Fog, fog, and more fog!! Woke to a white out, so thick we could barely
see the water below us. The ship had to blast its horn every minute.
The ship was at anchor in the harbour, there being nowhere in Bar Harbor
for it to dock, so we had to use the ships tenders to travel to the shore and
back. U.S Customs came on board to check out all aliens, processing and
stamping us into the country.
Bar Harbor was New England’s premier summer resort in the 19th
century, and it’s doing pretty well at present too, with lots of hotels and
resorts lining the shore around the town! It was home to summer estates for
some rich and powerful families including the Rockefellers, the Fords and the
Vanderbilts. A fire in 1947 destroyed many of the homes but we saw a couple of
lovely homes that survived.
We boarded a tender to go ashore about 8.40am. Our excursion wasn’t
until 12.30pm, so we teamed up with some others in the group and walked the
shore path and back into town. Here we split up and we wandered the town
looking at shops and homes.
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| Some fog still sitting on the water |
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| We watched this lobster fisherman check his traps and throw undersized lobsters back into the water |
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| This house is for sale! |
Bar Harbor was once named Eden, but was always
known as Bar Harbor because of the large sand/gravel bar which links the town to a nearby island.
The tides here are very large, much like Darwin’s, and it covers the bar with a
rush. Walkers to the island are warned at every point about leaving enough time
to get back before the tide comes in. We walked down to the sand bar, but not
across it even though the tide was low when we were there.
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| This was full of water when we left at the end of the day |
We had lunch at a restaurant, before joining the bus for our excursion
to Acadia National Park. This is extremely popular because there a great many
people everywhere. It encompasses a sizable part of the island, including Mt
Cadillac, a granite mountain at 1588 feet high. It is the highest point on the
east Atlantic coast north of Rio de Janeiro. Wild blueberries grow all over and
they are fruiting now so lots of people were ducking off tracks to eat the
berries.
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| wild cherries |
We passed Somme Sound, the only fjord in eastern America – here the
mountains do meet the sea. We then went on to the Bar Harbor Oceanarium to
watch a presentation on lobsters – how they are fished and how to tell them
apart for sex and size.
We then visited Turrets, one of the few homes that survived the fire of
1947. It was built for a young wife but the owners didn’t live to enjoy it. It
fell into disrepair before being restored by a college. It is now their admin
building.
Seen on the way:
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| Two beaver homes |
More number plates spotted:
Tender being put away:
Useless info: Canadians and
Americans pronounce ‘buoy’ as ‘boo-ee’. It sounds so odd to us who pronounce it
‘boiy’.
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