Water Lilies, Upper Hadlock Pond
3 July 2022
31 May 2022
There was no sunrise to watch this morning. There's rain and fog instead.
Around 10:00 a.m. the sky starts to clear.
A herring gull parades around on the lawn between the hotel and the Shore Path.
A family of eider ducks hangs out on a rock at the water's edge.
I could sit here and watch this all morning. Lord knows we're paying enough for this room that I can do this with impunity.
I fantasize about moving to Maine after I retire. Thing is, there's only one place with this view, and it's at this hotel. Anywhere else with a similar view is either already an inn, or is an estate worth some multiple of too many millions of dollars.
The ducks swim south.
I never tire of watching the clouds.
The balcony is still wet. We might have to eat breakfast inside today. As long as we're well away from other people, I guess it'll be okay. The dining space is large and has a high ceiling.
It's a good day to go over to Northeast Harbor to visit the Asticou Azalea Garden. It's a small space we've been to before. I bring the Spider Cam just in case.
The drive between Bar Harbor, which is on the northeast corner of Mount Desert Island, and Northeast Harbor, which is south central, takes about 20 minutes. In between the two villages is a whole lot of nothing. There are some houses, of course, and a few businesses. But mostly it's hills, trees, and a road with not much shoulder to speak of. I couldn't live here. It's too far from everything.
Downeast Maine is a few weeks behind Central Jersey in plant life. It still looks like mid-spring up here. The ferns in the sand garden haven't filled out yet.
Succulents:
Back home, the azalea and rhododendron flowers are finished. Up here, they're still going.
The caretakers do a good job of making a small space look large.
I haven't had much luck finding spiders. It's mid-day and early in the season. I find one tetragnathid orb weaver suspended over a stream. All the pictures are overexposed.
I convince Jack to take a walk on a nearby carriage road. I want to get back to the bridge near Upper Hadlock Pond, where I'd stopped on my bike last year. I'm no good at judging distance on foot. I think it might be a mile in, or less.
The carriage roads don't see as many people on this side of the island.
On the sides of the road, I'm finding lots of Cyclosa conica, trashline orbweavers.
The webs are easy to spot because the spiders create a line of silk and carcasses to hide in.
I find one with a smaller trashline and get a decent photo.
Eventually, we see Upper Hadlock Pond through the trees. I climb down the embankment to get photos from the water's edge. Jack stays up on the path.
The water close to me reflects the gray sky, an dthe water lilies look gray too.
That's Jack on the path, upper left. He's being patient, and I think he's bored. He could never live up here.
Is that a loon in a nesting box?
It is a loon in a nesting box.
I climb back up and we move on.
There's the bridge.
There's a trail next to the creek, under the bridge.
We drive to Seal Harbor to see if the Lighthouse Inn is open for lunch. It isn't. We continue on Route 3 back to Bar Harbor. We decide to try the Independent. Back in 2016, it was a hopping sandwich joint with locally-roasted coffee beans and festooned with anti LePage paraphernalia (and a photo of the owner being dragged away in an anti-W protest). There was a map of Cadillac Mountian on the wall, and travel mugs made from crushed lobster shells for sale. In 2018, the owner invited me and Jack to an information session for a local candidate. That was then. This is now, mid-post-Covid. The front of the space is now shelves of locally-sourced everything and four-packs of Maine beers. The grill is gone. The thrill is gone. We end up paying far too much for two PB&J sandwiches on white bread.
It's low tide. Jack doesn't want to come with me to the sand bar. I trudge out there alone. I've never explored the southern shore, so I walk along that for a while. On land are several gigantic houses with sprawling lawns that lead to the stone wall separating them from us tourist heathens. Could I live there? At least the houses are in town, with a view of the sand bar and sunsets. Hand me a fistful of millions and I'll have a think.
From where I'm standing, I can't compose a decent photo of the nearest house. I take some of the stone wall instead.
There's time enough to walk across the sand bar to Bar Island. I've walked east along the shore at low tide. This time I think I'll go west, around the corner, as far as I can get. I stand by the entrance to the trail and take some photos.
Cairns are a thing up here.
I crunch through the dried spring tide seaweed and head around the western tip of the island.
Ahead of me, somebody is walking along the rocks. I follow from a distance, stoppping every so often to take a picture or five.
Cadillac Mountain, with its long north side, slouches in the distance.
The guy I'm following meets up with some other folks enjoying the view. I don't want to encroach. I turn around.
They all start back; I can hear them. I turn to look, and they've stayed high on the rocks and entered the woods. I follow, because I have a hunch that I've been where they're going.
When I get up there, I recognize the spot as a side trail to the main one, a trail I followed briefly once, to take a picture of the water from between the trees. When the group gets back to the main trail, I overtake them and go down to the water.
From here, it's Cairns R Us.
Back on the sand bar, I move towards the harbor side. There is a rock I want to visit.
Bald Porcupine is ever a presence.
This isn't the rock I intended to find, but it's on my list now. It looks like a mouse.
I send a photo of it to two of my colleagues. They'll get it.
This is the one. Mustache rock. He's lost much of his seaweed.
I've spent enough time out here. It's time to go back to the hotel.
A row of floating docks that should have been in the water by now are taking up space in the Newport Drive public parking lot.
Where is Tubby, the rustbucket boat with the crane that pootles around the harbor, installing floats and ramps in the middle of May?
Over at the far side of the pier, a crane lifts something into or out of a boat, but that's not Tubby.
We've never stayed in the hotel's main building. I can't see the sunrise from there.
Without Tubby, Margaret Todd's ramp is still on the pier.
The whiteboard doesn't tell us why.
Will I go the entire trip without seeing That Boat?
At low tide, it's possible to walk under the pier.
I clamber up the rocks to the Shore Path.
From here I can finally see Egg Rock Lighthouse.
On the roof of the hotel is, maybe, one of the Bar Harbor Cams.
I take a few more photos on the path before walking up the grass to the hotel room.
There's time enough before dinner to hang out in the room. I upload and label photos, munching on the bag of sliced carrots and celery that I'd brought from home and kept refrigerated.
Tonight our reservations are at the Balance Rock Inn, the most chi-chi restaurant of our trip. I can take it or leave it, but Jack thinks it's got the best food in town. The inn is on the other side of Grant Park, which is next to our hotel. It's another giant house, dark inside, that heavy fancy look that always makes me squirm. I'm in jeans and sneakers because that's all I've got with me. The host doesn't sneer, which is a good sign.
There's a dark bar to the left, where someone might be playing piano. We're seated outside, on the veranda. The restaurant is called the Veranda. Between the Shore Path and us is a pool and a long lawn.
Next to us is a very white, very polite, very quietly chatting family. It takes us half the meal to figure out that they're English. Last year we were seated next to a loud party of four, the dominant white male mansplaining all the things, clearly a poser.
These are not my people.
I order a risotto with peas in it. When it arrives, it's swimming in thick cream and tastes too much of butter and fat. It's good for a few mouthsful, but I can't get more than a third of the way through it. Whatever Jack has, he likes. We opt out of dessert and walk into town for ice cream at Ben and Bill's instead. I'm not feeling very hungry, but it's ice cream and we're on vacation.
By the time we get back to the hotel, I know something was off with my meal, or maybe the veggies I was eating before. I'm thinking it was the risotto. I'm not used to eating that much fat. And I'd forgotten to ask if it had been made with chicken stock. Usually I can tell, but this was so loaded with cream that maybe I missed it.
I know what my stomach does when I accidentally eat meat or something meat-adjacent like duck fat or chicken stock: I burp around for a day, feeling not quite right. And that's what's happening now.
Only this is worse. I can't sleep. I was planning to ride the carriage trails tomorrow, but as the night wears on and I'm stumbling to the bathroom every hour or so, I know that a hilly gravel ride is not in the cards. Blergh.
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