This is an inside joke of ours - we are both huge fans of William Wegman, and he once did a short for Saturday Night Live, called "Dog Baseball." I can't link to the video directly, but you can Google it if you want. It starts out with him saying "Dog baseball is a game we started playing up in Maine. We're not in Maine now." Well, we are in Maine at the moment, and it's lovely.
I don't exactly know why, or when it started, but I've long had a "thing" about Maine. My first visit was in May 2013, but for many years prior, I dreamed of visiting. Had a great time in 2013, and am having a great time now!
[previous visits chronicled here and here.]
We arrived in Bar Harbor around 7:30am, gliding in amongst the lobster buoys and the islands. We knew we'd be anchoring today, and also that we'd have to wait for the US Border Patrol to come on board before we could leave the ship. Got to watch them lower the tender & zip off to pick up the officers, which was cool. Regent had it very well organized, calling people to the theater to pick up passports, meet the Border Patrol, then set out on tours. Of course, they've done this kind of thing many, many times, but still, it was good to see it work so efficiently. Before we knew it, we were on the tender, heading for shore.
Bar Harbor is on Mount Desert Island, which is home to (most of) Acadia National Park. (ANP) It is a very popular town "in the season," and with two cruise ships in town, we knew there would be lots of other tourists. It wasn't so bad, actually and fortunately. The town will get very quiet in a couple of weeks, after the leaves fade and most of the people go home.
There have been people summering here for a long time - the Rockefellers, to name one prominent family. In fact, it was due to private individuals that ANP came into being, nearly 100 years ago. Ideas such as no vehicular traffic, save horse-drawn carriages, helped carry forward the idea that the park was a natural sanctuary. There are plenty of cars now, but the carriage roads are still there and used daily by horses and carriages (and walkers and bikers.) Also, Maine's own L.L. Bean company sponsors a bus system that runs through the park now, with propane-powered vehicles. This, too, helps keep the air clean.
When Nancy and I visited in May 2013, we had two strikes against us: (1) the weather was crappy, and (2) the government sequestration had just shut most of the roads in ANP! We could walk or bike on the highways through the park, but not drive. Oh well. There were no people, and we managed to have a lovely walk/hike along the rugged, rocky shoreline, only us.
Today, the weather was fantastic - perfect fall conditions - and although there were a lot of other people around, we managed to see the highlights of the park in all its autumn glory. We had a good guide (again) who is a MDI native
We have a relatively short distance to travel tonight, a little over 100 nautical miles. The captain advised that we're taking it slow, and, because he doesn't want to disturb the many thousands of lobster pots along the way, he is not going to use the ship's stabilizers. Consequently, we're definitely rolling tonight, albeit gently. You know me - I like the rolling!
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And.... this week in First World Problems, the Internet totally died on board last night, so I couldn't finish the Bar Harbor entry. Not much more to say, I guess, except it continued to be a beautiful day, we got coffee from our favorite Bar Harbor place, Two Cats, and had a beautiful sailaway at sunset. Got to see the Princess ship all lit up, as they saw us, too.
On now to Portland....
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