Rocks, Fog and Chills

Mount Desert Island is the home of the most easterly national park, Acadia, a park given mostly by the rich who have inhabited the island since the mid 19th century. Before that it was a small fishing town, founded late, in the 1760s. The park is known for its magnificent mountains and coasts. Unfortunately the park today is covered with drizzling rain and the mountains shrouded in impenatrable fog, through which John could barely see 15 feet as they ascended 1500 feet above the ocean.
But the ocean itself, with lovely small islands, was open to us. We boarded a small boat with a group of other tourists and a park ranger, heading out to Little Cranberry Island in the Gulf of Maine, checking out lobster pots, walking the lanes of Isleford, home to 70, one of only 14 still inhabited islands along the state's coast.

From there we managed lunch at a small restaurant in Bar Harbor today, hit by an unforeseen power outage that closed down the whole town for about half an hour. Very good chowder, good sandwich.

Quite unlike dinner last night, at the Cafe This Way, a bistro down a small lane. Cute waiter who presented us with a menu of excellent dishes and good, reasonable wines: starters: roast beets with chorizo and quail eggs, tuna tartare with kimchee and cukes, then halibut crusted with peanuts and Maine crabcakes. A bottle of Castilian Alia of temperanille and pierto picune. Lovely meal.
This afternoon we did the a mesmerizing fog to ride up Cadillac Mountain, but the coastal run along the edge of the park was exhilirating, even if bone-chilling cold.

Tonight our last Maine lobsters for a while and then early tomorrow a long trip to Lake Magog in Quebec.

We did not, however, buy the lobsters, but we saw evidence of the industry all over the place. It seems that every lobster person has their own color buoy and can therefore identify their pots. They need to be checked every three days or the lobsters begin to cannibalize each other.

The drive up to Bar Harbor was long and wet, but through some beautiful bays and small towns. We stopped in Belfast for lunch at a small lunch shop on the main street, Belfast Soup and Sandwich, run by a Mainer with a wonderfully strong accent, of Italian descent, whose grandma had made and passed on the recipe for Sicilian flat bread. Excellent sandwiches and very good Sicilian soup.