Hill Slugs in Bar Harbor 10: Can't See Shit!

                                                   

Bracy Cove

12 September 2026

With the Atlantic House Slugs having bowed out of our second road ride, it was the five of us hotel Slugs venturing out of town towards Northeast Harbor on August 27.

We rode south on Route 3, out of town, past Jax, past the Sieur de Monts Acadia entrance, and stopped at the Tarn at the foot of Dorr Mountain.

Farther along Route 3, as we got closer to the town of Otter Creek, we were enveloped by fog.

My goal for this ride was to show the Slugs scenic Cooksey Drive and Sargeant Drive. Cooksey Drive hooks east of Route 3 and winds its way through the woods towards Seal Harbor. I told the group that there would be an easily-missed scenic turnoff on the left.

Our Jeff sped right past it. The rest of us stopped. This is what we saw:

We continued downhill for another minute and stopped along a stone wall. Looking straight out got us a wall of fog. Looking down got us some rock drama.

Having now been stopped for several minutes, we were far behind Jeff. He turned around. As he was coming back up the hill, I called out, "You missed two scenic spots!"

He replied, "Can't see shit!" True that.

(For what it's worth, we later searched Zillow for Cooksey Drive real estate. There's a house for sale now for a cool 12 million.)

We turned off of Cooksey at Steam Boat Wharf Road, which led us to Seal Harbor Landing, not Steam Boat Wharf, the map says.

A few minutes later, we descended into Seal Harbor.

Next was the stupid part that everyone agreed to go along with: We turned north on Stanley Brook Road, which is another Acadia National Park entrance, and followed the gentle incline along the brook, in the woods, for 1.2 miles. Then we turned around and went down the same road. I wanted to do this because the road is pretty, but at the top, there's no easy way to Northeast Harbor from there on Park Loop Road.

We stopped again at Little Long Pond. On the map I have on my wall at home, it's called Long Pond. There are two Long Ponds on Mount Desert Island. This is the little one. Some maps say that.

Across the road is Bracy Cove.

Our bikes were on the Little Long Pond side. Jeff had gone onto the path for some pictures, so I took more too. I didn't realize until just now that there was a horse carriage on the path. There are carriage roads near the pond, but bikes are not allowed. It's outside of the park's boundaries.

Ginger scooted ahead to get pictures of us passing.

We got into some more hills and traffic as we approached Northeast Harbor. We passed the Asticou Inn and the Asticou Azalea Garden. Our rest stop was at Colonel's Restaurant and Bakery. They didn't have fancy coffee for Princess, but they did have blueberry donuts and worthy cookies. 

As we sat outside, the sun came out.

There was some confusion about where to put our bikes, as the shopkeepers didn't want us mucking up their storefronts. There was a conspicuous lack of bike racks here and in Bar Harbor.

Leaving town, we turned north towards Sargeant Drive, which is a little slice of Acadia National Park.

"What body of water is this?" Heddy asked. 

I ought to have known without thinking about it. "Somes Sound maybe?"

"There's an app for that," Heddy said, and took out her phone.

"There's a map for that," I answered.

"Somes Sound," she said. 

Somes Sound is a fjard. 

We had to ride in traffic again when Sargeant Drive ended at Route 3. We turned north, passing Abel's Lobster Pound, and then went east on Route 233, which is Eagle Lake Road. I knew we'd have to climb a nasty hill here, something like a 10% grade. I went into my lowest gear at one point. "Who put this on the route?" I grumbled. I think we were at McFarland Hill.

Jeff was waiting for us at the top. He was looking into the brush at a turkey that was eating berries off a bush. He began to talk to it.

"Come on out," he said.

"Come on."

"Come on."

The turkey had either listened to Jeff or run out of berries.

Yes, of course I put this bird up on iNaturalist.

Ginger got more pictures of us after the hill.

We turned off of Eagle Lake onto Cromwell Harbor Road in order to get out of traffic. Then we wound our way into town, getting close enough to the Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop that Jeff could roll in to drop off his bike and walk back to the hotel.

I looked out of the hotel window when I got back to the room.

7 minutes later, the Porcupines had disappeared behind fog.

I was hella hungry. After I showered, by the pool, I paid a hotel price for a salad loaded with burrata while Ginger was in the hot tub and Heddy was off doing something. Then I went to hang out with Jack at the front of the hotel. There were several wicker chairs around a low table. I collapsed into one of the rocking chairs.

(I had to ask Jack if he remembered if there was a table. He thought a minute, said "yes," then found a photo online of the front of the Main Inn.

This picture must have been taken in the off-season. When we were there, the front was adorned with planters full of red flowers, the doors were always held open by doormen, and there was never not a stream of people going in and out.)

The Atlantic House folks had invited us to a big cookout at their place. Heddy, Ginger, and Jeff had been tasked with bringing blueberry pies and ice cream. Of course, they did extensive research to determine that the best pies would be from a bakery associated with Parson's Lobsters on Eagle Lake Road. I knew where that was because we'd passed it on our way back from our carriage road ride. 

Jack and I would bring veggies, fruit, and wine. I volunteered to drive to Parson's after stopping at the Hannaford supermarket on Cottage Street. When it was time to walk up to the house, we detoured at House Wine, where Jack picked up a couple of bottles.

Jim, Regina, Rickety, and Cheryl were cooking away when we arrived. They had a table set on the deck out back. The back yard was huge by in-town standards, big enough to squeeze another house in. 

It was dusk when Cheryl noticed the giant slug crawling up the side of the house. I'd brought SpiderCam with me, naturally.

It's a leopard slug.

After dusk, I took the camera and lantern around the yard to hunt for spiders. I found one Zygiella x-notata.

I found so many Zygiella atrica that I stopped taking pictures of each one.

Rickety and Cheryl had done a hike at Jordan Pond while we were riding. They'd found Bubble Rock. Two years ago, I led Heddy and Ginger on a failed attempt to get there. Now I was curious how they did it. "We didn't have maps," Cheryl said. "There's two paths, and you take the one to the right."

I said to Jeff, Ginger, and Heddy, "Let's go to Bubble Rock tomorrow."

Back at the hotel, I studied the three maps I'd brought with me, trying to figure out where we'd gone wrong before and how not to do that again. I pondered the Island Explorer schedules. At first I thought we could take a shuttle right to the trailhead on the road, which would get us up the mountain without any rock scrambling. But upon closer study, I learned that the bus wouldn't stop at the trailhead because there was no safe way for a bus to stop there. Instead, we could take it to one of two other stops and walk a mile on the road, which I didn't want to do. So I opted for starting at Jordan Pond instead. 

My maps were useless because none had expanded views of the pond trails. In the end, I used ridewithgps in OSM Outdoor mode to map what I thought would be a sane way up. No rock scrambling this time. We'd take the long way around on the Jordan Pond Carry Trail, then turn onto the Bubbles Divide trail, see Bubble Rock, and take the Bubbles Trail back to the pond. Ridwithgps even gave me elevation grades; it showed 15% for the descent. One of my maps showed a 30% incline on one of the trails, and I assumed that was what we'd stalled out on before. I sent some screenshots to the others, but by the time I thought I had it all worked out, they'd already gone to sleep.