Acadia, Day 2

We spent the morning at the hotel pool. Since New Haven doesn't really have any good outdoor swimming pools (it has rocky beaches and splash pads in their stead) we were excited to go in a real pool. After grabbing some lunch food at Walmart, we headed back to Acadia. We found a picnic area and ate lunch. Our boys were of course happy to find some rocks to climb on.

We then drove to Schooner Point to see the waves. It was a gray day and the water was really choppy.

It was pretty mesmerizing watching the water crash against the rocks, but my favorite part might have been watching the ducks in the water.

We then headed to Sand Beach. I stayed in the car feeding Jacob while Kevin went down with the boys.

Joseph really liked getting close to the water:

Meanwhile, I was nursing Jacob when I heard them coming. I saw Joseph walk calmly up completely covered in sand.

"He took a bit of a tumble," Kevin explained. We got to work brushing sand off his face, out of his hair, and off his clothes. We didn't really have extra clothes right then so we turned the heater on and dried off everything that had gotten soaked.

His hair never really recovered from his fall. Just imagine this cute face covered with sand.

Another cute face.

I took a quick look at the beach and then headed onward. We had considered walking along the Sand Beach Trail but decided to drive to our next destination. If there was one thing I remembered about visiting Acadia when I was 11, it was that there were nice big rocks to climb on, and I wanted to find them.

Thunder Hole

Our first family picture since the hospital, I think.

We kept stopping in little parking lots by Otter Point and Otter Cliff to find a good place for the boys to climb around, but everything just seemed too big and rugged with steep dropoffs, so we didn't want them playing there.

Then we decided to stop near Otter Creek.

And here we stayed a while. There were definitely rocks to climb on, though they were much smaller than the ones I had remembered, and we stumbled more than climbed.

Lots of beautiful colors in the rocks.

The rocks were just the right size to throw in the water with a huge splash.

Then, it was time to head to Cadillac Mountain for the sunset. Like E. B. White said, it was great how we could see beaches, forests, and mountains all in the same day.

Once we got up there, we discovered it was cold, cloudy, and windy. This was to be a drive-in sunset experience except for a few brief trips out of the car to take better pictures.

The heavy clouds made it a grayer sunset, but we still liked a bold strip of red peeking through between the clouds and the horizon.

Once again, we traveled back to the hotel in the darkness.