Two Mornings in Maine

 In the interest of time and wanting to be done blogging about vacation before school starts, I figure I better start combining some of the places we visited all into one post.  Here is a glimpse of the rest of our time in Maine, so I can get onto blogging about Canada.  We only spent about 2 days in Maine in total, but writing it all out I see that we jam-packed a lot into those two days!   See here and here and here to read about our other adventures in Maine.  

Shout-out to whomever correctly guesses which children's book I based my title on today!  


5--Whale Watching--a couple of the kids were mildly obsessed with seeing some sea creatures in the wild, so we splurged for a 3-hour whale watching cruise based out of Bar Harbor.   We saw a dozen or so whales, some finback and some humpbacks.  We also saw a blue shark, a molamola sunfish, and a jellyfish.   The kids were mostly bedazzled by it all, but we learned that one of our kids has a little tendency towards seasickness.  It was only when the boat stopped moving and rocked side-to-side, but poor Adam was looking a little green by the time we got back.

4--Ogunquit--a cute little town just over the border in Maine, we  would have liked it a lot more had the traffic not been a complete and total nightmare.  Reminiscent of  rush hour in DC, traffic barely crawled well into the late evening and had it not been for the charming beach and delicious dinner at Cornerstone Pizza, we would have vowed to never return.  As it is, I think the experience soured us on  taking Route 1 through Maine!

traffic looked pretty much like this the whole time we were in Ogunquit

The food at Cornerstone Pizza was amazing!

3--More Tide Pools--I already blogged about the tide pools we saw at one of the beaches, but we discovered them in a couple of other places as well and they were just as fascinating every time.

2--The beautiful rocky shoreline--although the kids were initially sad that we didn't stop at the overcrowded Sand Beach, they ended up totally enjoying  exploring the rocky shoreline between Sand Beach and Thunder Hole.  Discovering tide pools, enjoying beautiful views, and just plain old exploring and climbing turned out to be just the kid-friendly/energy-burning activity we were looking for that day.

1--The Scenery--Even the hour-and-a-half drive from our hotel in Bangor to and from Acadia was filled with gorgeous little spots like this where we could  pull over (at my request) and take a few pictures!

Biggest Bummer:  Thunder Hole--when one of Emma's friends raved about how it was her favorite site in all of Acadia, we had high hopes for watching the crashing thunderous waves that made it famous.  We knocked ourselves waking up quite early to be able to be there an hour before high tide, but even still it turned out to be quite the dud for us.  Apparently we happen to be there on a very calm wave day and instead of thunder we got sweet little waves quietly lapping into the inlet with a funny belching sound.  Oh well....now we'll just have to go back another day.  

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