I let myself sleep in a little bit, then shoved trail mix and granola in my face, and set out for the park, taking only my trunk bag with me and leaving the rest behind. As a last minute consideration, I decided to stuff my jacket in my bag. I'm glad I did. It was not near so warm and sunny as forecast today, and I found myself soon stopping to put it on, and then wearing it all day. Though as I I told my host when I returned, I didn't feel cheated for the cold, cloudy weather. It was still a lovely day to see the park.
I saw plenty, though still left much unseen. I'll let the pictures do most the talking. I absent-mindedly got my feet soaked while taking a selfie at Sand Beach. I had my photo taken at Thunder Hole. I kept looking for the carriage trails, and was amazed just how nice they were once I finally got on them, staying off the loop road and on the car-free crushed gravel for most the rest of the day. I saw lakes and waterfalls and mountains and no end of beauty everywhere I looked.
Toward the end of my day, with my phone battery getting low from pictures, I decided I wanted to bike up Cadillac Mountain as my last hurrah. Google told me I had a path I could get on close by around Bubble Pond. ...It was wrong. Again. It was referring to a hiking path. I was consulting the map, contemplating biking up the road to it, when a volunteer noticed me and asked if I needed directions. I explained to him, and he told me I didn't want to bike up. There's no shoulder and at this time of day, lots of traffic, and it's harrowing on the way down. He said instead I could just park my bike and hike up, right on the trail I was near, though he admitted he'd never done it himself. Well... I probably should have turned around when I saw everyone else deciding the rocks were too slippery and they weren't going up. I hiked and climbed up a fair ways before realizing a couple things. It was of course going to be much tougher to go back down. This was going to be time consuming. My phone was soon to die. No one would know where I was if I did fall. And lastly, I'm a bicyclist, not a hiker or climber. So, I turned around (having still got some lovely views for as high as I got), called my dad so someone would know in the chance I slipped, and made my way to the bottom. It was fine. And I have no doubt that I would have been okay to go up all the way and back down again, it just seemed a better choice to return to my bike. I decided that having biked the carriage road past Eagle Lake twice already, that I would instead bike the steeper, shorter path up the loop road. I was rewarded with one last beautiful view of the lake from up high...and my damn phone told me it wouldn't waste battery on a picture because it was down to 5%. Annoying. But probably fair. I raced my way down the hill and back to town. It was a little earlier than it could have been, a bit after 3. But supplemented with a little walking around Bar Harbor in the evening, it ended up a full day of sightseeing, I feel.
I will have to come back one day and see more. There is no doubt of that. But tomorrow I bike on, southward (well, North first, but...), to begin my East Coast adventure. Phase one of this trip is done. We're now onto the longer, though after the next rough few days, less hilly, phase two.
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