of Maine. Once the sun was up and the golden hour had passed, we started our trip back to the campground and came upon a rafter of wild turkeys as we left the Park Loop Road.

That afternoon Dan’s childhood friend, Mary, and her husband Steve came over to visit and talk about our adventures on the road. After the grand tour of our 5th wheel (it really doesn’t take long to give a tour), Mary and Steve drove us into Bar Harbor where we took a short hike across the sand bar to Bar Island. Even though Mary has lived in this area since high school, she had not done the hike to Bar Island, which can only be done during low tide. One must not linger too long on the island or you can’t get back until the next low tide. After the hike, we got dinner at the Side Street Cafe in Bar Harbor. It was good for Dan to, once again, catch up with an old friend and to get to know each other’s spouses. We all had a great time and we will certainly meet up again whenever we find ourselves back in the area.

With biking and sunrise photography checked off, it was time for a hike. Before parting ways with Mary and Steve, they suggested we check out Dorr Mountain via the Emery trail that starts at Sieur de Monts Spring. It was anticipated that parking our big truck would be less of an issue as this location is not as popular with the tourists as other locations. The hike was very interesting. The majority of the climb up the mountain was achieved by climbing stairs made from granite. One is tempted to ponder on how they got all the granite up there to build the stairs then you realize that the whole mountain is granite and each piece likely only moved a few dozen feet, at most, before being placed and shaped. The hike was very enjoyable and the views were gorgeous. After all that exercise, we were ready for some Pat’s pizza and a beer or two.

Old Orchard Beach

We left Ellsworth and moved another 150 miles or so down the coast to Saco, Maine near Old Orchard Beach and just south of Portland. Here we stayed at a KOA campground and were placed in a site among the pines. This was a nice, wooded site but we immediately knew we’d have to strategically exit the campground in order to avoid mishaps with trees and tight corners. After checking in and getting setup, we drove down to Old Orchard Beach to check out the pier and walk along the sandy beach. We ended our day with dinner at Jimmie the Greek’s.

On Friday morning, we took a long bike ride along the Eastern Trail. We were able to get on the trail just a mile down Route 1 from the KOA. We then rode the trail to its terminus at Bug Light lighthouse in South Portland. Our roundtrip ride was 34 miles and would have probably been closer to 30 if we hadn’t taken a couple of wrong turns, or more accurately, missed a couple of key turns. It was a fun ride on another beautiful day in Maine. Later that afternoon, Dan’s sister, Becky, came to spend the night with us before she took a flight out of Portland on Saturday morning. It was nice to have an overnight guest and spend some bonus time with Becky before leaving Maine.

Saturday was cloudy with some rain during the day. We got laundry done, filled the truck with gas and waited for the rain to stop. Once it looked like it was done raining, we took a walk down Route 1 to visit a nearby brewery. Barreled Souls is a brewery that is after Amy’s heart. Amy is very fond of bourbon barrel aged beers and this brewery specializes in barrel aged brews. We each had a flight of four 4 oz. tastings and were glad we had walked over by the time we were done. These were some very strong beers! We picked out a couple of bottles to bring back with us. We will save them for a special occasion in the near future.

Back to Rochester

In order to avoid some tight turns with trees in the way, we ended up backing out of our pull through site. This wasn’t too difficult and certainly made the path out of the KOA far safer than if we had tried to drive out of the site. We drove over half way to Rochester before stoping for the night in Ilion, NY at Crazy Williez Brewery, a Harvest Host location. The road to the brewery was quite hilly. We sampled their brews, listened to a local musician and had a peaceful overnight stay. Before leaving in the morning, Dan got his drone out to get an aerial view of the countryside before we finished our drive back to Rochester to spend some quality time with our grandson.