Bar Harbor 2016

Just in case we didn't have enough going on this month, this weekend we headed to Bar Harbor.  Gabe had a conference there, the hotel rooms were super pricey, we had to return the camper to Jon, so we camped for one more weekend.  It was chilly, but with a working furnace in the camper it was quite nice.  We didn't see much of Gabe since the kids and I went the afternoon before to get the camper set up in daylight and he was at the conference for most of the daylight hours on Saturday.

Saturday morning we got up and headed for the Acadia National Park visitor center.  Every fourth grader in the US gets a free national park pass and there are a few locations you can turn in your paper copy for a plastic, more durable one. Obviously, this was our first stop.  The coolest part was that the rangers all spoke directly to Noah about what the pass means and his responsibility in having it. Adults almost never directly speak to kids which drives me crazy. After getting the pass we watched a video and headed out to complete our Junior Ranger workbooks.

Our first stop was to hike up Beech Mountain and climb the fire tower to meet the Park Ranger.  The kids, true to form, had lots of questions that were mostly appropriate.  It was an amazing view and everyone did a great job hiking.  Nannie and her friend Trese joined us on this adventure which was a big help.  After that hike we were considering another short hike.  Since we had Noah's park pass that gets the whole car into the park for free we headed for the loop road.

I thought we might be able to explore Sand Beach, but it was just as busy as I remember it in the summer, so we kept driving.  My mom really wanted to hike Gorham Mountain which she remembered to be a good hike.  It was an awesome hike, but I think she realized halfway up that how we remember hikes from 20 years ago is not always accurate to how they actually were... I've made that mistake many times;) The kids loved climbing in around the rock formations, it was great exercise and there was another amazing view of another side of the island from the top.  The kids did so well for what turned out to be almost 5 miles of hiking! They also earned their Junior Ranger badges, so we had to get back to the visitor center for their oath.

We went back to Bar Harbor to meet Gabe and Grammy for what we thought would be dinner watching the sunset on Cadillac.  As it turned out, since it was a beautiful day and the MDI marathon was the next day, everyone else had the same idea.  Instead, we drove up Cadillac and right back down watching the sun the whole way.  Then, we ate our pizza back at the camper.  It could have been worse:)

In between all of these adventures, the kids have been enjoying soccer this fall.  Ben finished his soccer a few weeks ago and is now onto basketball. James finished soccer this week and Noah's team will still be playing when we leave for California!