Monday, 2 October: Maine.

We were looking forward to exploring and biking today.  We sat around enjoying our coffee and didn't get an especially early start.

We headed down to Mt. Desert Island which is in Acadia National Park. Bar Harbor is also down there.

On the way we passed somer really colorful fields.  We have no idea what is growing there, but it was so lovely we had to stop and take pictures.

We passed through some cute little towns and one had a Shoe store in it that I had to take a picture of.  Because, it is "Curtis Family Shoe"  And that is Rob's sister's (the one who lives in Boston) last name.

We got to the Hulls Cove Visitor Center and picked up a couple maps, asked about routes and stuff and then returned to the truck.  We are going to go on the "Carriage Roads"  They are multi-use trails that are designed for the horse carriages.  They are nice, smooth, decomposed granite that go through the woods, over stone bridges and around lakes and ponds.

Since we knew it was going to be smooth trails we brought Bella's basket and of course her.  She gets so excited now when we start getting bike stuff together, especially when she sees her basket. 

She seemed to like the trail a lot.

The stone bridges were lovely.  They are all stone (duh!) but each one is completely different.  What they cross is different as well.  some of them cross the road, some of them streams, ponds, or just gullies.

It was funny.  On the trail there was a lot of horse poop.  Not especially something you want to ride through.  I started smelling horses and suddenly we came upon two horses with long reins.  

A women was walking them and talking on a walkie talkie.  Behind here were about 6 people walking.  One man started saying, "Boy the carriage ride in this park is something else, you have to walk behind the horses  with out the carriage."  We laughed.  We had stopped riding our bikes and were walking them then just stood by them so not to scare the horses in case they were skittish.  After they passed we got back on our bikes and sure enough, came upon the broken carriage.

We rode on 

And Rode on

And on

And after 23 miles got back to the car.

We drove down to Bar Harbor.  What a darling place.  I told Rob I could live here. There were some very lovely views along the way.

 We parked the car and then wandered around for a bit.  Really cut places.  

Some fancy hotels with lovely pool area.

  Some interesting sea creatures...like this Whale

 Beautiful Flowers down by the whale watching ticket office.

We found a nice place to eat in town.  I had a lobster tail with claws and knuckles; carrots and baked potato.  The carrots were terrible, but everything else was lovely.  Rob had serf and turf with a really good sirloin.

We wandered around a little bit more.

We made our way back in the car and headed back to the campground.  I was so tired I couldn't stay awake on the way home.  Once we got there I went straight to bed.  It was a fun day.