To the top of Norumbega

Today we hiked to the top of Norumbega with a trail guide named Don. Don has salt and pepper gray hair and was very funny and intelligent. (CHRISTINA - If he wasn't married, he'd be perfect for you! She loves the ol' guys!) Our mission today was to insure that the trail was clear of debris, repair the trail markers, and destroy rock piles.

In Acadia, the trails are marked with Bates Cairens - a four rock formation consisting of two bases, a alter, and a pointer rock. The park uses these markers instead of signs or paint because it is more natural. To the untrained eye, the cairens look like a pile of rock. A lot of people add a rock to the pile thinking that is what you do a so an unobtrusive marker soon becomes a pile of rock (like the pile we are sitting on in the picture above).

The view from Norumbega was beautiful. Norumbega is really a hill but for our students who are used to the flat Indiana landscape, this was a mountain! The trail back down the hill was called the Goat Trail - which I am still unsure of the reasoning. It was slick, steep, and rocky - what an adventure! On the trek back to the car, we passed the gatehouses, Rockefeller built as the entrance in to the park.

On the way back to the cabins, we stop and play tourist. Every day, we passed this bridge and there were pople paininting it and taking pictures. It seemed like something that we had to do too! After getting cleaned up, we headed to Bar Harbor (a touristy town on the island). We ate dinner at the West Side Cafe and then went shopping. There were lots of good bargains in the stores because it was the end of the tourist season. Matt and I tried Lobster ice cream at the local parlor. It tasted like cold butter with chunks of frozen lobster. Not good!