July 2009: We’re getting a ton of visits to this site for the Precipice trail from search engines. I feel we should add more than the two pictures I have here, so I will do a new post with more pictures. The trail is great! It’s not really that hard if you’re fit and not averse to a little exposure. The hike takes maybe an hour up and half-hour down. The views are fantastic, at least as good or better than the drive (or cycle as we did) to the top of Cadillac Mountain.
Twilight
Joining the crowds after road biking to the top of Cadillac Mountain, about a 1,000 ft climb. When we told curious tourists that we regularly cycle a mountain seven plus times that big in Tucson, their eyes said they thought we were full of it.
The parking lot from the top of the aptly named Precipice trail.
Claire on the Precipice trail; short but brutal.
After the Precipice, we mountain biked the carriage trails built by and for the wealthy. You can still ride a horse or carriage on the well maintained trails with numerous beautiful bridges.
Bar Harbor
Huge wild roses grow from sea to summit of Cadillac Mountain.
Thunder Hole. Not much compared to Oregon and Washington blow holes, but obviously very popular hereabouts.
Those darn artists. They make a nice quiet place look so inviting that they end up attracting so many people that the landscape is too full of people to paint anymore! The Hudson River School of painters discovered Mount Desert Island (a dry forsaken place, or a luscious sweet, nobody knows for sure) and took their paintings back to Boston and New York to sell. The rich bought the paintings, and decided it would be a lovely place to take their summer holiday. Soon the quiet farming and fishing villages played host to the “cottages” of the fabulously wealthy of the golden era of capitalism. Then the merely wealthy came to huge “rustic” hotels, and the place has never been the same. Changing antitrust laws, (that Teddy Roosevelt!) and a handful of preservationists, led to large donations to land, and eventually the Federal Government created the first National Park east of the Mississippi in 1919. It is a very heavily visited park, but you only have to walk a few hundred feet into the forest to get your little bit of silence, and it is even possible to have an unshared stretch of rugged shore to yourself as sea birds and lobstermen make for shore in the gathering night. From tidepool to sub alpine it is well worth the visit, if you’re ever Down East.
bob
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