Ok, here's the blog entry for my first "fake"-cation stop. Do you know where I am? :)
Tim and I love hiking in Acadia. We made a backpacking trip out of this particular section. We could have had Old Quarry Ocean Adventures drop us off right at the campground, but we thought it would be fun(?) to hike in 30+lb frame-packs the full 5 miles. It’s not anything like giving a piggyback ride to a wiggly little kid. Less hair tugging, for one thing, but the pack is dead weight. It doesn’t throw its sweet little arms into a chokehold around your throat while it hangs on for dear life. And it doesn’t jump to help get up to where it needs to be. It just leans against a picnic table or stone wall or wherever you dropped it and says, “Go ahead. See if your forty-something year old rotator cuffs are tougher than me.” Actually, once it’s on, the pack isn’t bad on flat ground. I had my poles, which helped tremendously. But this experience gave me an even greater appreciation of long trail hikers who take on mountain ranges. My hips salute them! (Honestly, that’s not weird at all. Your hips are where the weight from the pack is distributed, and you have a lot of muscles there that you only seem to meet on the side of a steep mountain.)
This is a gorgeous place, with a very relaxed approach to life. Everything seems to be operating at a much slower speed and lower tension level than elsewhere. We accidentally passed the turn-off to the lighthouse and didn’t want to miss our ride home, so I had to swallow my one disappointment of the trip and keep trudging back into town. Someday, I’ll return there with my travel palette and journal. I’d love to relax on the grass and soak up the salt air and sunshine while I sketch that lovely old building.
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Don’t feel bad if you can’t guess. It’s an often overlooked section of the park that I mostly expect other Mainers would know.
