Our weather apps said today was going to be cloudy and possible rain showers, so when we woke to sunshine we knew we had to get out while the gettin’ was good. Our first box to check was buying tickets for a sunset cruise tomorrow night and a lighthouse cruise Wednesday morning, then we headed straight for the visitor’s center to buy Bob’s lifetime national park pass. It was a moment. LOL

Next was Cadillac Mountain. It was beautiful on the way up, but that view from the top? Wow. We spent at least a good hour walking the trail and walking out on the rocks for better views. Bar Harbor hasn’t exactly been sleepy but it hasn’t been bustling with people either. But there were tons of people at Cadillac Mountain! The views of all those islands sitting out in the bay were pretty stunning. It was neat to see Bar Harbor from that perspective.

Along our walk we met Frank Lee Ruggles. This man has quite an impressive and diverse resume, from Army paratrooper to government photographer (US Treasury, FBI, Dept of Energy, Sec of State – Colin Powell, and even the Smithsonian). He is currently working on recreating all of Ansel Adams’ national parks images, going back to exact locations on the same day of the year and the same time of day. He will be co-hosting a 10 episode show for NatGeo to air sometime in 2020. We had an amazing conversation with Frank – we do have Virginia in common. His home base is out of Richmond, about 1-1/2 from us. What an amazing thing to just run across this morning. We felt like we had won the lottery!

By now it was lunchtime so we headed to the only restaurant in the park located at Jordan Pond. Even though it seemed to be crowded we were seated quickly with no wait. Both food and service were wonderful! There’s a 3 mile loop around the pond we are considering doing at some point this week but for today we wanted to see the rest of the park.

The road around the park is only 27 miles so it really doesn’t take that long to just drive it – at least not compared to large parks like Yellowstone, Glacier, Yosemite, etc. As beautiful as the views from Cadillac Mountain were, the views along the coastline were exactly what we pictured for a rocky Maine coast. We didn’t take too many pictures because the clouds had come in pretty heavy by now and tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful sunny day. So we’ll be out early taking advantage of that.

On the way home we stopped by the local grocery store and picked up a few things and that put us back around 4:00. We were supposed to have a David Crosby concert tonight but discovered around 5:00 that it was canceled due to illness (they’re hoping to reschedule for Wednesday night – it wasn’t) so that freed up this evening. We enjoyed sitting on the balcony watching the world go by for a while before venturing out to grab a pizza and settle in for a quiet evening. Along the way we saw the theater (Criterion) where the concert was scheduled and stopped by to see if there was any more information. There wasn’t but the director was standing out front and offered to give us a tour. This is a 1932 theater that was beautiful fully restored in 2015 and hosts all kinds of different artists. Crossing our fingers the show gets rescheduled and we get to experience it.

And, that’s a wrap for today!