We were woken up abruptly at about 2am by the sound of a car alarm and someone shouting ‘bear’. We, maybe rather stupidly, hadn’t realised there were bears in the area and had a bag of rubbish outside and all our toiletries in the tent. We quickly went into lock-down, throwing everything in the car that smelt, including a pair of my smelly socks I had been wearing the day before just in case! We then headed out of our site to find out what had happened. Some campers a couple of sites away told us that they heard a bear munching on some apples up a tree in their campsite, they chased him off with their car alarm, Thankfully the bears here are wild and unlike in Lake Tahoe, don’t have an addiction to Pringles, or the skills to break into a car.
We headed back to bed, one ear listening for any bear shaped rustling sounds outside before drifting off to sleep.
We woke up and it was already 9am and all the other campers had left. We showered, made some hot coffee, packed up the tent and then hit the road.
We didn’t have time to see Grafton Notch yesterday so we decided to take a drive through the State Park this morning.
The campsite was a 2-minute drive from the park, perfectly located if you have more time than us and want to spend a day or more exploring the many hikes and trails. We followed the road through the park, stopping off at Screw Auger Falls and a couple of pulls outs to take in the scenery.
It is not a big park so it didn’t take us long to reach the end where we turned around and headed back the way we had come and towards our destination for the night in Acadia National Park.
The drive through Maine was fairly uneventful. We went through a couple of big towns and some smaller villages. It was a pretty drive with very little farmland but lots of trees with the occasional granite rock formation. The trees seemed to have more Autumn colours than where we had been up until now and the houses felt more practical for extreme seasons that luxurious. I did find it strange how often home owners would have a bigger, more impressive barn compared to their houses.
We normally stop off for lunch at scenic overlook, a pull out with a view or a picnic area on public lands but today we couldn’t find anywhere to stop. We became desperate just after 1pm and stopped off at the first place we came across, a petrol station in Norridgewook with some picnic tables, not very glamorous but very roadtripesque.
We continued on, heading towards the coast and to our destination for the next couple of days, Acadia National Park. We knew we were close when we started to see restaurants selling Lobster Rolls, a well-known Maine dish that we were going to have to try one day.
We pulled into Acadia National Park and the surrounding villages and it felt very sleepy and calm. The waterways had boats gently rocking with the waves and the villages reminded us of small British villages with small local stores, cottages and the occasional turkey running around.
We reached our campsite at around 4pm so we had plenty of time to pitch and cook dinner before the sun went down at 6:30pm. Lee, being the pyromaniac that he is, built a big fire to keep us warm all evening as the temperature dropped to near freezing. He did go through all three bundles of wood we bought, guess we’ll have to buy some more tomorrow!
For dinner, we had salmon and sugar snap peas cooked on the fire with noodles from the hob and fruit with yogurt and honey for pudding.
