Acadia National Park, Maine: Day Six

Activities: Hiking Acadia Mountain, Visiting Hunter’s Beach, Eating Lobster from Parson’s
Date: September 23, 2022 (Our 16th Wedding Anniversary)

This would be our last full day in Maine. We ate a good breakfast of English muffins and eggs and cereal and English muffins for the kids and headed to Sugar Bakery for some coffee and whoopie pies for dessert later. We were hiking Acadia Mountain that day and had no trouble finding a parking spot at the trailhead. As we headed up the mountain, there was a split in the trail and we decided to go left, hiking clockwise around the loop.

The trail was steep at times, but nothing like Beehive or Precipice that we had hiked days earlier. We stopped several times through out the hike to check out the view. You could see the fire tower that sat atop of Beech Mountain and Somes Sound below. Another spectacular hike with amazing views. We made an effort to really enjoy it as we knew it would be the last time we would be on a mountain for quite some time.

At one point, we saw a sign that pointed to an overlook so we took it down to the shore of the sound, or what I would call a cove, and there was a waterfall dumping into the ocean there. A boat with an older couple was taking pictures of the falls as we scrambled on the nearby rocks trying to get the best view of the water. On the way back, the trail met up with a truck trail that was pretty flat and easy, so the end of our hike was a breeze. When we returned to our Jeep, we dove into our left over pizza from the day before along with some apples and Jill and I finished our iced coffees from Sugar Bakery.

Our next stop was Hunter’s Beach. We had been to Little Hunter’s Beach a couple of days earlier but couldn’t stay long and we heard this location had a cool sound that would come from the waves retreating off the round rocks on the beach that almost made them “sing”. The stream that ran through the beach was surely swollen from the full day of rain we had the day before so all we heard was the sound of rushing water coming from that stream. We did, however, get to see a harbor seal diving down for some sort of seaweed and munching on it at the surface of the water. We were all excited to see it out there as we hadn’t seen much for wild life on this trip other than turkey and deer, which we have an abundance of in Iowa. We could see the seal out there the entire time we sat sat there soaking in the beautiful view.

The beach had colorful round rocks all along it’s edge and large climbing rocks near the bank. Mattix threw rocks around in the water the entire time while the rest of us relaxed watching the seal and the waves crashing against the beach. On our way back to the Jeep, I stopped and snapped a couple of photos of the mushrooms growing along the trail and the neat bridge that crosses the stream on the way to Hunter’s Beach. The beach was great, but even the trail out to it was extremely beautiful.

It was the 23rd of September, Jill and my 16th wedding anniversary, and we decided to treat ourselves to lobster for dinner. We stopped at the same place that Jerry and Carol did a few days earlier, Parson’s Lobster. We bought two lobsters for $15 a piece then hit up a grocery store to buy some potatoes, salad, and wine to compliment our meal.

When we returned to the cabin, we were surprised to see how low the cove actually was at low tide. The only water in our cove was from the stream that was making its way to the ocean. All the other water had left. Mattix explored the newly exposed land for a bit while we baked our potatoes. He wanted to help with the lobsters so we called him in when it was time to throw them in the pot.

We had to watch a few YouTube videos to understand how to get the meat from our lobsters, but our dinner was even better than I had imagined. The firm white lobster meet was amazing. We shared bits of it with the kids, but they luckily didn’t like it much so Jill and I got to eat the majority. Once we ate all we could of the lobster, we broke out the whoopie pies. We got one maple and one velvet cake. I didn’t think they were all that great, so I only sampled them and let the kids eat the rest. After dinner, packed up most of our stuff and watched Cinderella with Camila Cabello before bed.