Acadia Nat'l Park -- Day One

This morning we woke up in Randolph and went to church to hear Grampy sing. He is part of a barbershop quartet called the Belltones, and they travel around to different churches in the summer providing special music. It was a really neat time!
We headed back to Grammy and Grampy’s after a 2 hour church service – ate a quick lunch packed up and hit the road for the coast. We had to cross this bridge to get there.

We met Jamey’s family on his mom’s side today on the way to the coast in a beautiful little tourist town named Camden – Maine is full of them. It was so great to meet everyone and finally put faces with the names I’ve been hearing for so many years. From Camden it was on to Belfast, ME to see the Atlantic ocean! Brianna and I were so excited to see the little glimpses of ocean behind the trees but when asked why he wasn’t excited Avery said “what’s there to be excited about it’s just a lot of water and sand.” Yeah, can’t wait for him to be a teenager.

We ate at a seaside restaurant, right on the Harbor, where the

big beautiful boats of the rich and maybe famous were docked. I had my first ever lobster dinner. The lobster had eyes. I didn’t expect that. Still, after I ripped it limb for limb, it was really very good. Hard to eat but good. Jamey kissed the eyeballs of his lobster it was gross (but we have a good picture of it). We have lots of great pictures, but they were taken by Aunt Val so as soon as I have those on email I will post them.

Then we hit the road again for Acadia National Park. Soon road signs were posted everywhere for Acadia, but we couldn’t find any type of entrance for the park. We were passing tourist towns, gas stations, even a Wal-mart, but we couldn’t find the park. We stopped for directions and were told we were IN Acadia! We were floored. Who knew that national parks had Wal-marts?!? There were actually towns in a national park. Below, is a (terrible) picture I shot of a small town main street inside of the park. Isn't that interesting? After about 15 more minutes of driving, about 7:30 pm however, we found the Seawall Entrance – the entrance to our campground and to another section of the park. This is what we expected a national park to look like. The ocean is beautiful you can see the waves crashing in, but we couldn’t stop and look for long because we had yet to set up our giant tent (Thanks again mom and dad).

We found our campsite just before dark and unrolled the tent -- what a beast! And the campsite was too small – so we had to move then tent around for about 30 minutes and move tables and such to fit it – it was now after dark and we were struggling to set up by lantern light. Finally, after we were terribly frustrated and having a hard time figuring it out, a neighboring tent family (and seemingly camping veterans) from Illinois and their two teenage daughters came over and asked if we “need some light and a little help” . We were SO grateful. The six of us had the tent up in no time!

So, a night in the tent tonight, then we will walk about ¼ mile to the ocean, then back and take the park bus to some of the sights. We are in for a beautiful day tomorrow!