Doing the 'Schoodic'.......

7:13 am - Saturday - August 18th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 65º F, 94% humidity, wind 12 mph out of the south by southwest......heavy overcast with occasional rain with a forecast high of just 69º F.

It's been a while since we drove anywhere past Ellsworth, but if we wanted to see the most remote part of Acadia National Park we would have to drive over 50 miles to the Schoodic Penninsula.......

......there is no direct route to the Schoodic Peninsula, unless you take the ferry out of Bar Harbor over to Winter Harbor, but then you would have no transportation, or so we thought.  At any rate we had determined that Friday was the day we would make the drive.  We were up and on the road at the relatively early hour of 9 am, and by 10:30 am we were in Winter Harbor, right in the heart of what they call the 'Schoodic District'.  From Winter Harbor it is a short drive to Fraser Point, which is the beginning of the Schoodic Peninsula Scenic Route, a one way, two lane road shared with bicyclists.........

 Fraser Point

.....this is when we realized we could have taken our bicycles with us on the ferry and spent a lovely day riding the one way road....we passed literally dozens of people doing just that.....next time.....

Winter Harbor lighthouse across the bay on Mark Island

Closeup of the lighthouse

....the fog continued to roll in and out as we made our way slowly along the one way road.  We stopped at Schoodic Peninsula Head to take some pictures........

.....it was then that I noticed these long black sections of rock, which appeared almost as if they had been poured into a gap in the rocks at a much later date.......

......see how perfect the seam is between the granite and whatever type of rock the black stuff is?  I became totally fascinated by this phenomenon......as it turns out these dark streaks came much after the original granite was formed when molten lava reach the surface, and pooled in gaps in the granite before cooling, just as we see today......very cool....

.....we continued on another mile, so coming to a turnout in the road where we parked and began the Schoodic Head Trail.  As is the case with most trails here in Acadia National Park, this trail began going straight up.  We were treated to some great views of the fog rolling in and out.....

.....after just .4 of a mile we came to on overlook sign where we snapped the pictures below......

....as is often the case, the sign at the beginning of the hike indicated it was 1 mile to Schoodic Head, but it was more like 1.25 miles each way......

....according to Strava we gained 573' in elevation, and I would have to agree...I remember telling TLE during the hike that I thought we had gained over 500'........

....it has been a very long time since we found a great Mexican food place to eat in the northeast, so after we finished our hike we continued on to Milbridge, ME where there was reputed to be just such a place......

.....Vasquez Mexican Takeout.........OMG.....the extra 40 mile round trip distance was more than worth what we found!

I ordered 3 of their 'Classic Tacos', whilst TLE ordered a very large Chimichanga.....they do not sell beer, so we chased our orders with ice tea......the tacos were for which one might die, if necessary.  We were told about this place by co-workers Tammy and Karen, who quit SDC the same day as us.  I'm always skeptical about Mexican food referrals, but Tammy and Karen were spot on with this recommendation!

We were home just after 4 pm after a wonderful day sightseeing (by the way, I just became aware that I have been improperly writing 'site seeing', as opposed to 'sightseeing' in my blog posts for literally years, but thanks to The Lovely Elaine, who quite graciously pointed out my mistake Friday morning, I am now correcting my error).....thanks for stopping by!

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