Friday, August 16, 2013

Exploring Crab Beach

With the combination of rocky shoreline, ocean vistas, and the highest mountains in the eastern US, Acadia National Park truly is a remarkable place.  In the two days we spent exploring the park, we saw enough to know that we barely touched seeing all of its glory.  Glen and I are already planning another trip in a few years where we spend longer and finally get to do some hiking.

One of our favorite parts of this trip was this beach we passed right next to the road on the way from Thunder Hole heading toward Jordan Pond.  During high tide it was just another pretty pebbly beach....

but during low tide it becomes a wonderland of rocks, kelp, and thousands of little puddles of seawater left from high tide.

My family stayed here for over an hour exploring the tide pools that were teeming with little creatures that are normally out to sea.  

Their favorites were these teeny little crabs, which Ellie begged to take home as a new pet.  I opted for a pet-free car ride to Canada though, so the cute crustaceans stayed behind.  


Even my squeamish Cami got brave enough to hold one...


Adam especially was enjoying this time to explore out in nature and his find of the day was a sandworm getting eaten by one of the mini crabs.  The sandworm was still alive and trying to escape, but the crab had its tight grip on it.  It was much too wriggly an event to get a good picture of unfortunately, but Adam (and Daddy) were fascinated with the whole thing.

The kids also enjoyed finding seashells.  They mostly found shells like these that Emma is holding, but there were also some pretty cool mini swirly shells as well.   
I don't know what this beach is officially called, but we dubbed it Crab Beach and have it on our list of places to visit when we go back someday.  In fact it  was one of the few places my kids begged to go back to the second day we were there, but alas the tide was high and all of those little creatures were covered in several feet of seawater.  Next time....

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Stay tuned for one more Acadia/Maine post, then on to our visit to Canada! 


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