Walking Into the Picture: Quietside

Somesville Bridge

31 May 2018

We drove west today, to the part of Mount Desert Island that locals call Quietside.  First we went to Northeast Harbor because the antiquarian bookstore was open. They won't be much longer: the owners are retiring. Every book out on the shelves was 50% off; everything behind glass was 30% off. Even without the discount, Jack told me later, the prices were good.

He bought enough that a box was fetched.

We got lunch where we got lunch last year, and the food was just as bad. I did interrupt two cyclists who were eating there. I grilled them about the roads on the island. "There's no traffic up here," they said. Being from Westchester County, NY, their definition of traffic is probably close to mine. They come up here to ride every year. They'd climbed Cadillac in the morning. Having no sense of distance in a car, and not enough knowledge of the roads, I had no idea how they could have been there and reached here. (Looking at a map later I realized that it's maybe 15 miles from the top of the mountain to Northeast Harbor.)

I'd done no more research into Thuya Gardens but to know that it was in Northeast Harbor. So we parked and up we went, 200 granite stairs interspersed with wooden shelters and lookouts onto the harbor.

The water was green.

Eventually we found a sign pointing towards the garden. We walked through the woods for a few hundred yards and reached a paved parking lot. Thanks, Google Maps, for not showing me this. (Not really; I'm glad we climbed, even if Jack isn't.) The garden was behind a house and small enough that we were finished looking at it after about ten minutes.

 We walked back through the woods

 and took a path towards one more lookout.

The view was worth the diversion.

We made our way back down.

Next we drove to Bass Harbor because I wanted to find the Bar Harbor Cam trained on the water from Ann's Point Inn. We got as far as the driveway. It was roped off. I stood in the side yard while someone in the house across the street watched us. This was as close as I could get to the official view.

The inn is closed until the end of June, but the camera there is still running:

To get to Bass Harbor we'd passed through Southwest Harbor. The wine shop that Jack had remembered fondly is gone.

Down the road, Bar Harbor Cam is mounted somewhere at Dysert's Marina. I couldn't find the camera but the camera found me. I wasn't planning on being in the picture; I didn't remember that the parking lot would figure so prominently.

Here's a hint: This is where I was standing.

This is no tourist harbor.

I had one picture left to walk into. The Somesville Bridge is just a little white bridge over a little stream that leads into Mill Pond, which drains into Somes Harbor. It's perfectly photogenic, though, and easy to get to.

I didn't get the angle quite right. I couldn't find the camera either. Here's the Bar Harbor Cam view;

I played around at the base of the bridge.

 Then I walked to the middle and stood there long enough for Bar Harbor Cam to catch me.

Jack calls this a high-tech selfie. I think it's a meta-selfie. Somewhere the webmaster is asking himself, "Who the fuck is this person in the red pants?"

Across the road is a library and where the stream leads to the pond.

A spillway empties the pond into the bay.

A photographer with a real camera and a tripod was tracking a flock of raucous herring gulls.

A bald eagle flew into view from the left, swooped down, and curved away. A second one came in from the right. The photographer had managed to get pictures of the first one. I hadn't. Instead I got photos of the herring gulls.

Trash birds.

A merganser floated around the inlet.

That's Acadia National Park in the distance.

When we got back to Bar Harbor I checked the distance on my car's odometer. Somesville was less than 10 miles away. I plotted a short bike route back there and around the southern loop of Route 3. Depending on what we end up doing tomorrow I might try it.