MAINE - 1992

By the time we arrived in Bar Harbor, Maine, lined up to drive off the ferry and passed through customs, it was quite dark. Fortunately we had eaten a very good dinner aboard the Bluenose Ferry because there was little to eat at the Park Entrance Ocean Front Motel, where we had booked two nights (August 21 and 22) in a standard room with a king-sized bed for US$310.30. [You may continue to use the map of our trip East for our journey in the USA. Viewers may also click on the map of Maine OR a close-up map of Mount Desert Island.]
After breakfast at the motel, we headed for Bar Harbor where we took a Nature Cruise (US$25.50) around some offshore islands.

After the cruise, we decided against a lunch at a restaurant near the harbour and located one with an outdoor patio in the town. Their lobsters (US$21.40 for two plus a tip) were so delicious that we decided to return on Saturday. After some grocery shopping, we had time to visit the Acadia National Park on the road opposite our motel. Unfortunately, we did not receive proper directions at the Visitors' Centre and continued along the two-way section of the loop as far as we could go . . . missing the turn-off to the road which went completely around the loop in the park.

After breakfast at the motel on August 23, we signed out and headed to Bar Harbor for a Whale Watching Cruise followed by another delicious lobster dinner. While Pat was taking the following photos from the other side of the boat, a whale nicknamed "Shark" (due to a wounded dorsal fin) surfaced with its right eye larger than a dinner plate and paused as close as it could get to the boat while looking up at the passengers.

We took time to shop at the L.L.Bean Factory Outlet in Freeport and made a side-trip to the Desert of Maine. A glacier left behind the sand and mineral deposits 8,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age during the Pleistocene Period. Good crops of potatoes and hay were grown on the 300 acres during the early 1800's, but failure to rotate the crops and massive clearing of the land resulted in the soil erosion that exposed the hidden desert. The spreading sand grew uncontrollable.

Our next reservations were at the Day's Inn and covered the evenings of Sunday, August 23, in Portland, Maine, and Monday, August 24, in Kittery, Maine. We took advantage of the free continental breakfast on Monday morning before driving to Kittery, where we discovered Warren's Lobster House (US$28.00 for two) and did more shopping.