Do-Over Vacation

 

Sunset on Mount Desert Island

4 June 2021

This vacation is a do-over. This time we're vaccinated. This time we're relaxed. 

We started in Amherst, MA, where my friend since middle school lives. I hadn't seen her in 20 years. That didn't matter; when you're friends for this long, you pick up where you left off as if no time had passed at all. We had dinner at a restaurant, inside. It was the first time I'd eaten inside a restaurant since the pandemic began. It was weird for all of us at first. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm fully vaccinated. 

One of our college friends, who lives in Boston, drove in the next day, and we all hung out at the house until evening, when we and our Boston friend drove to Northampton to have dinner outside with one of Jack's friends.

The next day we drove to Bar Harbor, where we're paying stupid money for an ocean view at the same hotel we've stayed at every year since 2018. Jack likes it here: there's always a comfy chair, a lamp, a table, and tea. I get to roll out of bed for the sunrise, then roll back in for a few more hours. We're right in town, so we never have to worry about parking the car. I can ride my bike to one of several Acadia National Park entrances, and, because I'm on a bike, I don't have to pay the extra fee for a timed pass to the summit of Cadillac Mountain. 

The mask rule here is that if you've been vaccinated you don't need to wear a mask unless the business you're about to enter requires it. Nearly all of the staff are wearing masks, vaccinated or not. Some people on the street are masked up, but most aren't. We carry ours in our pockets just in case. I'm getting used to going mask-free indoors, which is a weird feeling at first. 

In a few places, I've seen pen holders, at cash registers, where the pen rests in and slides through hand sanitizer between each use. It's a sticky mess, but it's a sterile sticky mess.

The first thing I always do when we get to our hotel room is go out on the deck and take pictures of Frenchman Bay and the Porcupine islands.

Bald Porcupine Island:

Burnt Porcupine Island:

Looing south from the hotel balcony:

Gulls and cormorants on a floating dock that was moored in front of the hotel for a day:

Bald Porcupine Island:

Looking out from the inside of the hotel room:

Between the slats of glass are spider webs. In the middle of the webs are tiny spiders. 

We always end up at Stewman's Lobster Pound for dinner on our first night. The food is mediocre at best, but we can always get a table outside, and the view of the harbor is worth the crummy food. We had a few minutes' wait for a table, so I walked down the street for some photos.

The entrance to Stewman's screams lobster trap and tourist trap:

Our table was on the edge of the building, facing the harbor.

Hi, Margaret Todd!

We finished in time to walk to the edge of the sand bar for sunset. Most of it was under water. Here, we saw the first of many mysterious street art eyes.

Two women and their dog were swimming off the edge of the sand bar. Shortly after I took this picture, they called out, "One, two, three!" and dove in. Brr!

After the sun went down, we walked back into town in search of ice cream.

Ten years from now, will we see signs like this being sold as magnets, next to "keep calm and carry on" paraphernalia?

I wonder how long this spray-painted social distancing sign will last on the sidewalk. Will one be preserved as a historic marker?

Another street art eye:

The spiders are proving difficult to photograph. They're so tiny. The webs that are missing their bottom sectors are home to Zygiella x-notata, silver-sided missing sector spiders. They were here last September, still juveniles, and much bigger than these. Some of the webs are complete, though, and I'm still working on getting good enough pictures to figure out who they belong to. Maybe they're just Ziggies that didn't get the memo on proper web building. At several millimeters across, they're not making it easy.

See those little dots against the vertical post? Those are two of the dozen tiny spiders living on the railing. Getting good pictures will be one of the many activities on my list for the next five days.