Maine 2025 8: Sunrise, Abbe Museum, Little Long Pond Carriage Road

Sunrise, Frenchman Bay

19 June 2025

June 2 was our last full day on Mount Desert Island. I woke up at 4:40 a.m. to catch the sunrise.

There were low clouds to the east.

A plume of fog hid in a cove to the northeast.

The sun had probably risen already. All I could see was a faint rainbow of light on the horizon.

As the light got brighter, I could see more detail in the clouds.

Then, a pale disc appeared through the haze.

I zoomed in. 

This was one of the stranger sunrises I'd seen. I emailed a photo or two to my commitee colleague who was up on the mountain. He said it was a good fifteen minutes before they saw the sun, after a lot of people had given up and left.

I was about to go back inside when Little Buddy got active. I let them photobomb the sunrise.

Then I went back to sleep.

After breakfast, we walked over to the Abbe Museum. There were rose petals sprinkled outside a gallery on Mount Desert Street.

"How Glooskap made the animals small."

The only moose on Mount Desert Island are plush toys, on mugs, or in paintings.

Norma Randi Marshall was one of the artists we saw at an art fair on Village Green a few years ago. 

At the time, she had a large painting that said, in Passamaquoddy and in English, something like "when we lose our language we lose our culture." Surrounding the painting were smaller drawings of animals with their Passamaquoddy name underneath. "Mus" (moose) was one of them. I heard her say "kocokikihlasis" as she pointed to a drawing of a chickadee. None of these were for sale. That fall, I contacted her to ask if she could make a mus and kocokikihlasis for me for Jack's birthday. She did, they're beautiful, and she didn't charge me nearly enough.

Another version of how Glooskap made the animals small was hiding behind an empty display cabinet on the lower level.

There was an exhibit of student art from little kids to teenagers. Jack found his favorite (and sent me this one later). The kid wrote, "I like my moose." Jack posted it to social media with the caption, "I like your moose too." The art was really good. I ought to have taken pictures.

I hatched a plan to take a walk on a carriage road forbidden to bikes. First, we went looking for lunch near Seal Harbor and found nothing, winding up in Northeast Harbor instead, at the only restaurant that was open. Then we drove back to the Long Pond upper parking lot.

There are two Long Ponds on Mount Desert Island. This one is called Little Long Pond to people who know these things, which I wasn't one of until Elaine schooled me last year.

As soon as we set off, I could see why no bikes were allowed. We were outside the boundary of the park, and the surface was full of roots. 

We turned onto one road that was a wide swath of grass.

We got near enough to the pond that I went in for a closer look.

Route 3 runs on a thin strip between the pond and the ocean. In this photo, the strip doesn't look wide enough for two lanes plus big shoulders and a rock berm, but that's all there.

The trail got closer to the end of the pond.

On the opposite side of the carriage road was a trail that started with a flight of stone steps. This wasn't on my map. It was the "Friends Trail," and the sign said it led back to the upper lot. We decided to take it, because it would be shorter and we wouldn't have to double back the way we came.

There were a lot of steps.

The trail led to a rock face, 

and then back into the woods.

We were back at the car a few minutes later. Jack estimated we'd gone a mile or so, and when I mapped it later, I got 1.5 miles. Had we not turned towards Little Long Pond, we'd have been walking quite a ways before reaching Jordan Pond. Maybe next time.

Jack's favorite Bar Harbor restaurant (or maybe tied with Havana) is the Veranda at the Balance Rock Inn. We went there, then walked to the pier for sunset. I took so many pictures that I'm going to put them in the next post.