Sunrise on Frenchman Bay
13 September 2020
Sunrise is at 6:10 a.m. I'm out of bed at 5:50 and on the balcony at 5:52, camera in hand. I'm not the only one out on their balcony with a camera, but I am the only one not using their phone to take pictures.
It's quiet.
We watch.
Bald Porcupine Island
balcony view
the luxury yacht
Egg Rock Lighthouse
a fishing boat on its way across the bay
By chance, I look up to see the moon. It's almost directly overhead, making my tripod useless because the balcony roof is in the way. I mess with the exposure time and shoot freehand.
fog behind the mainland behind the tip of Sheep Porcupine Island
It's 6:14. Sun's up. I'm going back to bed.
Three hours later I'm up and dressed again. We're about to go down to breakfast, which used to be buffet style, indoors. Now it's grab-and-go, with indoor and outdoor seating in a renovated space by the new pool. I step out onto the balcony to stare at the water, and instead see a man walking along the shoreline, strumming a ukulele. Sure. Why not?
The breakfast room isn't crowded, but it's uncomfortable just the same, in part because everything is pre-packaged, including single pieces of fruit. Whatever progress we'd made in curbing plastic waste before the pandemic has been undone.
We find a table by the new pool, which has been built to look as if it is one with the ocean.
To break the illusion, I walk to the edge. It's a little waterfall.
We decide that we'll take our breakfast back to the room from now on. I've brought coffee beans from home, Acadia, of course, as well as an electric kettle, coffee grinder, and French press. Jack has tea from home too. We can do better than what's being served here.
Before going back to the room, I take a little walk. The hotel grounds have been renovated. Now there's a brick walkway lined with flowers outside of the bay view rooms.
I have to go visit the Todds. There's Margaret, behind Bailey Louise and another little red-masted boat, the Delight.
One of the things I wanted to do this year was take a tour on the Margaret Todd. Yeah, no. I've been watching the Bar Harbor Cam live feed. One evening not too long ago, while Jack and I were on a Zoom call with a few local friends, I pulled up the live feed for everyone to watch. As it happened, the Margaret Todd was unloading after her 6:00 p.m. sail. People poured down the dock. Too many people. I still want to do it, but not this year.
More flowers line the Shore Path at the edge of the Bar Harbor Inn.
The early morning clouds have cleared out.
This is what people see when they walk on the Shore Path next to the hotel pool. Pretty clever.
Between the front of our wing of the hotel and the renovated breakfast room is a collection of flowering shrubs. There are at least four hummingbirds darting around. They hover for such a short time that getting pictures is a crap shoot. The best I can do is a single hummingblur.
*****
Jumping ahead a few hours (there's a separate blog post coming to fill the time in between), here's a reflection of the edge of the harbor in the hotel room mirror. The glass slats on the balcony are where the spiders hang out at night.
The Margaret Tood, on her 2:00 p.m. trip, has her sails up.
The boat is old news. Let's stalk the Egg Rock Lighthouse instead. Now that the second tree is down, and because of where our room is this year, we have a clear view from our balcony. Let's zoom in.
A little more.
*****
Another time jump (another blog post) brings us to evening. The sky is getting murky again. The Margaret Todd is out for her 6:00 p.m. sail.
Another luxury yacht has dropped anchor in the bay.
I'm on my way into town to find a sweatshirt. Last night at dinner I realized that the sweater and jacket I'd packed would not be enough. What I need is a hoodie. It has to have a moose on it. It can't be too tacky, but that's a relative thing, considering that anything I buy here will scream "tourist!"
I pass one of several free mask mailboxes.
I go in and out of half a dozen shops, none of which is crowded, because the number of shoppers is monitored at all times. There are too many hoodies to choose from, all just that little much too tacky for me to wear. Eventually, when I'm in one store for the second time, I make my choice. It's screaming pink, almost fuchsia, with "Acadia" stitched across the front in giant capital letters. Under the letters is a shiny, little, white-stitched moose, and under that are the words "national park" stitched in blue. Is this any worse than my screaming orange Princeton sweatshirt, or the decades-old ones from Penn? It is not. The only size available is extra-large. It's on sale because we're at the end of the season. The clerk lifts it off the wall with a long hook, sanitizes his hands, and folds the hoodie into a bag for me. I sanitize my hands, pay with a credit card, and sanitize my hands again.
Outside, across the street, the moose above Geddy's lights up the evening sky.
There are spider webs under the walkway lamps on the path back to the hotel room. I check. Nobody's home.
*****
After dinner, cozy in my screaming pink hoodie under my faded orange denim jacket, Jack and I walk slowly through town. Cool as a Moose sports a social distancing sign that says "keep a moose between you and all others at all times."
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