Climbing Beech Mountain, An Easy Hike

Trenton, Maine  High: 77  Low: 56

It's listed in the Falcon Guide book, "Best Easy Day Hikes- Acadia National Park", all about easy hikes in Acadia...But not the way WE did it! And it had nothing to do with Sparky being navigationally challenged, but it was more about Sparky' persuasive ways than anything. We pulled into the parking lot this morning, and promptly found the trail head. The wrong one.

The wrong one, that is, for the easy hike. HA! This was supposed to be a 1.1 easy hike. However, the name of the trail marker didn't match the name in the book. Sparky told Eldo that the park was in the process of changing the  names of the trails back to the historic names when the park trails first were named, which they are. So, the fact that the trail head name didn't match the one in the book quite exactly, was no big deal, Sparky insisted. Eldo, being easily persuaded, acquiesced, which means, he wisely kept quiet and let Sparky have her way. And off we went, on a really beautiful hike through the forest with lots of boulders.

Which was clue #1.....the boulders kept getting bigger and more plentiful....

And harder to climb and get over.....

After we had gone MORE than a mile, we realized that we must have taken a wrong turn, but we soldiered on. Sparky saw some really cool mushrooms or fungi...whatever they are!

Some weird looking yellow ones....

And then, the challenge began....

See the blue blaze on the rock? Yeah, they actually want you to do some rock climbing...We passed some hikers and found that after getting sidetracked and taking a loop trail we didn't mean to, we were on the trail to get to the summit of Beech Mountain and the fire tower.

And------We made it!

We climbed the first level of the fire tower, that was as far as the park would let you look out over the fantastic vista below....I guess the original fire tower was wood and was replaced by a steel fabricated frame and brought by helicopter in the '60's.

Here's the view from the boulder summit of Beech Mountain...

Here's Sparky at the summit of Beech Mountain....

As we started down, we took a break on a ledge, ate some snacks and pondered our wonderful life together, sharing these great hikes and views all over the country.....

It was an exhausting climb today, but perfect weather to do it in....Sparky wants to ride bikes on a carriage road tomorrow.....Ok, Eldy?  Eldy?  Eldo?  Hm-m-m-m-mm, might have to wait a day on that one......