BaHaBa

Narrows Too RV Resort   Site: 819.  Highs: 60's-70's, Lows: low 50's

On the carriage roads in Acadia

Bahaba is New England speak for Bar Harbor, lol....(Sparky saw that on a license plate years ago).

We are at an Encore Park in Trenton, Maine, called Narrows Too. There's another Narrows Park right down the road a few miles away. We like either one but Narrows Too is our favorite due to the more wide open spaces and quite a few pull through sites. 

Encore parks are "free" with our membership. Our monthly Thousand Trails membership cost has paid for stays such as these over and over within very short periods of time. It is well worth it and makes full time RVing affordable. If you were to stay at this park without the membership, it would cost you a lot per night to be able to stay about 10 miles from the Acadia National Park Visitor Center. We couldn't find out from the RV office because the price is based on "dynamic pricing". It depends on what day of the week it is, what time of year it is, and what kind of site you want. They have waterfront sites here, too. So we can stay for two weeks with our membership, then we have to be out of the park for a week before coming back in. We love that we are so close to Acadia! 

We happened to be assigned one of the best spots and the biggest in the park. It was just a lucky break. We have a pull through that is really ample, and has a view, although a little bit farther away, of Frenchman's Bay, so we can see the ocean from our living room window.

Sites are gravel and very level. They actually take care of grading and keeping them level! Decent laundry, nice pool, but not open yet as the season isn't fully underway up here just yet and they are waiting on a pool liner which they have no idea when it's going to come in. We have discovered that this is a great time to visit Acadia, as the crowds haven't descended upon the park just yet. A ranger said the end of June is when everything starts jamming up.

Sparky went for a ride one day on the carriage roads in Acadia. For newbies to Acadia NP and this blog, the carriage roads are of great historical significance, as John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s construction efforts from 1913 to 1940 resulted in 45 miles of crushed gravel, 16 foot wide carriage roads that weave in and around the national park. The roads were built to preserve the hillsides, save trees, and take advantage of the views. Even the drainage ditches and run off areas are built of stone that appear to be a part of the natural landscape.

The roads have quite a domed effect to allow for drainage. Along the sides of the roads are granite coping stones nicknamed "Rockefeller's teeth". 

As you ride, you can experience many of the beautiful stone bridges in Acadia and see horses still traveling the roads as well, whether they be individual riders or horse drawn carriage tours. This lady had the entire coordinated purple outfit going on. She looked very chic! She even had a Go-Pro camera attached to her purple helmet.

Watch out for horse poop! As a side note, only class 1 E-bikes are permitted on the carriage roads.

The carriage roads are a GREAT workout. There is no steep elevation except in just a few places, but steady ups and downs. The ups might last a half to a mile before you think you are going to have a heart attack, then the downs go down for about the same amount of distance. Just kidding, but riding the carriage roads will definitely get your heart rate up. It is NOT an easy ride if you put in some miles, that's for sure. Even Eagle Lake which is supposed to be more level, has elevation changes, but it's a very popular section of the carriage roads that are not quite as challenging as some of the other loops.

We did a bridge tour several years ago, that was called "Rockefeller's Bridges" and it was amazing! There are sixteen of them and Sparky's favorite is the "Amphitheater Bridge", built in 1931. Pictures of that one coming later on the second bridge bike tour later this week.

If you would like to know more, there are great guides to the bridges and some are easily found online. Sparky hopes to visit all 16 bridges in the park by the end of our two week stay. Here are a few from her first 20 mile ride on the carriage roads.....

Duck Brook Bridge, 1929

Eagle Lake Bridge 1928

Bubble Pond Bridge 1928

Deer Brook Bridge 1925

Along the ride today, Sparky stopped by the famous Jordan Pond House. She did not have popovers which they are famous for, but instead opted for the beautiful view outside and the Grab and Go little takeout area for the most delicious homemade lemonade. They also have some quick sandwiches which sure beats waiting for a table for long periods of time at the Jordan House when summer is in full swing. You can eat your popovers out on the lawn with the view of the Bubbles Mountains in the background--(legend says they are named for someone's ample busty girlfriend.)

Sparky then stopped by a pond and saw all these dead trees. She wondered if they had been felled by disease. Nope...From information from a fellow bike rider riding by, who just happened to be a biologist, she learned that beavers had dammed up the pond, killing all the trees by water logging their roots. The trees falls, the beavers eat all the bark to their heart's content, then they pack up and leave. He said it is about a 30-50 year process for the pond to recover. In the meantime, the beavers have moved on. It was striking to see the stark white tree trunks at all sorts of odd angles in the pond. As you traverse the carriage roads, you might come across one of the two gatehouses that herald the entrance to the carriage roads. They are beautiful, too!

If the bike trails on the carriage roads are too crowded, then there are other trails outside the national park in the area.

There is a Rails to Trails bike trail that runs for 87 miles called the Down East Sunrise Trail. It is the longest trail section connecting eastern Maine with the East Coast Greenway. The easternmost trailhead is in Ayers Junction, Pembroke. Sparky rode a part of the trail for 26.3 miles out and back the other day. It's not a very good trail heading northeast out of Ellsworth. She kept riding hoping it would get better but it didn't for almost 13 miles. It's for motorized and non motorized vehicles but seemed more for ATV's judging by how many passed by Sparky on her ride. The ruts and potholes from the machines were plentiful. Not an enjoyable ride at all with having to stop for ATV's flying by you unless you consider there is some beautiful scenery of streams and ponds along the way. 

Although there are forests along the way, the trail is mostly sunny and the biting flies were awful the first week of June. Wear bug spray!

With all that, and a couple of nice meals out at local eateries (We loved the Chart House by the way....) our first week passed by rapidly. We are not lobster fans, so all the lobster pounds and lobster roll offerings in the area will just have to be sampled by the next visitors to the area, but they look great and we are sure they serve delicious lobster!

We have one more week to go...more bike rides planned to more bridges in Acadia...There are many many things to do in the Bar Harbor area besides nature and bike rides, but we have done quite a few of those things years ago our first foray out as full time RVers-- a lobster boat tour years ago was wonderful, we've braved the Bar Harbor crowds to shop downtown at the wonderful cute shops there, we did a whale watch tour as well, but this time we are holding onto our tourist dollars for fuel costs instead! Hope we don't bore you with all the nature stuff, but if we do do some other things, we will let you know! Thanks for stopping by to see what we have been doing....Bye for now.....

Day 5--Acadia National Park--Carriage Roads with Lots of Bridges to See

Sparky's apologizes for the break in info about Acadia and riding the carriage roads. Sparky took a week's break from picking out her favorite Acadia photos and blogging about the carriage roads to go on a road trip with her daughter's car back to Virginia, and to welcome her daughter home from a long stay in Kuwait. She's BA-A-A-C-K! (Both of them...explains E.)

A little aside about Acadia National Park...It preserves parts or all of 15 islands in addition to Mount Desert Island.  It's about 35,000 acres with 41 miles of coastline, has the only fjord in the eastern U.S., AND the highest point on the Atlantic coast of North and South America. (Cadillac Mountain).

Sparky LOVES the Rockefeller bridges. There are 16 of them that are within the carriage road system and more outside the carriage roads. Each bridge is unique, and what a lot of people don't know, if you don't get off your bike, or head down the paths that you can barely see at the sides of the bridges, you will miss a whole other world. There are trails that criss cross the carriage roads, go under the bridges and beautiful falls and streams and other surprises await, like this little wooden bridge on a trail a ways back from one of the bridges.

This is Sparky's favorite bridge, the Amphitheater Bridge.

Here's an example of what you might see if you traverse down a bridge's side and look for trails underneath.

This photo below was taken underneath and to the side of the Waterfall Bridge....

One of the coolest things about Acadia and Rockefeller's vision, are the fact that the trails and paths that lead you to Mother Nature's beauty are so well blended into the landscape, although they are man made trails, that you can't even tell they are there.....This looks like an impossible walk through, but it's really quite easy because the stone and rocks have been deliberately placed so you can step from one rock to the next, and not jam your ankle in a crack somewhere, as long as you are stepping carefully!

See the blue blaze on the trail? (it's on the tree in the center) This really is a trail!

Sparky's ride today was on the other side of Acadia, near Northeast Harbor. She wanted to see FIVE bridges. This was going to be a longer ride. Eldy dropped Sparky off at the parking lot to the side of where the Brown Mountain Gate Lodge is located, on 198 on Mount Desert Island.

We had rented a nice little bike rack from the Bar Harbor Bike Shop on Cottage Street to transport the bike rental over to that side. Sparky was going to ride the Upper and Lower Hadlock Pond loop and the Long Pond loop-- on the bike map highlighted in blue--rated DIFFICULT. Where you see stars, are the bridges. The hard part is identifying the bridges two weeks AFTER you saw them, and trying to match up the stars with the names of the bridges on the Acadia park map with this bike map. (There are no signs at the bridges). The numbers on this map are the signpost numbers.

Here's the park literature map WITH the bridge names (off to the side,  not pictured) and numbers which have nothing to do with the bike shop map numbers! See how Sparky is confused? :-) (Doesn't take much to do THAT! laughs E.)

Did Sparky get lost again on the carriage roads? Yep, briefly. You see, many of the carriage rides are loops. So when you get to a signpost, which is numbered, and which is on the bike map, sometimes it will say go either way to get to a certain point, because it's a loop. Sparky's problem is, she's spatially challenged BIG time, and she doesn't know which way is east- west- north or south on a cloudy day (or any day! laughs E, AGAIN). So she briefly went a wrong way on one of the loop routes, then asked some other bikers which way she was supposed to be going, and they straightened her out.

Sparky thinks she did over 20 miles today....She started the "Map My Ride" bike app, but it ran down the phone battery so fast, she turned it off. And if it wasn't 20 miles, it certainly was a stupendous workout with all the hills. She needs a portable odometer! It was a really fabulous ride today.....

Hadley Brook Bridge

Next up, a whale watching tour with quite the story! See you later......