Acadia National Park offers wonderful glimpses of the craggy Down East Maine coast.
The Double B Mail Boat Ferry is a fun way to explore the Cranberry Islands.
A lobster boat pulls up to a jetty.
Wild lupine bring vibrant color to the coastal landscape.
On another day we drove up Cadillac Mountain to the highest point in Acadia National Park. Wide views fanned out in every direction. On one side the vast ocean stretched to the distant horizon while on the other side Frenchman Bay lay dotted with small islands. At the top of the mountain, kids romped across big round boulders while parents spread out picnic blankets for lunch with a view. At the time of the roadway disputes when Rockefeller built his carriage roads, the Ford Model A was common. Ironically, we happened to be visiting Acadia National Park during a national rally for Ford Model A owners. More than a hundred of these antique cars buzzed around the island, and everywhere we turned we saw them. Our big diesel truck was quite oversized for the small park roads, but the Model A cars were right at home and gave us a sense of what this area was like in those bygone days of early car travel to America’s National Parks. Down at the southern tip of Mount Desert Island’s western lobe, we walked on a short trail through misty woods to reach the bluff where Bass Harbor Lighthouse has warned mariners of the rocky shoals for over a century. Fog filled the air and formed beautiful droplets on the ferns and wildflowers, and the ocean was a forbidding gray. How reassuring it must have been for sailors of
old with neither radar nor GPS to see the light piercing through the fog and night air. Northeast Harbor is the launching point for the Double B mail boat and ferry that takes islanders and tourists between Mount Desert Island and the nearby Cranberry Islands. We stood in the back of the converted lobster boat next to a group of construction workers who were headed to Cranberry Island for a day of work. When they disembarked, we joined a group of school kids and teachers who were on their way to school in Islesford on Little Cranberry Island. We were surprised to learn that they all commute back and forth to school on this small boat every day, rain or shine—or blizzard. Each child wore a life jacket, and the conductor assured me that he had the phone number for every parent. The teachers wedged themselves between the kids, and we all bounced over the waves together as they headed to a day of school. We spent the day strolling the tiny streets of Islesford on Cranberry Island. The tall wild lupines were in full bloom, and they turned the landscape shades of purple and pink. In Islesford, we stopped by Islesford Artists, an art gallery owned by Katy Fernald, which is partly housed in an attic room that used to be her husband’s repair shop for his lobster pots, line, and buoys. Lobstering is in the
DOWN EAST MAINE
COAST TO COAST SPRING MAGAZINE 2018
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