Pink Granite and Lobster

That evening there was a sofa to curl up on in the club lounge at San Francisco airport, and the food (beans, vegetables, chicken soup) was excellent. We had left home a little later than planned, driven through no traffic at all, and had hours to spare.

Then came the red-eye: out of Terminal 1 late that night, overnight to Chicago, and on to Bangor in the morning.

The layover at O'Hare meant a nap on the floor of an empty gate, head on a pillow, because going out to the lounge and back through security seemed like too much trouble. Then it was on to Bangor, where the rental car was waiting right downstairs in the terminal.

Bangor got an hour: photos outside Stephen King's house, a stop at the river waterfront, and the Paul Bunyan statue through the car window. Then down the road to Ellsworth to stock up at Walmart (fruit, yogurt, bagels, corn). The day was fine and rain was forecast for the next, so we went straight on to Acadia.

At the Acadia Gateway Center in Trenton we should have picked up a map. A late lunch at the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound, just before the bridge onto the island, was a lobster roll, crab cakes and boiled potatoes: filling, but nothing special. In Somesville we stopped at the famous white footbridge, and after some trouble finding the Park Loop, we made it to the boulders at the edge of Jordan Pond, with the Bubbles across the water. The house turned out to be big, very nice and well decorated. We made corn for dinner and had an early night.

It rained all day, as forecast, a cloudy 16°C. The morning was in Bar Harbor, where a gravel bar runs out toward Bar Island. It can only be crossed near low tide, as the park's sign at the foot of it warns, and we walked out on it in the rain. Afterward there was time to wander downtown among the shops.

The Park Loop afternoon in the plan didn't happen. Instead we bought four lobsters and more groceries at the Hannaford and took them back to the house, where they were cooked and eaten. They were good, and one of us ate nearly three.

The weather on Cadillac Mountain was excellent, and so was the view. We drove up from Echo Lake for a timed booking on the summit road and spent the next three quarters of an hour on the pink granite, looking out over Frenchman Bay and the Porcupine Islands.

The day had started with a jog, about three miles of hills near the house, and then a climb up Beech Mountain to its fire tower; the way down was rocky and slippery and slow. After a break at the house we drove past Southwest Harbor and walked the Wonderland Trail, an easy mile out and back to a shore of round stones, and stopped at the Seawall picnic area nearby. Last came the small sandy beach at Echo Lake, quiet and a little secluded, a lot like Trillium Lake on Mount Hood.

The morning was on the Bar Harbor waterfront, looking out past the town pier to Bar Island, with an early lunch at Geddy's on Main Street. The lobster and pesto pizza there was short on lobster, but the clam chowder was actually good.

The last morning started early with a long run, an eight-and-a-half-mile loop of the island's back roads in good weather, with very little traffic and a lot of deer. Around mile five it got hard enough to mix in some walking.

Later that morning came one last lobster at a sunny dining table. We left the house in the early afternoon, two days before the rental ended, turned in the car in Bangor, and flew American through Charlotte to San Francisco, on time both ways. We were home a little after midnight.