The first chapter published in Picturesque America is ” The Coast of Maine”, but we have not been going in any order. This is actually our 11th chapter so far.
After looking at the pictures and hearing the description I am looking forward to seeing a interesting new location much different from our other visits.
The morning came and we all rose to the sunlight and ate breakfast. After that I brushed teeth, packed up, and jumped in to the car ready for a day of adventure! First stop was the Acadia National Park Visitor Center. We met a park ranger named Michael and had some questions for him. We asked him about places like Spouting Horn and Thunder Hole. We soon found that Spouting Horn was challenging us the most. The park rangers had never heard of it and looked up an old map to see where it would be.
Click on the picts to see larger versions
Researching with Michael
On the old map it was shown on Schooners Head. They still had no recognition of it – it remained unclear if it had collapsed or was still there. A real mystery! We decided that we were going to do “The Ovens” today. But before we did that we stopped to grab some pizza for lunch. With our bellies full, Michael took us to his friend’s house who lived near the location of the Ovens. We walked down to an all stone beach and started exploring down the shore. We saw several jellyfish at first, and then we saw areas littered with them everywhere on the rocks.
Jellyfish
Close up of jellyfish
We continued walking down the smooth pebble beach carefully avoiding jellyfish and keeping and eye out of where the Ovens would be. We soon came up upon an opening in the rock wall and knew that it was one of the vantage points!
The crack called “Via Mala”
We were happy with the one that we had found but we still had another to search for that couldn’t be far. Soon we came up upon the ovens themselves and saw how they were large bowls cut into the side of the cliffs.
The ovens
The side of the rock wall and beneath were millions of perfect skipping stones. We continued walking still, carefully avoiding jellyfish, and came upon a rock that looked back upon the Ovens and the opening in the cliff wall. As we held up the picture it was definitely it. We were standing where the original artist once sat! We snapped a photo and daddy started to sketch while Elias and I looked for wildlife.
The ovens vantage point
We ended up seeing some seals in the ocean and even a starfish!
Starfish!
As I was exploring, I found a bunch of extremely tiny bugs floating on top of a small puddle. At first we thought they were plantlike. But looking closer we saw they were maybe an insect – light blue with six legs. After we got back, I researched and discovered they were Springtails (Anuria martitima )
Spring Tails in tidal Pool
This photo (above) was taken with an extreme macro camera lens about a half inch from the water. They were so TINY.
We skipped a few stones, explored and soon decided to slowly head back. On the way back we took a picture at the crack in the wall and a few up close of the jellyfish.
Close up
When we got back to the car Michael wanted to show us something else. We followed him to a little stone outcropping and it was really cool! It was an arch of stone sticking out and from the back you could climb up and get to the top. We explored, studied, and looked at everything around in that area.
The arch
On the way back up I asked him about what wildlife lived in the harbor. He then said “I can show you some now if you’d like” and I got excited. We were near a small research lab he worked also. He walked up to a shed with the sound of rushing water coming from inside of it. He opened the door and inside of a small outdoor swimming pool were dogfish. They are like small sharks and Michael just reached in and pulled one out to show us.
Dogfish!
Then he took us over to a tank with a few stingrays in it. Then he showed us an awesome fish that had to coolest fins.
I love animals and sea life, so it was very nice of him to show us all this marine wildlife.
We all got back into the car to go find our cottage. After stopping at the local grocery store, we found our home away from home, unpacked and went to bed after a long a successful day.