What We've Been Up To!

The past week we've been on the morning shift, which means our work day is over around 3:00 in the afternoon. The weather has been wonderful, finally, so we've had a few hours each afternoon to play in the park :-).

The month of August presented us geo-cachers with a special opportunity; every day in August that you find and log a cache you earn a souvenir. So far, we've only missed three days out of the month...thank goodness there are so many caches here! In searching for various caches, we've gone to some real pretty spots.

This was one of the most interesting "hidden in plain sight" caches...note the name on the mailbox!

We dropped into the town of Bar Harbor on the "blue moon" night for some practice in taking night pictures. This is the beautiful hotel at the edge of town with the full moon shining over it.

I've also been wanting a picture of this character on top of Geddy's...

Close up!

While in town we did a little shopping...this was our favorite sticker :-).

We FINALLY made it to lunch at Jordan Pond House...popovers and soup....delicious!!

On the outskirts of town, there's a short, little used hiking trail to Compass Harbor. We had a lovely view of the Porcupine Islands.

Following the trail around to the other side of the harbor we saw more beautiful rocky coastline.

Why on earth is there a staircase leading apparently to no-where?

We found the "Missing Mansion"! (forgive the lens hood shadow, I forgot to remove it!). For a wonderful explanation of this area, check out Sherry's blog here. I can't possibly do a better job of writing about it, so enjoy her explanations :-)

Another cache led us down a beautiful creek that led to Hunter's Beach.

A short but rugged trek across Hunter's Cliff, including hopping over several large downed trees,  led us to the cache.

Hunter's Beach is a cobblestone beach....I didn't realize when I took this photo that the trees were reflecting in the puddle...cool!

Another cache was at Otter Point....going down!

Looking back up at the start of the trail.

The scenery along the trail is awesome.

Looking back north you can see Sand Beach in the distance, one of the few places where you are able to swim on the island.

Our last adventure this past week was a kayak paddle on Long Pond. We broke down and bought a SeaEagle kayak after seeing all the great kayaking trips Sherry and David did while they were here. 

It was a calm beautiful morning, and the reflections were unreal. We also heard the haunting, eerie call of loons, and hoped we would see them. If you've never heard a loon, click here and listen.

The shoreline was very pretty....

interesting how the tree and rockline go right to the edge.

You can see here the rocks go beyond the edge....the bottom of the pond is covered with rock!

Success! We saw this mamma loon with her baby, and were able to float quite close.

Isn't he cute??

I'm pretty sure she caught a fish :-).

Close up showing the beautiful coloring of the loon.

So, we haven't spent all day playing, but the few hours each day have provided plenty of entertainment. The good weather has been such a lift to our spirits. I'm hoping September is going to bring us some glorious color and great weather...although I wouldn't mind a couple of freezing nights to knock off these mosquitoes!