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Previous Days:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5

Trip Summary: Sleepy; ouch.  Park; pretty.

For Next Time: Leave camera tripod at home.  Remember to move 2nd back to vehicle actually going to Acadia.  Try to see inside of the park instead of just coast.

There was a bit of a pall over the trip for me as before departing I received news that the EKG I had before leaving as part of my physical revealed what could be a defect in the wall of my heart.  My doctor rolled his eyes when I told him I was going camping and Acadia wasn’t nearly as strenuous as I thought it would be.

I took more photos than were listed in the entries which are available as part of the Flickr album.  I think the panoramics came out quite nice and wish to get better at taking them.

[flickr album=72157622447264170 num=90 size=Thumbnail]

I’d like to thank Pat for taking care of the cooking and Joe for putting up with the fact that I turn into a whiny 4-year old if I don’t get my ugly sleep.

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Dawn came early, and we refused to rise with it, making our exit around 9:30 AM after giving the park rangers the gift that keeps on giving: a leaky propane cylinder.  We took turns driving and Joe didn’t enjoy me as his navigator.

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We stopped at a Dunkin Donuts manned entirely by white people which included a spastic woman who listed all the allergens in my donut and got impatient with the register receipt dispenser.

We landed at 4 PM, ate dinner and decided to drive to University of Vermont to visit Matt Grob.  I have no idea why.  We visited Matt Grob and watch his friend’s room mate attempt to rocketjump before landing after jumping off a building in GTA 4.  We watched that for a solid hour.  We ate at Denny’s drove home and arrived at Pat’s house again at 1:00 AM… and decided to drive straight home.

Joe and I started on our way and I selected “HOME” as our destination.  I got suspicious of the GPS once we hit New York and it started taking us west.  I checked the future directions and the GPS apparently thought “HOME” was located hours west of me somewhere beyond Harrisburg rather than SE PA.  We put in Joe’s address which had us return east and shaved 90 minutes off of our drive, three and a half hours if you include the time we saved after overcoming the sense of whiskey-tango-foxtrot after theoretically “arriving” near Harrisburg.  I got drowsy around five AM but powered through by yelling about what I thought was wrong with Scouting, it was surprisingly effective.

Dawn came, we arrived at home, and I hit the sack like a midget boxer.  All in all the trip cost only about $250 for five days of stuff.  One day I’ll make it to the mythical “Canada” and may even remember to bring my passport.  Perchance to dream.

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One of our original plans was to shoot to Canada after our third day, but my “other bag” never made it to the Rav 4 and along with it my passport, so this was the closest we got to Canada.

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This grate was outside of where we thought the causeway to Bear Island was located, but due to tide and ignorance, we couldn’t make it.  Instead, I took a pano.

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We gunned for Cadillac Mountain and were knocked over by its short mediocrity.

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We may have gone to Cadillac Mountain the day before, but it doesn’t matter much.  We wanted to go sailing that evening and meet up with CJ Raste, aka Ice Dragon and stopped at Sand Beach beforehand.  It was stupidly pretty.  I hope I’m not being an arrogant dick in saying this but I think the following could reasonably be a postcard with a little lightening.

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We later scaled the side-trail and found some wonderful views including the following giant stitch-together.

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We met CJ before going onto the Margarette Todd, a historic vessel built in 1999.  Joe took pictures as well with his tiny tiny camera.

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There was a mediocre musician on board that played several tunes mediocrily but illuminated well.

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And to prove the power of the Golden Hour, here’s CJ for those who doubt his existence.

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Most passengers had point-and-shoots with them but one person inspired some camera envy with their L-series 70-200 f/2.8.  For the price of the lens, I could rebuy my camera, three best lenses, and pay for most of the Acadia trip.  One day I’ll get two.

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We went to a restaurant after the trip where a small Asian child repeated pushed out a window screen and nearly hurled himself from a second story window.  Their entrees sucked but their peripheral items like desserts and sides were exceptional.  We had earlier pondered shaving a corner off of our man-cards and sleeping in a motel for the evening but manned up and bought sleep drugs instead.  They didn’t work and my final night at Acadia was spent uncomfortably.

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Today was our first proper day in Acadia and after an incredibly short walk on the “Ocean Trail” we hit, the ocean.

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The above pano was made from 28 pictures or so and has some kludge-y parts where it doesn’t quite come together but the image suggests the absolute gorgeousness of the area.  I used the polarizing filter on my camera and failed to consider its effects on the image.  I repeated this error later, oops.  We were continually stunned by the picturesqueness of almost every vista.  Some shots looked like the stereotypical Caribbean  lagoon with the exception of glacial rock-rape evidence everywhere and others were just… grand.

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On the way back Joe and Pat decided to get into a tard fight…

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… and then pointed at each other’s junk in triumph (?).

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Our next stop was “Thunderhole” that just sounds messy but is named after the natural amplification of the rock shapes to certain waves like in this key-hole:

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It took about 10 minutes of waiting to get this spray, and after a few more of waiting a larger wave hit which sprayed my back.  I was angry at first until I realized I’d probably decimated my camera if I were looking in that direction and considered myself lucky.   I took a neat two-parter here which shows the storytelling power of focal distance. Here’s the first:

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To which I added the caption “hm… maybe we should get her out of there” followed by:

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which screams “This is a neat rock!”

We took an afternoon nap and headed into town that evening and I noticed three things:

  1. Every store sells ice cream, fudge, something with a moose on it, or something with blueberries in it.
  2. Anything referring to something historic was done in Copperplate Gothic.
  3. Pennsylvania consists entirely of the Amish to the rest of America beating out even Philadelphia and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

At one fudge shop Pat and I were impressed with the attendant’s ability to cut precise quarter pound blocks.  Once we brought this to his attention he lost his cooler and was all over the place.  I felt bad.  In an adjoining shop the cashier asked us what we did and I mentioned “proto-actuary”.  She thought I was an aerospace engineer, she probably says that to all the actuaries.  That night we had a fire which looks far more impressive and forge-like with the power of long exposure.

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Joe enjoyed some face time with the fire as well.

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But recoiled when he thought the fire was getting too friendly.

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That night we spent some more quality time staring at the top of the tent and had another painful night on the gravel.

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I woke up at the crack of 11:30 AM after the forceful deflation of my air mattress and after a sequence of shit-we-forgot’s and two pizzas which were eaten across from surly old people we made out way Northward.

I got to drive Pat’s Rav4 and being in another person’s car the most dangerous thing I did was drink and drive.

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At a previous point I’d taken a picture while driving and holding my iPod, so this is a cakewalk.  Pat and Joe were also strongly opposed to a practice I call “slap steering” which terrifies both of them.

Around 10 PM we stopped at a Target in Augusta to get a 1/8″ patch cable so I could bore everyone with The Economist audio edition.  The hand dryer was quite potent and my hands came away red with windshear.  On our way out, we hit a T-intersection with no obvious path back to the highway so I picked left at random.  This small change resulted in us taking a sequence of country roads, byways, and semi-paved paths to Acadia through the “drive faster, I hear banjos” portion of Maine.  I got bored and started taking long exposures of lights while driving of which some came out well.

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We arrived at Acadia at about 11:30 PM, several hours after the proper closing of the park.  My concern for lateness dropped when I learned there after-hours check in process was “go to a campsite, and tell us sometime the next day that you’re here”.  We entered our gravel-covered campsite and discovered that one was supposed to sleep on the gravel.  Gravel ranks as slightly below a battery of dull steak knives for uncomfortable sleeping surfaces and the hours taken to actually sleep proved this.

Luckily, the rest rooms were exceptional and even included two-ply toilet paper.  The walls also held some of the most erudite graffiti I’ve ever seen including:

  • A spot-on picture of Master Shake
  • A Sierpinski triangle after three iterations
  • I LOVE HUNGARY

  • Eulers Identity

    Euler's Identity

  • “Go Organic” with an arrow pointing to that phrase with the caption “wow, you convinced me”.

I was impressed.

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I don’t vacation well.  I usually get more excited by sitting at home but rarely do I achieve the To Do List slaying I gun for and I’ve slowly learned that I suck at prioritization until the last minute or when someone else is counting on me.  Joe and I talked of going to Nova Scotia over the summer which slowly turned into a few days at Acadia National Park.  I had an secondary goal of visiting some people and somehow Pat Toye was magically available so he became our Day 1 waypoint.

Joe and I left a spot late around 3:30 PM and shot for the icy north.  Entering NY was an absolute clusterfuck as we tooled along for 20 miles at 10 MPH.  We saw the following:

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And

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Yep, her other car is a broom.  After idling past Scarsdale I fumed at some 200 car pile-up causing the delay when we crested a hill and there the pile-up was.  Not quite 200, but enough to generate a gaper delay that shaved two hours off my life.

We met A.C.E, aka Richard Mercier at Braza, a Brazilian steakhouse in Hartford with the standard gimmick of all food coming from servers with the appropriate meat cut skewered on giant 3-bladed rapiers/sais.  I destroyed a hearty collection of sausages and various meats wrapped in other meats.  I was disappointed to learn that desserts were not served in the same manner and was hoping to see a sword impaling a collection of cheesecakes.

A.C.E mentioned his love of hot wings and brought up some wing joint in Philly with egregiously hot wings.  I began thinking if the hotness would be enhanced by simply using pepper spray on a wing before serving it and thought of starting a business as a pepper spray sommelier for those wanting a more refined tongue-incinerating experience.  Before leaving the restaurant I asked if we’d missed any of the food items to which the host said matter of factly “no, sir.  You ate everything.”  I don’t know in what sense he meant “everything” but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were an airlift from Munich as an emergency restock after I leveled their sausage reserves.

Afterword we hit A.C.E’s house where none of my pictures of his mint-green pool were properly illuminated.  His wife “the Warden” is a wonderful gal and loves to have her picture taken and does an awesome impression of Samara from the Ring.

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A.C.E has a minute computer monitor and I’m not terribly sure how he plays TF2.   I think I’ll start a collection for a real one leading up to his wedding.

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I suppose to a certain extent that was made up for by his much larger DVD collection.

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A collection he rarely gets to peruse for the following reason:

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All my photos of Richard sucked so….

We departed Richard’s home around midnight and arrived at Pat’s Vermont home at 2:00 AM.  Joe and I were immediately struck by the quantity of celestial pinpoints apparently called “stars”.  There are few in Philadelphia and I think we should look into importing them.  We went to bed around 4 AM, about 2 hours after Pat first saying “maybe we should go to sleep soon” and three hours after Joe shared a moment with Pat’s cat.

September 19, 2009-21-Acadia

I took up residence on an inflatable floor mat and day 1 was done.