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September 2023 (Part 12)

Maine Trip - Friday, Sep 29: Bar Harbor and the Precipice Trail (and Loop Road ... and BEAVERS)!

On Friday, we had booked a whale watching tour, but woke up to thick fog blanketing the area and Frenchman Bay.

We headed into town for an amazing breakfast at Jeanine's Great Maine Breakfast, with the boys looking forward to their "famous" blueberry pancakes.  Nancy got pumpkin pancakes with apple sauce topping.

We soon discovered the whale watching tour was canceled, as the fog extended far out to sea which would make it impossible to spot the whales.  We re-booked for Saturday, hoping for better weather.  With the huge breakfast, we killed some time wandering around Bar Harbor.

Decided Steve would enjoy the Dad Jokes Ale, if only for the description.

We decided to hike the Precipice Trail, which we had planned on doing on Saturday.

You could see the sandbar that allows access to Barr Island at low tide.

Made it to the top!  Yea!

Time to head back down.  Andy opted to split off and take the trail along the bottom of the cliffs, while we proceeded to the trail along the road.  Think he got to the parking lot within ten minutes of us.

We then had to drive around the Park Loop Trail, so actually stopped to look at a couple sites and take pictures this time (along with going past the first turn-off).

Here is a look back at the Precipice trail.

We last headed to the northern visitors center and hiked back into the park along the carriage roads to Witch Hole Pond, which was a bit over a mile in.  We saw this earlier on the eBikes and wanted to come back at dusk to see if we could see any beavers, as there was a huge beaver lodge on the far side.  Andy really, really wanted to see a beaver.  By the time we got there, the sun had already set and it was getting dark quickly.  The mosquitoes were really happy to see us, surprisingly really the first bugs we encountered all week (glad we came a bit later for that reason).  We were essentially giving up after a while, although we clearly heard one of them send a warning signal by slapping the pond with its tail a couple times.  We could see ripples far to the right where the sound came from, but hadn't seen anything since.  Steve and Andy had both gone into the woods closer; Steven had come back up to the road with Nancy and Andy was getting his stuff into his backpack.  Steve then spotted something moving in the water about 10-15 yards offshore and excitedly called out to Andy.  Andy had a much better view and was really, really excited.  We could here him almost giggling.