Home again

Home again, and glad to see the kitties. I've posted all of my pictures from the trip at Picasa. There are about 1000 of them, but they're organized by location. If you're interested, click here.
Thanks for traveling along with me!

More star trails!!

15 minute exposure centered on Polaris.

1 hour exposure centered on Polaris. I got up at 2am this morning to take this.

Jordan Pond and The Bubbles

One final MDI outing today. Mandy and I went to The Lilac Lily, the local yarn store. Got some nice green yarn to make a pair of socks. Russ & Mandy brought me some yarn from England a few years ago, and I made a nice pair of socks with that, so this may become a tradition.

Ironically enough, this was spun in Nazareth, PA.

Then back to Otter Cove for one last round of sea glass hunting. We found a lot, almost doubling my entire collection so far.

Then we stopped in at Jordan Pond on the way back for this:

The Bubbles!

These two mountains appear to be the same size from this end of Jordan Pond, but actually, the North Bubble (on the left) is 872 ft. high, while the South Bubble (right) is only 766 ft. high. The North Bubble is farther away though. I posted a pic earlier this week of the Bubbles from the side. Here it is again:

The two mountains in the middle of the picture are the Bubbles seen from the east, from the Cadillac Mountain Road.

Home now for a relaxing afternoon. :-)

Star trails

Ok, this is my first attempt at star trails, and it's both easier and harder than I thought it would be. The hard part was finding some stars bright enough to focus on, given the brightness of the moon. The easy part was the length of time it took to see some star movement...as little as 2 minutes! Unfortunately, a fog moved in fairly quickly, so I didn't get as much time out there as I'd hoped. Here's what I got:

With a 2 minute exposure:

5 minutes:

and 10 minutes:

I think I'm hooked! I should have done this earlier this week. Sunday or Monday night was incredibly clear. The Milky Way was very bright, and we even saw some meteors. It was amazing...I wish I had done this that night.

Twilight

Lovely moon, but I'm afraid it's going to interfere with what may be our last chance to photograph star trails.

Success!!

Adam spotted this morning visitor to our pond:

First stop this morning: Seal Cove Pond. It was only about a 10 minute drive from our house.

Bald eagle!!! This is the 2nd real-live bald eagle I've ever seen. The first was along Route 15 (I think) on the way home to NY.

A mysterious path along the shore...we didn't take it. We were saving our energy for...

The summit of Bernard Mountain! Yes, we made it to the top of a mountain! Bernard Mountain is 1071 ft. high, higher than Beech Mountain (839 ft.) which we didn't make it to the top of, but this was a much easier climb. And worth it!

Some pics of the trip up:

Fuzzy stuff growing on rocks.

Then on to Pretty Marsh, which was much less marshy than I expected.

And we found this cutie:

Either I keep seeing baby red squirrels, or they're smaller than the gray squirrels we have back home.

(OK, Wikipedia says the American red squirrel is a little larger than a chipmunk, so I guess these are adults.)

Then, into Bar Harbor to visit Bar Island. You can walk to this island during low tide via this sand bar:

Cool sighting here: saw a seagull dropping mussels onto the rocks to crack them open. Found some sea glass too, but mostly small pieces.

Back home for a late lunch, then Adam had a fabulous idea...jacuzzi!!! It felt so good on these sore muscles.

Back to the house for lunch, then...how about an easier hike. Mr. Kaiser has no recommendations for easy hikes, but I found the Wonderland trail on the internet. It's on our side (the quiet side) of the island, about 15 minutes away. Apparently, I can't read a map, so instead of getting the the Wonderland trail entrance before the lighthouse, it was the other way around.

Bass Harbor Head Light:

View from the lighthouse

There's a short trail nearby, that lets you see the lighthouse from another angle.

Then, down the road a ways to the Wonderland Trail, apparently an old railway converted to a trail. The best part...it was pretty much level.

Here's a bit of wildlife along the way:

The trail led to a beach:

Mandy and I continued on to the rest of the trail:

Then back to the beach where we found...sea glass!!

And this is the sea glass we found from our second trip to Otter Cove this morning, during low tide:

Now, a quiet evening at home. Who knows what tomorrow brings!! One thing I do know is that I won't be allowed to pick the hiking trails. :-)

Beech Mountain, back to Otter Cove, Wonderland

OK, the internet seems to be cooperating (thanks to some tinkering by Adam!), so I'm almost caught up with my posts. Today we started early toward Beech Mountain. Russ bought James Kaiser's Acadia: The Complete Guide, and I read it cover to cover in 3 days. It's an amazing book, even if you aren't coming to Acadia. There was just enough detail so that I really learned a lot, but not too much detail on any one subject that I got bored. Each topic had about one page of text - perfect. Well, Mr. Kaiser rates a few of Acadia's hiking trails. I automatically discounted the "strenuous" trails, and quickly flipped past the "strenuous, ladder" trails, but I thought we could handle the "moderate" trails. After all, we all survived Scott's off-trail Glen Onoko experience, right? Well, let me tell you, Mr. Kaiser's "moderate" is my pouring-sweat strenuous and Russ's "I refuse to go any farther, I'll wait for you here." Adam and I continued on from the overlook toward the summit, only to find that Russ had the right idea. We turned around when we saw this:

No, no, no. No ladders! This is why I skipped over the "strenuous, ladders" trails!

So, we decided that what is needed at the beginning of these trails is a ranger who looks at you and says "Yes, you can hike this trail." or "No, don't go up there...you'll die." Sort of like the thing at amusement park rides that says you must be this tall to ride.

But, I got some nice pictures on the way up.

Overlooking Echo Lake

Echo Lake Beach

Red mushroom

The path upwards

Then, at the bottom, one last, short excursion to Echo Lake Beach.

The view of Beech Mountain from the beach.

The lake.

And now for something completely different

It's nice to know the cuteness doesn't stop while we're away. Sarah, coworker and cat-sitter extraordinaire, sent me this dose of kitten just when I needed it.

Here is Sophie, our youngest, stretched out between Sarah's sandals.

Acadia - Loop Road - Thunder Hole

View from Thunder Hole. This is the image of Maine that I've always had in my head.

The tide was coming in when we were there early afternoon.

Russ & Mandy

Seaweed stuff & mussels

Seaweed stuff and barnacles

I took a ton of action shots of waves coming in.

Old Soaker, an island just off the coast.

Adam took the following pictures:

There was an impromptu photo shoot, with Russ as the model.

Waves coming into a crevase.

Anyway, we were at Thunder Hole late morning/early afternoon. Then we went into Bar Harbor for some amazing pizza at Geddy's, where even the grown-ups are encouraged to color on their placemat:

Then it was back to Thunder Hole. The water was much, much higher, in fact we couldn't sit in the same place we had been before we left (which I didn't think was that close to the water).

Mandy was the bravest of us all.

After spending quite a while at Thunder Hole, we moved along the Park Loop Road to Otter Cove, where I found my first piece of sea glass!!!

Little did we know this would start an obsession with us all...

Finally, here's a cute bridge on the way home:

It actually has three openings. The left one was I think for water, middle for cars, and the one on the right (top pic) for people.

This day accomplished FOUR things on my to-do list: take pictures (been happening all along), sit on a rocky coast for a while, climb a hill (well, sort of), and look for sea glass (the actual list does say "look for," not "find." See, I didn't want to get my hopes up)!