Cadillac Mountain High.

Yesterday, I climbed my first mountain.

And it’s not a king-hell Rocky Mountains mountain. At 1,500 feet, Mt. Cadillac at Acadia National Park gets eaten for breakfast by most mountains. But it is the tallest mountain along the Atlantic coast north of Brazil. And it was a pain.

But I did it.

Before that, though, I had my first whole lobster – two of them, in fact – at a restaurant just north of Bath, Maine, on Tuesday night. Delicious. Just-off-the-boat delicious. The price was right too. No Red Lobster prices in Maine, no siree. No need.

I drove a bit more until I found the hotel I posted from last time – the one with the iMac, and woke up to a spectacular view:



That morning (Wednesday, yesterday for me now) I hit US-1 north to Acadia, which lies on Mount Desert (pronounced “dessert” – it’s French) Island, a park not on the scale of Yellowstone, but still impressive.



The park has several hiking trails, and two levels of trail that lead to Mt. Cadillac (named after the same Mr. Cadillac who founded our beloved Detroit). I chose the Northern Trail, the “moderate” level one, because…well, because I don’t want to die.

I parked my car and packed my bag, and hit the slope head-on. It wasn’t five minutes in when it started to hit back.



This was moderate? The trail guide said the whole thing ran 2.2 miles each direction, which, when I read the description during breakfast that morning, seemed like a breeze. If I can run three miles, surely I can hike…oh wait. Four-point-four miles. Ooops.



Thankfully, hikers have developed a system of what are called cairns:



They help guide you during hikes, and they’re really handy when it snows and you can’t see the little blue dashes along the trail. No trip, though, would be complete without a walking stick, and I found a great one. I didn’t need those silly four-legged poles some hikers used (I saw one guy with them, when I was on my way down). Just give me a broken-off log.



The black flies – notorious in Maine – were a bit annoying, as was the fact that I picked sandals to hike this thing. Sandals? They’d helped out on other trips: climbing waterfalls, clambering down cliffs at Yellowstone, trotting up Great Sand Dunes. But on this one they cost me.



This, dear reader, is what you get when you try to take your own picture along a granite cliff. You slip, and you feel such pin-point pain in your shin that a personal censor would’ve been appropriate for what comes flying out of your mouth.

No matter. Issues like rustling in the bushes, and a flare gun going off a mile behind me, commanded my attention away from the wound. The flare was totally random. Better them than me, I thought at first, but then I wondered whether I’d find a bear-mangled corpse on my way back down. Was this a cry for help? A kids’ prank? I never did find out. Maybe the bear dragged them, kicking and screaming for help, back to the den.



Eventually I reached a point that I thought was the top, and even filmed a little video to share the good news. I was wrong. I was only the mountain road I saw. There was still about a mile of hard, shear granite climbing left to go.

When I did reach the top, I felt like a sucker. There was a parking lot, and a bunch of L.L. Bean-wearing tourists scouting around the pathway, taking pictures, and not sweating their butts off. They can drive all they want – I knew my own accomplishment. The stiff ocean wind helped cool me off, and I grabbed a snack after I checked my bloodsugar and helped a couple take a picture. I traded them for one of me, at the top:



The climb down was a bit easier. The view was easier to enjoy, too, since I faced Frenchman’s Bay the whole way down. I only passed four other hikers, all of them together, on my entire hike, which surprised me. The solitude, however, couldn’t be beat. At one point I rested on a boulder and just…sat. It was perfect.



The next stop on the Acadia tour was Sandy Beach, the most cleverly-named part of the whole park. Why? Because it’s the only beach that had sand on it. Every other one was nothing but granite cliffs.



Notice the odd picture? It’s because I made friends with a seagull who wanted to steal my peanut butter and crackers:



He was sneaky. When I set my camera down on a boulder to grab my picture, and walked away, he snuck up from behind to steal my lunch bag. So during every picture I’m seen lunging to grab the bastard and throttle his salty neck. He was a large bird. And he followed me back to the stairs leading up from the beach, at which point I think he just gave up.



Acadia’s ocean views were everything you dream Maine looks like. Stark, rocky, noisy – but above all, beautiful.



The park is one big testament to glaciation. Stones and cliffs and ponds everywhere, and the best one was Jones Pond and the cool Bubble Mountains. I walked down to the pond and saw that it was a public water source, which meant no human could touch it. Strangely, boats could float it in. The German tourists that followed me down ignored the signs and started thrashing about wildly in the cool water. My Deutsch is a bit rusty, but I think one of them hollered “Zis is better than eating sauerkraut off a stripper’s butt!” Whatever that means.

The rest of the park followed uneventfully, but I was hungry, so I headed to Bar Harbor for chow. Let me tell you about Bar Harbor: I’ve heard good things, so maybe my expectations were high, but it seemed like one big tourist getaway. Nothing but theme restaurants and gift shops, all along the coast of Mount Desert Island. My pick for a theme restaurant? That was easy:



What else? I caught the sign driving through town, and immediately stopped in for a fried haddock sandwich and fries. Nice place.

After that it was on to my first bed and breakfast, the Bass Cover B&B.



Bass Cove is in Sorrento, Maine, just north of the park and Bar Harbor along US-1. I pulled in to introduce myself, meeting Mary Ann and Mike (and Jasmine, their cute cat), and unpacking my car. Mary Ann insisted I head into Sorrento-proper to see the sunset, which she said were famous.



She was right. The town had a public dock and a bunch of fishing boats in the harbor. It was the kind of place you think about when you think about coastal Maine. Just great.



I drove around town and found the backside of the peninsula to find true West and the best sunset I had seen the whole trip:



After that, I enjoyed the rest of the night watching “Lost” for the first time (with Mike, who – even as regular watcher – gets confused) and chatting it up. I almost fell asleep a few times during the show because I was so tired, so I caught some much-needed shut-eye and woke up to a marvelous breakfast of blueberry pancakes, coffee, and broiled grapefruit. This is the kind of thing I had been looking forward to: talking with locals, getting a feel for the area, and a hearty breakfast to boot.



Mike and Mary Ann were originally from Massachusetts, but opened up the B&B after Mary Ann’s mother moved out. They operate what’s called a “homestay” level of B&B, which means it’s small and cozy and personable – with one or two rooms in the house available to guests. Or, as I like to call it, perfect.

It was great having more folks to converse with. We chatted about the area, and about their story, and how a developer was trying to build a “green” resort on a nearby peninsula. After breakfast I packed my things and said goodbye, hitting to the road for my cross-Maine trip into New Hampshire and Vermont.

Which is where I’m at now – in Fairfax, Vermont, at the Wagner Road B&B. But you can read about that in the afternoon on Friday, when the next post will publish. Until then!

Tags: acadia, atlantic, bar harbor, cadillac, hike, maine, mountain, route 66, sorrento