This blog starts with a big THANK YOU to L.L.Bean (and no, we are not getting any kickbacks for this). First, a thank you for saving us a lot of money at their outlet store in Freeport, Maine. We have been on the hunt for pants and shorts to wear at our volunteer position (more about that later) and it was pretty exciting to just wander into L.L. Bean’s gigantic outlet store (located right next to their enormous flagship store) and find the exact pants we need for 70% off. We purchased 4 pairs of pants and one pair of shorts for under $100 and even found one of those pairs for $6.00. We don’t do a lot of shopping for clothes and it usually isn’t very exciting, but this time we got a big kick out of it. And so did the hundreds of other shoppers we saw there.
Our second and biggest thank you to L.L. Bean is for their community spirit and generosity in funding shuttle buses throughout Mt. Desert Island and Acadia. This was by far the best public transportation we have used. The buses ran every half hour, stopped at all the sites and were staffed by the nicest, most accommodating drivers. Acadia is a very busy park and one of the problems you run into when you visit any national park during the summer is that the parking lots are sometimes filled to capacity. This means that you drive (often long distances) with the intention of parking at a visitor center or a park attraction or a trail head and then you can’t find a space to park your car. Often you have two choices, drive around and around the parking lot, hoping to land a space or else swallow your disappointment and drive to another site. Having these buses greatly reduces this problem and waiting a few minutes or standing on a crowded bus is just a minor inconvenience.
These buses are not only running in the National Park but also all over Mt. Desert Island, stopping at all the major hotels and campgrounds. We had the pleasure of walking a very short distance to the bus stop in our campground and catching a ride right to the Acadia Visitor Center, where we could transfer to another shuttle to get around the park. One day we were able to get a ride to an event that wasn’t on the regular bus route because the driver figured out a way to drop us off in a safe spot near the event.
The convenience was wonderful and we are grateful for that but the incalculable benefit of reduced pollution to that beautiful area of our country is something we have even more gratitude for. The bus rides were often crowded, the roads were under construction which made the ride pretty bumpy, but no one ever complained and we often heard our fellow riders expressing how thankful they were for this amazing gift from L.L. Bean. We don’t buy a lot of clothes any more and our needs have been simplified enough to make most purchases unnecessary, but you can be sure that if we decide to buy something – we’ll check out L.L. Bean first.
As mentioned, our first stop in Maine was Freeport. We only had one full day there and we spent it doing what most people do in Freeport – wander through all the shops and eat in nice restaurants. Maine is our 25th state on this trip and we were already anticipating a really great time in one of our favorite states.
LL Bean Bootmobile
On July 5th, we moved to Hadley’s Point Campground – right on Mt. Desert Island and near Bar Harbor. We loved this campground, not only because this is the one with the convenient bus stop, but also because we met some interesting campers and from talking to them we gathered helpful information.
We did have an uncomfortable encounter with one of our neighbors at this campground which resulted in a few chips in our motorhome paint job due to her car door hitting us (repeatedly!)– but we realized that this is first time in 88 campgrounds that we have had even the slightest problem. It didn’t keep us from enjoying all the wonderful things we did from that campground.
We had a very busy first day visiting Acadia. We had been there on a camping trip a long time ago and had always planned to return to see more of the park. So on this day we traveled the Park Loop Road on the shuttle. We spent a few hours at Sand Beach, eating our lunch and marveling at the beautiful view of the cliffs, the rocks and the ocean. We hiked along an easy trail to Thunder Hole, where there wasn’t much action due to the low tide level but again, the view there and along the trail were amazing. We hopped back on the shuttle to Jordan Pond – took a hike along the perimeter trail and after a pretty exhausting day, got back on the shuttle to the visitor center and finally home.
Sand Beach at Acadia National Park
View at Thunder Hole
Jordan Pond
On Friday, we drove our car (no shuttle due to the narrow winding road) up to Cadillac Mountain – the highest east coast peak – and spent our time there walking on trails and scrambling over the boulders. That night, we took the shuttle into Bar Harbor and joined the crowds wandering in and out of galleries and shops on their weekly Art Walk. The gallery owners treated their guests to wine and cheese, cakes and snacks and eyefuls of beautiful art. Another tiring but satisfying day.
View of Bar Harbor from Cadillac Mountain
Bar Harbor
On Saturday, we shuttled to the Native American Basket Festival. We saw some incredibly intricate styles of basket weaving and listened to beautiful flute music. The following Monday we drove over to the quiet side of Mt. Desert Island and toured Somes Sound. This waterway is the only fjard (or fiard) in this country. It is a smaller version of a fjord – a deep narrow channel. We walked through Northeast Harbor – quaint and tiny. On our last day on Mt. Desert Island we drove to the Schoodic Peninsula. We watched the boats and the gulls and enjoyed the cool sea breezes. The geology of this part of Maine is all about the ancient glaciers that passed over it. The results of the movement of the massive ice forms left softly sculpted mountains, deep lakes and puzzling erratics – large boulders dropped randomly throughout the landscape. We contemplated the marvel of how this huge monster of ice and rock could leave such loveliness in its wake.
View From Schoodic Point
Our next stop was Scarborough, ME at the Wild Duck Campground – where the ducks were too friendly to be wild and where we met more campers who shared their stories with us. We had some routine maintenance done on our rig at a Freightliner Service Center. We got some laundry done at the nice facility at the campground and then on Saturday we went to the beach. We made sure we got our fill of sand and surf at this pretty Crescent Beach. It will be the last time we see the ocean for a very long time.
Crescent Beach State Park
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Just a note here about our future: We have been considering volunteer opportunities as part of our time on the road. We have explored a few possibilities and recently we applied for volunteer positions at Kartchner Caverns State Park near Tucson, Arizona. Since our son Josh and his family and our daughter Amy are living in Tucson, this seemed like the perfect place to spend a few winter months. The application process was a little more intense than we thought it would be – a joint application with a joint resume; a joint hour-long interview, submitting professional references and then a full background check. And then we got the news from Ranger Curtis that we were accepted. We will be working in Visitor Services from November through April. We are pretty excited about this. We have a dress code (beige, brown or gray pants or shorts – with a special volunteer shirt given to us by the park) and lots of rules to follow – all listed in a huge handbook we have to go through. We are studying up on the history of Kartchner Caverns as well as all we can find on bats and caves. We have committed to working 20 hours each per week and for that we get a free campsite with hook-ups, a year-long AZ state park pass and some discounts at our park. We are looking forward to being with our family for the holidays (although we agreed to work on Thanksgiving) and living back in the Sonoran Desert. The caverns are about 40 minutes from Tucson and much closer to Benson. We aren’t sure how it will feel to be committed to a work schedule again. Our lives are pretty much in our own hands right now with no real time commitments except the ones we make for ourselves. But we want to experience this to see if more volunteering will be in our future. And landing a job at this really amazing state park is a great way to experiment. This will be our first chance to give back – to say our first thank you as a volunteer – to the Arizona State Park system which has given us so much.