I’m a lousy lazy photographer. If I weren’t so lazy I’d try harder to get places, or return to them, when the lighting is better. Too often we hit places at mid-day when lighting is at its absolute worst. It really does make a difference, as these pictures atop Cadillac Mountain near sunset attest.
Once the holiday hordes left, we ventured out to the more popular areas of Acadia. Here we set up chairs in the shade near “Thunder Hole,” which wasn’t all that thunderous at the time. It’s probably a good thing, though, because all of that racket would have distracted us from the books and snacks we brought.
We ended up leaving this spot earlier than planned because we somehow got caught in a strange time warp where our cell phones ran an hour fast. Either Thunder Hole bends time, or we managed to get far enough East for Verizon’s satellites to have us in another time zone. I don’t know which, but I’m guessing the Thunder Hole thing.
Agatha Christie beckoned, and I couldn’t resist. Thanks to a cancellation we scored last-minute tickets to a performance of Murder on the Nile, based on Christie’s 1937 novel Death on the Nile (coincidentally one of the few books from home that made the cut for the RV jaunt and has yet to be read), at the Acadia Repertory Theatre.
Every summer the Masonic Hall in Somesville, Maine, is converted into a 148-seat performance venue. The great thing about small theaters (like the outdoor Delacorte in NYC’s Central Park, home to annual Shakespeare productions) is that every seat in the house is pretty much a good one.
The theatre might be described as “low tech” on its website, but the performance was well-acted, the setting atmospheric — a sitting room on a riverboat cruising along the Nile — the glamorous 1930s-style costumes divine, and the drama entertaining. Christie adapted the story for the stage, apparently thinking it best to cut crime-solver extraordinaire Hercule Poirot from the action and change the ending.
Actors at the Acadia Repertory Theatre do double duty, helping out with various tasks, and we recognized the fortune teller, who sold us our tickets; the French maid, who showed us to our seats; and the murderer, who had kindly directed us where to park earlier in the evening.
Ben Franklin is often misquoted as having said “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” I imagine he’s pretty pissed that he didn’t actually say it, because not only is it a great quote, it is also undeniably true. And if ever there was proof that God wanted us to drink beer, we found it in Bar Harbor.
We had no intention of stopping that day; figuring the chances of getting a parking spot in the middle of the city on a Saturday afternoon of a holiday weekend were pretty close to zero. We were just driving through to check out the town and were more than a little surprised to see an opening across the street. A deft u-turn captured the spot, and a few angry gestures from other motorists. Before we even stopped congratulating ourselves on our good fortune, we noticed the even more improbable location of our improbable parking space: directly in front of Bar Harbor Brewing. Surely divine intervention.
Bar Harbor Brewing was already on our to-do list, if for no other reason than to taste their award winning stout. While the stout lived up to its reputation, the rest of the line-up was pretty mediocre. None of it was bad, but none of it was really exceptional either. We also tasted some of Bar Harbor’s ‘malt wines,’ which are beers brewed with a higher alcohol content and sweetness. These reminded me of the Belgian style we so much enjoyed at Alagash. But the downside of Belgian experimentation is that you probably end up with a lot of stinkers and, unfortunately, these fit into that style as well.
Notwithstanding the clear hand of God, we had only a partially successful outing at Bar Harbor Brewing. But an average day tasting beer still beats a great day doing just about anything else. So we left happy, just like God intended.
If not for some Dramamine, the title of this post would have had an entirely different meaning. We’re not generally prone to seasickness, but traveling at 35 miles per hour over 10 foot swells was a new experience for both of us. And not an altogether pleasant one, either. We managed to hold it together, though, until the boat finally slowed, nearly an hour later, at a common whale feeding area.
This was our first whale watch and we soon discovered what we probably should have known all along: whales have higher priorities than entertaining humans. So it wasn’t as much of a whale watch, as it was a whale wait. These wily creatures can stay submerged for a long time and generally only come up for a couple of breaths before diving deeply again, only to reemerge a long distance from where they were last spotted. We did see several of the beasties, though, including a mother and a calf swimming and diving in unison.
You wouldn’t know it, but I took a couple hundred photographs during our three hour tour. Either because of inadequate equipment or, um, inadequate skills, I mostly captured open ocean and images more suitable for Lock Ness Monster evidence than for enjoyable viewing. But what you see above is a finback whale, the second largest living animal, second in size only to the blue whale.
These critters are not only large, but are also incredibly fast. For a long while their speed helped them evade hunters. But our creativity knows no bounds, and we soon discovered that exploding harpoons slow them down enough to kill them. And we did, by the hundreds of thousands in the early 20th century. We harvested so many that we nearly hunted them to extinction. They’re still listed as endangered today, and so it was our good fortune to see them, and their calves, happily, and safely, at sea.
Everywhere Once 