Acadia Mountain

6:12 am - Thursday - August 2nd - Southwest Harbor, ME - 67º F, 100% humidity (rained all night), wind 11 mph out of the southwest......cloudy with a forecast high of 77º F.

After spending a good portion of Tuesday installing our new Fan-Tastic Vent Fan we were determined to get out and do a hike, and take in the movie we had postponed from the day prior.  Around 10 am we got in the VW to head north about 2 miles to the Acadia Mountain trailhead.  This is a very popular local hike, but it seems there is always a place  to park if you are patient.  We found ours quite quickly right near the granite stairway which begins the .9 mile climb to the top of Acadia Mountain.  This hike is rated as strenuous, and we would be totally on board with that description!

 At the beginning of the hike

 You know its going to be a tough hike when this is the trailhead

 We've come only 1/10th of a mile

As with most distance signs in most National Parks the distances frequently are not accurate.  The written description of this trail indicated a 2.1 mile round trip hike doing the 'loop' trail.  It ended up being 2.9 miles.  When you are climbing virtually straight up and then straight down an extra .8 tenths of a mile is a big deal......

 The ubiquitous granite staircase.....without these staircases you would be 'bouldering' all the way to the top

 We can see Echo Lake

 There is Southwest Harbor

.....we reached the top after .9 tenths of a mile......that distance was accurate. We thought we had another 1.2 miles to go, but it was really 2 miles to go.....

.....the climb was definitely worth the view......it was simply captivating.......

 Somes Sound

.....after soaking in the view and the wonderful breezes for about 15 minutes we continued to walk the loop trail thinking we had just over 1 mile to go.  The downward portion of the loop trail was quite treacherous, and did involve a lot of bouldering, but we finally made it to flatter ground in the form of a plank bridge......

.....at this point we thought we had about .2 tenths of a mile to go, but it was .8 to go.....at last we could see Highway 102, and where we parked our car........even though the hike ended up being way longer than we expected we would not trade the views we got for anything.....especially on the downhill portion of the loop trail.....Somes Sound was never out of site until we hit the bridge......

......in all we covered 2.9 miles with a total elevation gain of 775 feet, a total moving time of 1 hour and 37 minutes,  and 530 caloric units consumed.  Total time to do this hike.......2.5 hours.....

.....we headed for home, and were there in just a few minutes where we turned on the A/C for a while to cool down from our hike before taking showers.  By 3:45 pm we were back in the car and on our way into Bar Harbor to Reel Pizza Cinerama.  They have been in business for over 23 years and have a novel concept......eat your pizza while watching a current release film.  We were not that hungry so we just got a big bag of popcorn.......

 Every row of seats has a table for your food

.....they have two theaters in the pizza parlor and do two showings per night in each theater at 5 pm and 8 pm.  We chose to watch Mission Impossible: FALLOUT.  This movie is 2 hours and 27 minutes long so at the 1 hour and 15 minute mark we were given an 'INTERMISSION' when we could dispose of our uneaten foot, trash and go to the bathroom.  The intermission was about 10 minutes long and we were right back into the movie.  This movie is 147 minutes of extreme tension on the part of the viewers, but we loved every minute of it.  This was the best installment of this movie franchise so far.  A good indication of how good a movie is when the audience applauds the movie for 2 minutes after it finishes......IMDB gives this movie 8.4 stars of out 10 on over 44,000 reviews....pretty good, indeed.

It was about 20 minutes til 8 pm when we walked out of the theater and we were only a few blocks from Atlantic Brewing (Midtown) so we walked over and ordered a couple of drafts.....'Double Czech' (pale wheat ale) and an 'Atlantic Low Life' (California Common) for TLE....it was the perfect way to wind down after the movie.....

 Double Czech in the foreground, and the Atlantic Low Life in the background

.....we were home about 8:30 pm with smiles on our faces.....what a great day!  Those views from the top of Acadia Mountain were still in my mind as I headed off to slumberland.

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