Ockey Family Adventures: Boston Day 1

It was a really long day! Our flight was supposed leave at 10:20 pm on Wednesday night, but we got three separate delay emails. By the last one, it was 1:30 am before we left. The only good thing was that we got to see the chickens put themselves to bed before we left. It was their first time finding their way into the coop without our help, so we were a little less stressed about them throughout the day.

Worst flight delays ever!

The bad news, of course, was that we got in at 8 o'clock instead of 5 o'clock. That three hours really cost us. First, the car rental place had given our van away. They had another one, but it wasn't ready, so they got it washed and gassed up, but that cost us another thirty minutes. After breakfast and shopping, it was almost 10 am, and we were supposed to be in Acadia National Park 5 hours away in Maine by 11:30.

Dad even fell asleep waiting for the van.

The drive up the coast was long, but pretty. We made a short stop in a parking lot and Mom made sandwiches out of the back of the van. Record heat and humidity from the notorious "heat dome" had all the locals commenting about the unseasonal weather. It was a little over 90 degrees, but the humidity was 90%, too. We were racing up the narrow, winding roads into Bass Harbor because low tide was around 3:30 and we had two places to check out the tide pools.

The first stop was a figure-eight trail that ran through the thick forest. The trees were really pretty and we spotted an Eastern Blue Jay like the one for the baseball team and some squirrels. The boys even saw a few deer. Then we checked out the tide pools. Honestly, there wasn't much to see until Mark spotted a crab about the size of his palm. We saw some fun shells and lots of hermit crabs. Finally, we saw a starfish in the deeper water.

This trail began in the trees.

And ended up by the ocean!

The rocky coast was lovely.

We were barely alive after a long night.

Next we had another tide pool hike. This one was about the same, but we enjoyed the walk along the rocky beach. There were quite a few people out and about, but not much more than we'd already seen. We enjoyed a few loons on the lake, and we listened closely to their haunting call. Then we stopped at a little lighthouse and took a few pictures. The walk wasn't much, but the view over the bay was picturesque.

Mom loved these pretty pink flowers.

She also loved the purple mussels.

We had fun exploring the tide pools.

This was the coolest crab we spotted.

The seagulls were enjoying the crabs, too.

There were some big water areas in the tide pools.

Dad ventured way out!

We spotted this turkey on our way to the lighthouse.

Mom loved this cute little lighthouse.

It was kind of hidden by the trees from this side.

The storm clouds were rolling in.

They made for some great pics!

The lighthouse from the other side.

For dinner, we stopped at a serious seafood restaurant. The boys were good about eating Dad's appetizer of calamari. Mom loved her shrimp scampi, Mark and Dad enjoyed fish and chips (haddock), and Dax had a steaming bowl of clam chowder. Seth didn't love his pasta, but that was okay as there were enough fries to go around.

The restaurant was right by the water, too!

By the time dinner ended a storm was rolling in and everyone was done. Well, everyone was done except for Dad. He wanted to do the 1.6 mile summit that we'd missed because JetBlue kept delaying our flight. There was some minor arguing, but finally we all made the trek.

We probably shouldn't have. The hike was straight up steps for 681 feet. Between the sets of steps were slick rocks and Dax went down hard. Dad was getting some serious glares, but we finally made it to the top and the summit was a wonderful look out over the bay. It was getting close to sunset, and we hurried back to the van, careful not to take another nasty spill. We didn't get checked in to the motel in Bar Harbor until 8:30, and we were in desperate need of showers and sleep, but we had wrung every bit of fun out of this day.