Long day of adventuring over here. Will started off with a run, which is adventure enough around here. The hill that is essentially our driveway is quite steep. When he was home, I walked into the small downtown here and did a little shopping. I bought a scarf at a boutique. It was a bargain at $12, the cheapest thing in the store by about $50!
We left the house in search of the Acadia National Park visitor center. We accidentally took the longer, scenic route. The park is surrounded by a large park loop drive, but part of it is one way, and since we missed a turn, we ended up I driving through touristy Bar Harbor. We made it to the visitors enter eventually, where we watched a short film about Acadia and talked to someone about the junior ranger program for Ethan.
Since it was close to lunch time, and it was on my list of definite stops for the week, we drove to the Jordan Pond House, the only restaurant located in national park territory. It is famous for its popovers, and you can either just get tea and popovers (served with butter and strawberry jam) or a full lunch. We waited about twenty minutes and ate outside at a rustic wood table with an umbrella. We had an awesome view of Jordan Pond and the surrounding mountains. Best al fresco dining view I've ever had.
Eleanor got the soup de jour, which was a sausage vegetable soup, Ethan got the grilled cheese, Will got a cranberry walnut chicken salad, and I got the lobster stew. My meal came with two popovers, and the others' just one. Ha ha. They are quite stingy with the popovers...there's no unlimited bread basket kind of thing there. And it is easy to see why. They are freaking delicious. Yummy! And my lobster stew...basically lobster pieces floating in a butter and sherry broth, was delicious, too.
After lunch, we hit the tourist shop (Will bought a hat and shirt) then we walked down by the pond. Ethan and I watched a frog hop over a tourist's foot and jump right into the pond, which was fun. Then, we took a short walk down a little carriage road. Within the park are miles of carriage roads, which are only accessible to hikers, bikers, and carriages. Rockefeller had them made in response to more and more automobiles on the island. He wanted the park to be auto free, but when he realized that was not going to happen, he had all thee carriage roads built. All along the carriage trails are beautiful stone bridges as well as very pretty carriage houses, meant to blend nicely with the surroundings.
Well, we saw a little foot bridge off one of the carriage roads that led to a trail. We thought we'd take a look and go a bit down the trail, but we ended up hiking the whole thing, which was over a mile each way. Once again, we did not have the backpack for Eleanor, who ended up being held. This trail was worth it, as it was completely magical. On either side, the ground was covered in bright green moss, and it really gave it an otherworldly feel. I told Will I felt like I was in some kind of J.R. Tolkien enchanted forest or something. It really was so cool. And the trail went up a really steep hill, or mountain I suppose, so we had quite a few stairs to climb. The only bad thing was that the Mosquitos started to get bad and we were without our spray. Again, I think it was worth it.
We eventually made it back to the car and decided to head into Bar Harbor once more and look in the shops. It is all the same touristy stuff, but fun to look at nonetheless. We ended up buying a wooden lobster after Ethan dropped it, breaking one of the claws off. We were thinking of getting it anyway, and we plan to glue it, paint it red (all the wood in the shop was unfinished), and use it as an ornament momento of our trip. But we left the store quickly before Ethan or Eleanor dropped a much pricier piece of wood.
The weather cooled down quite a bit by the water, and we left around 5:30, deciding to do dinner at home since we ate out at lunch. The kids had hot dogs and Will and I are having grilled chicken, sweet potatoes, and asparagus on the grill. It's cooking now.
One random thing of note is that Eleanor locked herself in her bedroom after dinner. There is a childproof door knob cover on her knob, and she must have locked it then shut the door. We tried telling her what to do to get the door open, but she couldn't do it. Will went around the house to a window to help, but he said she was more interested in reading books. At least she wasn't panicking. Will eventually had to run over to Doug's to get the key to open it up from our side. Thank goodness he's our neighbor and was home. He also told us where he keeps the key in our cottage for future reference. :)
Haiku of the day:
Dreams of popovers
Lobster at last for Michelle
Running tomorrow
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