Wonderful weather, Great tans in places!!

I'm doing the fun fun task of standing in line at 7pm on 5th July in a laundry, waiting for the washing machines and dryers.  What a way to spend a few hours!!!  So good opportunity to catch up on emails and blogs.

We are in Bar Harbor Maine. Have heard a lot about it, but it isn't till you get here that you can see why it is so different to everything else that we have seen so far.  This is where the mega wealthy vacationed in the 1800's and 1900's.  It is very beautiful, on the edge of Acadia National Park.  It is on an island called Mt Desert Island.  It is a huge hill/mountain, split by a fjord (formed by glaciers).

The wealthy people bought up property here like mad.  Then they decided to be philanthropic and started setting aside large chunks of land for public land.  The Acadia National Park is now the 2nd most visited national park in the USA (I have no idea which one is the most visited sorry!). Tomorrow we are going on a guided tour, but for today, these were the highlights:

One of the 'summer houses' of the wealthy, probably still owned by that family or some 'new wealthy'

 

 

 

Got our bikes into the bike shop to get a service, so we are 'sans' bikes at the moment.  Its great for now! Had a fantastic lunch, crab meat cakes, fresh guacomole and 'lobster rolls'.  All were to die for!!

Have some other great photos, but they don't want to upload today.  Only rode 16km - yay.

Yesterday we rode 102km.  We were on the railroad trail.  When we woke it was foggy, but warm foggy,not cold like the day before.  We were on the trail by ourselves for a long time.  We saw an inquisitive deer who got quite close to us, on his early morning stroll.  The trail is a 'multi-use recreational trail'.  That means it is designed to be used by walkers, bike riders, horse riders and ATV (quad bike) drivers.

The day before, we encountered a lot of walkers and ATV drivers, on the Sunday afternoon, coming in to Machias.  So, we assumed that being the 4th of July, there would be a lot of people out and about. Nuh-huh!  Over the total 95km of the trail, we saw 1 mountain bike rider (and that was in the last 15km), but we did see 17 ATV riders, some who were most upset that we dared to be on the trail!

There were some beautiful scenes, but mostly tedious grind, but it broke the back of the long distance.  Now, hopefully we are looking at 50 - 65km days each day, so we can be in camp, setup by 2pm, and then have time to explore the pretty towns.

An example of the trail, this was a 5km slow uphill

About 100m after lunch, we saw this lovely stream, pretty, some trout fishing according to the signs, but very dark brown tanniny water.

The weather has been fantastic, not a spot of rain yet - and over 30 degrees celsius today.  Thunderstorms were threatening yesterday afternoon as we rode into Ellsworth, incredibly humid, but they evaporated.  But by the time we had found the campground (another 5km out of town, fortunately in the right direction towards Bar Harbor, so we didn't have to back track!) and put up the tents, the fog had rolled in again.  We caught a taxi back into town to get some dinner, but it must have ben after 8.30pm and it WAS the 4th of July!  The only places open were KFC, Taco Bell, MacDonalds, and a sandwich place called Friendlys.  They were friendly, so our good eating vows went out the windows and we had a burger (they had run out of chicken and most of the things on their menus were chicken!

Tans.  Yes, we have classic bike riders tans.  Tanned faces.  Tanned arms (but not hands, as we have to wear of riding gloves to protect the nerves in the palms of the hands, which still hurt when you are doing this much riding!).

Tanned legs, apart from the top where the bike shorts are, and the bottoms where the socks and shoes are.  But it feels good!

Hopefully another 15 minutes of washing and drying to go!!!

Sorry to hear about the weather......