Vacation 2009, Part I

Just back from a week on Mount Desert Island in Maine, stomping around Acadia National Park. There was no internet connection in our house, so I haven't been online in more than a week, something that I think hasn't happened in at least two years.

But even without access to my blog I think about how I will write on it, so I have been journaling in my head all week, and taking pictures. Here, late, is my account of the 2009 Bedell family vacation.

We -- me, Lisa, Robert, Thomas, Ben, and Clara -- drove up, a 14-hour trek. Lisa's mother Carole and our daughter Mary flew up to Portland and joined us on Mount Desert Island in a rented black sports car that Mary dubbed the Batmobile. (Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na Carole!) On the first day, Friday, July 24, we drove to Cambridge, Massachusetts and stayed with my mother, who fed us dinner. On Saturday we drove to Mount Desert Island along the coastal route through a long string of charming towns. Every time we do this Lisa and I fantasize about coming up this way without our children to stay in one of the amazing bed and breakfasts, explore these towns and enjoy each other, but so far this remains a dream. We spent about 20 minutes sitting in a traffic jam that turned out to be caused by a moose peacefully munching moose moss about fifty yards from the road, looking so much like a moose that everyone driving by had to stop and take a picture.

We arrived at our house around 5 PM. We stayed at the same place we stayed last time, a charming but decrepit little house called the Lyford Cottage. This is a long way from the more exciting and stylish parts of the island, in the town of Tremont near Bass Harbor. The house is on the ocean and has a wonderful view across a little body of water called Duck Cove, where there are always ducks, which is as it should be and pleases me to no end. Sometimes there are loons that wake us in the middle of the night with their mad singing. The house is slowly declining into a pile of lumber, aided by armies of carpenter ants. It has about enough hot water for half a shower or a third of a bath, the kitchen is fairly primitive, the beds are decidedly primitive, there's no heat, and when it is cold and wet out it is cold and wet inside, too. And, as I said, no internet. But it does have a resident squirrel.

When we arrived the whole island was shrouded in fog and all we could see looking across the cove was more fog.

It was damp and chilly both Sunday and Monday. Undeterred, I dragged my children up Beech Mountain on Sunday and Acadia Mountain on Monday.

The "mountains" on Mount Desert Island are really hills, but they have steep sides that make for rigorous hiking and they are bare on top, so you can experience hiking above the tree line and still get back in time for a nice lobster lunch in Bar Harbor. It's a very civilized sort of ruggedness. We also went tidepooling at a place called Seawall where the low tide leaves an acre or so of lovely little pools full of seaweed, mussels, snails, limpets, and sometimes other things like crabs, hermit crabs, and fish.

Tuesday was a brilliant, sunny day and I celebrated by talking Robert and Thomas into undertaking a 5-mile hike with me up 1373-foot Sargent Mountain. This brought home to me how much older and fatter I am than the last time I tried such a hike, I guess about five years ago. Thomas keeps saying that I tried to kill him and that he will never go hiking with me again. It was hard and we ran out of water, but it was also beautiful and exhilirating. Walking on top of any of Mount Desert's mountains is like walking in the sky, with a glorious post card world spread out beneath.

Wednesday we went whale watching. Unfortunately the fog was back, so we steamed off into a cloud where, I thought, finding a whale was about as likely as finding a mermaid. It didn't matter to Lisa and me. We just love the thrill of riding one of those big steel catamarans across the ocean at 32 knots, soaring over the swells and plunging into the troughs, salt spray in the wind that whips across our faces. As it turns out we did see a whale, a juvenile humpback who surfaced, gave up a flick of his tail flukes, and then dove out of sight, such a brief encounter that they decided it didn't fulfill the guarantee of seeing whales and gave us vouchers for a free trip another time. One of the good things about being married to Lisa is that in two or three years when we go back she will be able to find them.