Another Ride for Sparky-The Hadlock Pond Loop

Bar Harbor, ME   High: 78  Low: 62

Eldy has been feeling a little under the weather, so he opted out of a bike ride on the carriage roads of Acadia today. Besides, we had done the Hadley Brook Loop carriage ride two years ago. Sparky wanted to see if she remembered it, and there were THREE bridges she wanted to get photos of, so off she went. Best time to bike the carriage trails is late in the day...You can find parking, and the trails are not as busy this time of day. Sparky has found that around 4:00 PM is a great time to ride. If you go during the mornings or early afternoons, the small parking lots for the carriage roads are completely full, and cars are forced to park along the highway roads for long distances, especially during the months of July and August. Go in the late afternoon, and you can park easily in the designated parking lot. Hiking might be a different story. Not sure you'd want to set out on a challenging hike later in the day. That would best be attempted early in the morning.

She didn't even get out of the campground before calling Eldy, "Uh, honey, which way did you say to turn out of the campground?" Eldo just laughed and patiently told her once again, just like he always does, the man has the patience of Job when it comes to Sparky's inability to use her internal compass and memory banks to get where she needs to go on her own. Eldo knows Sparky needs LOTS of repetition to remember things. And even then, sometimes she forgets, like what appliances are using 12 volt in the motorhome and which ones aren't. But, I digress....

Brown Mountain Gatehouse

You can reach the Hadley Brook/Hadley Pond Loop at a mile north of Northeast Harbor on Route 198. It was about a 15 minute drive from Mount Desert Narrows Campground. The Hadley Brook Loop is a 3.9 mile circuit that rises to an elevation of 500 feet, so that means some SERIOUS hill climbing! Or walking, as the case may be...Sparky was on the bike for some of it, and off for walking the rest of the hill. This hike or ride has a little bit of everything---level spots, steep inclines, a waterfall (well, not in the summer, it's pretty well dried up), and a pond and some really great views except the trees have grown up and obscure much of it. You start out on the carriage road just beyond the Brown Mountain Gate House, one of two gatehouses in Acadia. The two gate lodges were built to control traffic and serve as a gateway entry into the carriage roads. The Jordan Pond Gatehouse was built at the same time as the Brown Mountain one, and they have similar architectural styles. The Brown Mountain Gatehouse has beautiful masonry, spindles in the windows and lots of detail.  There's a lot more to the gatehouse than what you can see in the photo. It extends out both sides and has additional attached buildings. It's beautiful!

If you take this carriage road trail, you get to see the highest waterfall in Acadia when it's flowing (spring time is best) and two of Rockefeller's wonderful bridges--Hemlock Bridge and the Waterfall Bridge. People talk about there being 17 of Rockefeller's bridges, but that number reflects just the ones on the carriage roads. There are more in the park crossing over non-carriage roads as well. You have two choices of how to travel this trail upon starting at the Brown Mountain Gatehouse. You can start uphill immediately, or take a different route for an easier ascent and descent. Sparky missed the easier route in the book and took the high road, which skirts around Upper Hadlock Pond. Not much of a view there, the mature trees now obscure the view. But Sparky took her time, admiring the sunlight dappling through the trees, highlighting the little things in nature that many people just breeze right on by most of their lives. Most people would say this is just an ugly tree stump, but when riding by yesterday, the sunlight on the little crushed pile of leaves made it just glitter, causing Sparky to pause for a moment of reflection. Same for the lichens below....

If you take this trail early in the morning, they say you can hear the loons calling in the Upper Hadlock Pond.

It was a beautiful afternoon to be out riding. Very few mosquitoes, a light breeze and temperatures in the low seventies.

It's not long before you come to the first bridge--Hadlock Bridge. It's modeled after the one in Central Park, NY. This little bridge is a wonderful example of how Rockefeller's vision is captured in the design of this bridge. It blends and harmonizes with nature, drawing very little attention to itself.

Rockefeller and his design team worked very very hard to blend the bridges into the landscape...curving the structures where needed, disturbing the natural environment as little as possible before, during, and after construction, using granite right from the bridge site, and employing a famous landscape architect of the twenties, Beatrix Farrand, to plant native species of plants, trees, and flowers along the carriage roads and at the bridges. When you stand back and look at this bridge, you see how well the granite stone blocks blend in with the boulders and rocks in the stream. Rockefeller even told his granite workers not to cut the stones too perfectly to maintain the rusticity of the bridges. When you come to intersections in the carriage roads, many of them have tree islands with the signs, it almost seems like an invitation to stop and rest awhile.

After passing this bridge, you climb steeply (again!) up the sides of Parkman Mountain to get to the next bridge--the Hemlock Bridge. This is one of the prettiest bridges in the park, in a lot of people's opinion. The bridge has a massive Gothic arch in the center of it. There are two small false arches, one on each side. This was one of the most expensive bridges to build, because they couldn't find enough suitable granite at the site. So they hauled it in from a nearby quarry.

About a tenth of a mile further uphill, (still climbing!) is the Waterfall Bridge. It was constructed a year after the Hemlock Bridge. The Waterfall Bridge is AMAZING!  Unless you are standing underneath it, you can't even imagine how tall it is, and how small you are. The north wall faces a 40 foot waterfall that can best be seen in early spring. Today there was a mere trickle of water coming down the ravine walls and barely enough water in the brook for a melodic tinkling down the rocks as it flowed.

There are two towers that form viewing platforms at the road level. Sparky stopped to admire the work of these early architects and to catch her breath....

From here on out, it was a gradual descent back down to the parking lot. It was a wonderful ride today, and marvelous exercise, too! Until next time.....

Sparky Solos on the Carriage Roads Or Aunt Betty's Pond Loop

Mount Desert Narrows  RV Park   High: 80  Low: 63

Bet lots of people have an Aunt Betty in their family. We don't, but someone who settled on Mount Desert Island must have, because the biggest pond without vehicle access on the island is called Aunt Betty. Nobody knows for whom the pond is named. Oh, my English teacher would be proud of that last sentence, I think!   The name shows up on maps dating back to 1890.

starting point at Eagle Lake for many carriage road trails

Because Eldy doesn't enjoy biking up inclines, sometimes steep ones that are just about on every carriage road in the park, he chose to stay home by the phone for a distress call from one navigationally challenged Jeannie Sparks, a.k.a. "Sparky" for our newest followers.

The call came shortly after Sparky left in the car, following a NEW ROUTE which she successfully used a map to find, and it was a little shorter way to Eagle Lake on Norway Rd. That was not the problem. The problem was, Sparky forgot to take the little guide book how to do the carriage road bike trail! And to compound her navigational difficulties, the cell phone service is extremely spotty on Mount Desert Island. It flipflops all over the place with the bars, at least it does with AT & T. You could be talking one second, and get dropped the next. Sparky called Eldy. 

"Uh, honey....I forgot....."  

"WHAT? You are cutting out, I can't hear you!"   

"I need directions what to do for....."   

"You are cutting out really bad!" 

"OK, never mind!" I tried texting him...PLEASE SEND DIRECTIONS FROM THE LITTLE BOOK. He sent a partial set to get me going, but I was already on the way.....THE WRONG WAY. At that point, the signal on the phone quit. The phone works some of the time on the trails, but it can't be counted on for help in the park consistently if you run into a problem.

These are what the signposts look like:

Here are the directions that Sparky SHOULD have done:

Park in the Eagle Lake Parking Lot about three miles west of Bar Harbor on Rte. 233. (If you are thinking that Sparky has all of a sudden gotten navigational skills, WRONG!) She's copying the written directions out of a little pocket guide book purchased at the Acadia Visitor Center, called The Carriage Roads. "Walk west along the footpath to where you can turn left..." Sparky has no clue what direction west is. (It was a cloudy day, folks) Go under route 233 (Sparky figured that was the 233 overhead on the overpass, brilliant!) "....and at #6, continue straight along the west side of Eagle Lake.  Sparky didn't see post 6, so she already had taken the wrong turn.  She turned right at the first signpost. "The first mile is flat"--NO, it wasn't! But that's because she took a right turn and not the left. "The second mile climbs to 468 feet at #8.  Turn right here."  Further instructions tell you at intersection #10, the carriage roads "intersect in a "K" shape. Stay to the RIGHT."  Well, Sparky didn't have the little book, but she DID have a map, but it DIDN'T have the intersection numbers. She turned the map round and round trying to figure out which way....What did she do? The signposts are well marked but you can be on a carriage road for a LONG time until you see the next one. She stayed to the LEFT!

But it all worked out ok....Sparky passed two female rangers and told them she wanted to see the "Seven Little Bridges". They told her to stay left, which she had been doing, and she would see them! They DIDN'T say that the incline to get to them is LONG and steep. Sparky asked the next biking couple passing her going back the other way for some information  about the Seven Little Bridges. They DID mention the steep incline SEVERAL times. Guess they thought Sparky might not be up to the challenge. HA! She started off..hey, this isn't such a bad incline.....

Miles later.....the REALLY steep incline started. The steep ascent to get to the seven little bridges seemed like miles long, it wasn't. But Sparky had to get off her bike and walk it some of the way, then she'd get back on her bike to try and ride some of it. When she stopped to get off, the mosquitoes attacked! She forgot bug spray....Note to self: Put bug spray in the bike bag! As the incline seemed like it would never end, the little bridges started showing up. And as you are huffing and puffing up the steep incline, the next bridge is in sight as you are passing the first one, a little bit of motivation to keep going....

They were really pretty and the carriage road scenery is exceptional on this particular carriage road.  You get to see views of Cadillac Mountain, Eagle Lake, and beautiful Aunt Betty's pond.

If you are in good shape, Sparky highly recommends biking this trail. Even if you are not, Sparky, (that's me) highly recommends it anyway. The scenery is just fabulous. We've been on several carriage roads and this one is one of the prettiest. 

It's great exercise, and hey, if you have to get off and walk your bike, that's ok, too!  Little guide book says it's a 5.9 trail ride...Sparky says if you go her way, it's probably more....One more caveat...if you get off onto another trail by accident, be sure to have some kind of GPS tracker or travel with someone who is navigationally savvy. Sparky knew she wanted to return to Eagle Lake eventually, but she encountered a signpost that said nothing about the lake in ANY direction, and that's where it got confusing. It took a 12 year old guiding his mother and me back towards the right direction. He knew, but we didn't, which way to go.....Which made the last half hour of the ride very enjoyable. His mother ( I didn't get her name, sorry!) was a very interesting lady, from Vermont, and we chatted all about travel and the RVing life for the next half hour on our bikes. It was great, and Sparky enjoyed meeting her.  

Tomorrow, Eldo has promised Sparky he will do a hike! It's in print, it's official!  :-)  See you on the trails......