[Paddlewise] My trip to Acadia, part one.

    For my first week of vacation this year several friends and I went
to Acadia National Park.  Originally it was going to be only me, my
cousin Jeff, his girlfriend Kris, and her two boys.  As the only kayaker
in the group this was a bit of a bummer for me.  I was going to the L.
L. Bean Sea Kayaking Symposium immediately after the Acadia part of my
trip so I would have my kayak with me and no one to paddle with!
Luckily fate intervened.  I met Kathie and her mother Ruth at a "how to
pack your kayak" seminar held by a local paddling shop.  We got to
talking and I told her about the trip I was planning.  We met again
(after exchanging e-mail) two weeks later at a kayak navigation class
held by the same shop.  At the class Kathie asked if I would mind if she
and her mother came along on the trip too.  Mind? I was delighted!  This
meant that I would have paddling partners!  The rest, as they say, is
history.  Here is the first part of my Journal of the trip.

Acadia

Day 1 - Sunday 9 July, 2000
 I arrived at Mount Desert Campground at 10:20 AM.  Jeff and Kris
arrived at 12:30 PM with John and Jason in tow, and we all checked in.
Kathie and Ruth arrived at about 1:30 PM.  After all of the tents were
set up we spent the evening socializing and getting to know each other
better.

Day 2 - Monday 10 July 2000
 Kathie, Ruth and I got up at 6:30, Jeff and Kris somewhat later.  After
breakfast Kathie, Ruth and I paddled in Somes Sound.  We started at the
campground boat ramp and paddled to the top of the sound, then headed
south.  We headed down around Bar Island (the one in Somes Sound, not
the one in Frenchman's Bay) and into the cove beside Squantum Point.
There were many beautiful homes to look at, and we spent a bit of time
just gawking and taking pictures.  Then we headed back.
 Coming back into the campground Kathie and I detoured over to the dock
to watch the kids catching crabs with baited nets.  Some of the bait
must have been floating in the water, because one Laughing Gull was
making repeated passes at the same spot in the water.  This gull was so
daring that he actually flew under the overhang of the bow of Kathie's
kayak when she passed over that spot!
 We soon discovered that the north end of Somes Sound is quite shallow
at low tide, with extensive mud flats.  Even the boat ramp had a mud
flat.  All three of us were glad that we were wearing our neoprene
boots.  Ruth was introduced to the problems that Kathie had encountered
last year while kayaking in Maine when she noticed that less than ten
minutes after beaching her boat it was more than a boat length from the
water.  With a ten-foot tide range, you can actually see the tide come
in if you watch a small stone at the edge of the water.
 After lunch the whole gang went to check out the Park Loop Road.  I was
supposed to head south to pick up my new kayak, and Kris' van didn't
have room for two more people (the third seat had been removed for cargo
space), so Kathie, Ruth, and I headed back early.  Arriving at the
campground I found a note waiting for me telling me that my kayak was
not ready, the distributor had not delivered it yet.  So my trip south
was canceled.  The three of us spent the rest of the evening talking and
relaxing on the shoreline near the boat ramp.


--
    Paddling along through fog so thick that only one's thoughts are
visible, your reverie is abruptly shattered by the ancient cry of a
great
blue heron as she lifts uncertainly from the brilliant blue of a
mussel-shell beach witnessed only by the brooding, wet spruce....your
passage home seems as much back through time as it does through space.
Mark H Hunt


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