Day 11 - Bicycling uphill

Wow! What a day! It kind of made everyone aware of how old he is.


Today, we rented bicycles and took a free van ride (bus service provided free to the park by LL Bean) to Eagle Lake in Acadia National Park. They have carriage trails around parts of the park where no automobiles are allowed. Today, we rode bicycles on one of them around Eagle Lake. Two things were remarkable about this day's adventure.


First, it was a 6.8 mile ride around the lake. I'm guessing, but I'd have to say that the first 7 miles of the 6.8 mile were up hill! I know - that doesn't sound quite right but it seemed when we rounded a corner expecting (hoping for?) flat road, we always found it still going uphill. Believe me, he was pretty tired at the end of it all. He complained that his legs felt rubbery. Old people!


Second, our youngest member was less than 2 weeks from having gotten off training wheels! Goodness, she handled it great. And none of the kids had any previous experience riding a bike with shifting gears - the all did great! (Oh, I guess I should mention that I was told that the family of itinerant workers that's been shadowing us are some people they know. Go figure!)


We couldn't see the lake during most of the ride - it was all heavily wooded. But it was a great day - warm and slightly overcast. So it was very nice.


When we returned to Bar Harbor, where we started from with the van ride, we sat on the lawn on the park overlooking the Bar Harbor harbor and ate ice cream. Then we returned the bicycles to the rental shop and drove back down town. We walked up Main Street window shopping and ate dinner on the covered top balcony of an open-air restaurant. By then it was a little chilly (imagine that!) so it was heated a bit by overhead heaters.


When we were about finished with dinner, the sky opened up and let lose with a torrential downpour. I loved it but was still eating so didn't get to go out to enjoy it. The rain lasted about 10 minutes and by then we were finished dining. We walked back down Main Street and did some t-shirt/sweatshirt shopping.


As we were on our way back to the car, we passed a "whale museum" hosted by the College of the Atlantic. We stopped there and the kids spent a while looking at whale stuff. I presume, due to reciprocity requirements, that we'll be visiting the duck museum in the next day or so.