Bar Harbor
There are no pictures today. I left the memory card in the computer, and I left the computer in the motel. We briefly considered going back for it, but decided it wasn't worth it.
The whole country is suffering an enormous heatwave, and the North East is getting this most of all. The Weather Channel is full of sage advice, although this morning Ashley Rousseau was talking about how to avoid stitches when excercising.
We took advantage of our two-night motel booking, and hence absence of checkout deadline, by having a small lie-in. We were still up and out by 11:30, seeking breakfast. We drove the half hour or so onto Mount Desert Island, and into Bar Harbor, thereby officially completing our route as defined by Road Trip USA. Bar Harbor is incredibly busy at this time of year, it turns out, and we crawled around the small town looking for a parking space for a while, before eventually finding one on the outskirts right next to a convenient diner, where we ate a hearty brunch. We vowed to park and ride on the shuttle bus next time we came into the town.
After eating, we headed back out of town towards the Atlantic Brewing Company, a local microbrewery which I'd planned to visit from early on in the planning of this trip. We took the free tour, which consisted of standing in one place (with a clear view of pretty much the whole operation) while a man described the brewing process. After that we enojoyed a tasting. The nicest one was their ginger flavoured beer, and our least favourite was their honey flavoured barley wine -- very strong and very sweet, almost like a sweet sherry. Other people bought lots of this, and we couldn't really understand it.
It's heartening to learn that their bitter is the best selling beer on the island, outselling Bud and Miller. A.B.C. produce as much beer in a year as the main Budweiser factory produces in 9 seconds, apparently.
We bought some bottles of beer, planning to drink some, and to post a case home (in a shipping case sold at the brewery). We took our case to the nearest post office and asked to have it shipped by surface mail, as cheap as possible. That turned out to be about $45, so we backed out. We're going to have to struggle with it on the plane. That could be interesting.
From there we went on to the Oceanarium. This is a lobster hatchery and museum. The lobster is a strange organism and no mistake. If it loses a claw (and sometimes they eject their own claw as a defence mechanism) it grows back. If is loses an eye, it grows a new nose in its place. They had some mutant lobsters with pigments missing: some blue ones with red pigment missing, a red one with blue pigment missing (so it looked cooked). At the hatchery, they feed the baby lobsters Sea Monkeys (or, "Brine shrimp -- which you may know as Sea Monkeys"). Seeing all those lobsters made us eager to dine on some later on.
True to our Park and Ride vow, we drove to the ferry terminal -- from which a catamaran sails regularly to Novia Scotia -- and waited for a shuttle bus. The heat was stifling and the bus stop did not benefit from any shade. After too long baking, we realised that the bus didn't stop there during the afternoon -- no ferry arrivals to service, we guessed. A little miffed, we got back in the car and drove towards town, looking out for another bus stop to use. They were all hotels, and we didn't feel comfortable about parking by a hotel we were not staying at. Before we knew it we were in town, but to our surprise we had no trouble parking at all.
We had a quick look at the harbour, from which we'll go whale watching tomorrow morning, then wandered into the town. Deciding we needed to fill a hole to put us on until lunch we fell into a cafe, which turned out to be an Internet cafe. We didn't use the computers, but we got some pastries and some drinks, and as we sat down we noticed a Scrabble set, so we spent a pleasant hour or so playing. I took an early and commanding lead, but by the end Debbie had nearly caught up. Only nearly though.
It was a cool set-up: all the food and drink was laid out for anyone to help themselves; when you were ready to leave you were trusted to tell the cashier what you'd had. They had a nice sign outside saying "YES! You may use our restroom."
We sampled some of the gift shops and added to our growing collection of tat treasure. Debbie persuaded me not to buy myself a T-shirt which read "Yes I'm a girl. Yes I'm an athlete. Yes I'll kick your butt". I neglected to buy a T-shirt which read "Stop staring at me" on the front, and "Stop following me" on the back. I sort of regret that now. Maybe I'll go back and get it tomorrow...
We left Bar Harbor (the town) and stopped to eat at a restaurant that was in Bar Harbor (the city). It's never clicked for me before that in the USA "town" means a cluster of buildings, and "city" means a wider district. According to a tourist leaflet, Bar Harbor (the city) consists of several towns, one of which is Bar Harbor.
We both ate lobster. Having learned to much about them today, we wanted to have one hard shelled lobster (a long time since shedding the previous shell) and one soft shell (shed the last one quite recently) between us, so we could taste the difference. The waitress insisted they only had hard shell, which was odd because we'd been told at the Oceanarium that with the moulting season just passed, soft shells were by far the most common at the moment, and this tallied with what we were told at last night's restaurant. When our lobsters came, I reckon they were soft shelled. They were delicious in any case. We were given natty plastic bibs with a picture of a lobster and a bowl of butter on them.
Leaving the restaurant, we noticed the hive of activity at the neighbouring mini-golf. My guess is that this was the hour for rewarding children for tolerating a day's hiking. There's no way you'd make me hike in this weather. I was drenched in sweat after a twenty minute round of mini-golf last night.
Early to bed tonight -- we need to be at the harbour for 8:15 tomorrow morning, and that's half an hour's drive away. Just time for some of that beer we bought before bed.