Maine - Day 2 Camden Hills, Acadia, Cadillac Mt

I woke up at 4 am and looked out my window – the sky was getting light and I could tell the sun was coming up! I dozed a little until about 5 and by then the sun was up! It was pretty cool to watch the sun come up from my bed! Then I rolled over and went back to sleep for 2 more hours!

As I sat down to eat my cereal I clicked the phone on and there was a message from Diane at Leisure Maine, Rene wanted to know if I would stop by on my way to Bar Harbor because he wanted to check over my RV to be sure that I wasn’t going to have any more problems. I agreed that it would be a good idea for him to check things over so said I’d come through on my way. He told me a back way to get to their place since there was a Blues Festival in Rockland and traffic was going to be bad – every road around here is only 2 lanes! It worked out for the best since I was going to have to back through Rockland anyway, I could get out without dealing with all the traffic!

Rene looked things over and declared her Road Ready. We refilled the water tank and dumped – which was good because the directions I’d gotten for dumping were wrong – Rene ended up crawling under the RV to figure out how exactly to dump it.

By 10 am I was on my way to Acadia! I’d decided I was going to stop at Camden Hills State Park to drive up the road to Mt. Battie and check out the view. Very impressive on a nice day like today! Mt. Battie over looks Camden Harbor and Camden – check the pictures!

It was about 11:30 when I was back in the RV ready to head on, I had a quick snack and then started driving. It was a nice drive up Rt 1. The same Rt 1 that runs by my school, but a very different environment!

I got to Ellsworth about 1 and stopped in the Hannaford’s there to pickup the stuff I forgot yesterday.

From there it was 20 miles to Acadia! When I got here I went to the Visitor Center, but there wasn’t much there. Then I decided to drive up Cadillac Mt since it was so nice today and there is rain in the forecast!

Cadillac Mt is the tallest point on the entire Eastern Seaboard! I can’t remember exactly how tall it is – 1,500 something…so small by “Mountain” standards, but the tallest that is directly on the ocean. I took a whole bunches of pictures so be sure to check the album! It was very windy and chilly at the top!

After the mountain I made my way to the campground. I had made a reservation for 7 nights at the Blackwoods campground right in Acadia. I got a lovely pull through spot and got all “parked up”. Had a hard time getting it level, and had to use a club soda bottle as a level, but it’s pretty good. Not sure I’m going to be able to stay here though, more on that in a minute.

The campground is everything you expect from a NPS campground – clean, quiet, woodsy! It’s very nice!

After I got set up I went out to catch the bus. Acadia has an amazing bus system – similar to Denali’s but more complex (there’s only 1 road in Denali!) I think the bus system is fairly new. The busses run on propane and were made possible by LL Bean, a fact that is mentioned any chance they get! The busses all say LL Bean right on them, the drivers wear polo shirts that say LL Bean on the sleeve (wonder if they are actually LL Bean shirts?). All the literature about the busses has LL Bean in big letters. I’m surprised they don’t have a stack of catalogs for you to look at while you are riding! There is a bus that goes directly from Blackwoods to The Village Green in Bar Harbor which is really nice!

I went into Bar Harbor to find the internet café and to find something for dinner. Bar Harbor is like Gatlinburg TN meets Jackson WY – tourist trapy/t-shirt shop/junk stores, but a little bit classier (not much, but a bit). It was a chilly windy evening but I got a sandwich and took it out the little park the overlooks the harbor and enjoyed the view, and did all my “online” stuff since I had good coverage. I then wandered the shops a bit before making my way back to the bus stop.

I’d found an internet café so, I returned to the RV ready to upload pics and get my blog ready for tomorrow AM – I’ll bring my computer into town with me and get stuff posted!

As I mentioned before there are no electrical hook ups here so I’m running on battery power. This morning it crossed my mind to maybe switch to a private campground so I could have a plug – since I realized how much I used the electricity last night. When I got here however I decided I liked it and would stay. Now though, I may have to move to a different campground. I have a generator but you can only use that at certain times, and I have been told that the generator doesn’t do a good job of charging the batteries, it’s just good for running anything that you plug in. If you want to charge the batteries you need to run the engine – ie driving. The RV has interior lights that run on 12 volts (reg plugs are 110 something), it also has a 12 volt plug like cars do. I have a little inverter that will turn the 12 volt plug into 110 so you can plug something in. I use it in my car all the time and I used in Alaska to charge my computer almost every night. I never had any problems with the battery in Alaska – we would camp for a few days and I never needed the generator or anything, so I was assuming that would be the same here. Before I left for Bar Harbor I plugged my camera battery into the inverter to charge – it only takes about 20 mins to charge and it’s not a huge draw on the battery. When I returned I turned on some lights – had them on for about 30 mins – and traded my camera battery for my phone on the inverter. I checked the battery charge on the MH – and it said “recharge”!!!!!! YIKES!!!! I ran the MH, just let it idle, for a few mins, but didn’t want to fill the air with exhaust so turned it off. I turned off all the lights except for 1 and got my phone mostly charged – I hope it’s enough to power the white noise all night. I did realize that the slide out operates on the battery as does the “electric” bed which I decided to test out (not a smart move! I forgot about the battery thing…didn’t think about how it was getting it’s power.

My laptop is about to die too…I guess it’s time to go to bed with a book and a flashlight….I am camping after all! J

Maine Day 2 - Cadillac