Narrows Too Campground in Trenton, Maine was our “home” while we visited Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park August 24-28.
August 24
Today our destination to explore was the town of Bar Harbor. We were going to take the free bus shuttle from the campground, but when we realized the bus route would take about an hour, and our Google and Apple maps showed only about 16-20 minutes by car, we decided to drive the 8 miles ourselves. We checked out quite a few stores along Main Street and West Street down by the water.
The Village Green
This lovely park seems to be the quintessential part of Bar Harbor. It is so peaceful and the views are great. A wonderful place to soak in the beauty and relax. Although today, we aren’t ready to sit and relax.
The Village Green was originally the site of the Grand Central Hotel which had 350 rooms! The hotel was demolished in 1899. The “Cottage Era”(building of summer homes) caused the bookings at the various 18 hotels in the area to decline significantly. The Great Hotel Era was no longer. Village Green Park took the place of the Grand Central Hotel. I hope Bar Harbor preserves this park forever.
The 17th century Italian bronze fountain pictured above came from Florence, Italy, and was donated by Philip Livingston in memory of his wife Julia.
The town clock (pictured below) is on the Main Street side of the park. It was donated in 1892 by Mrs. Tucker and her two sons of Boston.
We ended up walking the Shore path that took us along the water’s edge for about a 1/2 mile behind the Bar Harbor Inn.
A Glacial Erratic: The large boulder shown below is called Balance Rock and has been popular with photographers for years. It is a glacial erratic. Its makeup is different from the surrounding rock, as is seen by the color and texture of the stone compared to the ledge it sits on. It is not indigenous to this area. It was left behind at the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago. Geologists speculate that its origin is 40 miles northwest of here – just south of Bangor. The glacial ice was more than a mile thick and played a major role in sculpting the bays, lakes and mountains in this area as it moved through. It scraped off the tops of the mountains, leaving them rounded rather than pointed like the younger Rockies.
Bar Harbor has informative signs around the town that are part of “The Museum In the Streets”. It’s pretty cool. One of them provided the information above about the glacier erratic. This one pertained to lobsters. In the 1800’s lobsters were used as fertilizer and were fed to prisoners and servants! They were not something anyone wanted to eat. What a difference from the lobster industry today!
Lobsters are nocturnal and typically feed at night. To be a legal catch, lobsters must measure between 3 1/2 inches to 5 inches from the eye to the end of the back, and weight 1-5 pounds. The largest lobster recorded was 43.6 pounds!! Whoa! Barry and I know what a 3 pounder looks like. Trying to picture one that is 14-15 times bigger. I wonder if being that large if the lobster meat would be stronger and tougher or just like the “normal” sized ones. Guess we’ll never know.
The Breakwater Estate – AKA John Innes Kanes Cottage (the name that appears on the National Registry)
More beautiful flowers…
I recently discovered the Action Tour Guides App that offers a variety of self-guided tours for all kinds of places in the country. I purchased a walking tour for Bar Harbor, and a driving tour for Acadia National Park. We got started on the walking tour for Bar Harbor. When we came by the entrance to the sand bar, the tide wasn’t out far enough yet to walk on it to Bar Island across the bay, so we continued on with the tour.
The water level between Bar Harbor and Bar Island is 4-8 feet at high tide (and COLD), so you need to pay attention to the tide schedules. If you walk and explore the island and lose track of the time, you may get stuck on the island with only a phone call to a costly water taxi as a way back to the mainland. Maybe we can catch it on another day.
La Rochelle (French for “the Little Rocks”) was built in 1903 by George Sullivan Bowdoin, a partner in J.P. Morgan Co. It is a Georgian Revival style mansion that had 35 rooms, 15 bathrooms, 11 fireplaces and accommodations for 20 servants. Later it became the home of Dr. John Dorrance, a chemist, who invented condensed soup and became the president of Campbell Soup Company. In 1972, his grandson donated the estate to the Maine Seacoast Mission. It was their headquarters until 2019. La Rochelle is now the home of the Bar Harbor Historical Society. They offer tours, but we didn’t take one.
Summer “Cottages” – These were really magnificent manor houses. The Primrose Cottage (1878) was built by Colonel William F. Holland of Savannah, Georgia. (He also built the Graycote Cottage.) Both cottages were on Holland Avenue.
I had to take this next picture: Can you read it???
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.
I saw the Abbe Museum and of course had to take a picture of the sign even if they spelled “Abby” wrong. LOL. It was founded by Dr. Robert Abbe, a New York surgeon and summer resident of Bar Harbor. He put together a collection of Indian artifacts found in the French Bay Area. We did not think it was something we wanted to pay to check out at this time.
When we finished the walking tour we got a bite to eat at Bar Harbor Inn. We enjoyed the view more than we did the chowders. Barry couldn’t eat his because it was way too salty. The lobster bisque was seasoned more than I would like, but I ate most of it. The lobster roll was good, although we did ask for more drawn butter for it. The fruit was tasteless.
We had over an hour before our parking time expired. From our outdoor dining seats we could see people walking across the sand bar to Bar Island, so we thought we could make it if we hurried. We quickly paid for lunch and hustled back over to the sand bar entrance. Walking across the sand bar was pretty cool, especially having seen it completely and partially covered with water earlier.
Building cairns (balanced stack of rocks) seemed to be the thing to do on the island. We had no desire to create one, nor did we have the time. Typically cairns are found while hiking to help show the trail. These were for entertainment.
You do NOT want to ignore the tide schedule! The water level between Bar Harbor and Bar Island is 4-8 feet at high tide (and COLD), so you need to pay attention to the tide schedules. If you walk around and start exploring trails on the island, keep track of the time, or you may get stuck on the island with a phone call to a costly water taxi as the only way to get back to mainland before another low tide! They try to warn you, but I’m sure plenty of people just walk right past these signs without reading them.
The low tide around the sand bar was the perfect time for seagulls to feed. While watching the various gulls, I was lucky enough to witness one seagull dive bomb into the water, and successfully grab a starfish, only to have a second seagull immediately dive on top of him, and take that starfish away. The bully seagull then flew away with his stolen catch as the first gull tried to fly after him. But it was too late. His prize catch was gone. It all happened within seconds. I couldn’t believe I captured the photos below of the catch, theft, and getaway. I didn’t have time to switch to movie mode. 🙁
3:12:47 PM
We got back to the Jeep with about five minutes to spare. We headed back to the motorhome .
Tides are something not to take lightly…as we well know!!!
Oh, yeah! I’ll never forget dodging those deep whirlpools. You were amazing at maneuvering around them. But seeing the whales was worth it–I can say that since we made it back safely. 🙂