Acadia National Park: The Coast

We live on the crust of the Earth, and what do crusts do? Crumble. Especially when moving water has anything to do with it, as it does along the coast of Maine. Famously so.

I arrived at the crumbly coastline of Acadia National Park on the morning of April 16. The date is important for only one reason: Park Loop Road, the main scenic drive through the park, opens for the season every year on April 15.

Acadia NP occupies about half of Mount Desert Island and some other nearby peninsula acreage and small islands. The morning of the 16th broke damp and foggy and chilly. From my lodging in the sizable town of Ellsworth, Maine, which is on the mainland near Mount Desert Island, I made my way to the island, then Bar Harbor, then the entrance to Park Loop Road, stopping only for a wonderful breakfast sandwich at one of the few places along the way that was open, Farmstand Coffee House.

The visitors center at the park entrance wasn’t open either. The NPS missed making a sale of post cards to me. By the time I got to the park, the weather was better: slightly less damp and slightly less foggy and slightly less chilly.

Such is Maine in spring. I didn’t mind. In fact, the damp chill meant few other people had come that day. Chilly but no ice underfoot. I like to think that it all melted by April 15. Or maybe on April 15.

I sent a few pictures to Tom in Austin taken while I visiting Acadia NP.

He answered: “Wow. Fabulous. Choosing to visit that national park before May is a bold decision. Looks like you got good weather, though.”

Bold? Maybe. To boldly go where many vacationers have gone before. And will again, real soon.

I didn’t drive particularly fast along Park Loop Road. Little traffic for one thing, too much of a risk of a car-on-tree encounter for another thing, so curvy is it. Gnarly, maybe. The drive, whose construction John D. Rockefeller Jr. facilitated, winds but does not climb much as it follows the curves of the shore. The scenic stops are close to each other, since in national park terms, Acadia is a touch on the small side. Despite that it hardly lacks variety.

Beginning with the rocky shores you’d expect. The fog that day was a nice Maine touch. The foggy shores of Maine. There’s a song title for an AI song writing program: “The Foggy Shores of Maine.” Sad song about a solider dreaming of home on these shores? It worked for “Galveston.”

Boulders and sizable slabs, on their way to being pebbles and sand.

A feature that wears its name well: Thunder Hole.

A loud place, Thunder Hole, the waves bashing the rocks in crash-splashes, followed by the whistling, sucking whoosh as water pulls away from the rocks, followed by another bash against the rocks, all before you can count to three.

You can get closer to Thunder Hole behind the (relative) safety of rails, but that won’t keep you from a good drenching. Not that day, anyway. I kept my distance, and let the sound come to me in its noisy fury.