Site A16 at the Seawall Campground is set quite far back from the road. It is actually down a fire road and just off to the side of it, so it is pretty private. We can see site 15, but there is a pine tree blocking the view between vehicles.
There is an apple tree bordering our site that is loaded with small apples. Every afternoon, near sunset, a deer or two has come into the site (we've been inside Speedy) and eaten apples on the ground. One afternoon, a more enterprising doe even stood up on its hind legs to pluck apples off the tree. Even more enterprising was the crow that swooped in and pulled an apple off the top of the tree and flew off with it. We have also seen crows eating apples by a tree on the road to the picnic area.
The last three days have been pretty gray. What was supposed to be partly cloudy has turned out to be mostly cloudy. We haven't really seen blue sky until today—and then only a little bit. It has also been quite cool with the highs in the mid 50's.
Monday was a hike day. We started out by stopping at the Common Ground Cafe, just around the corner from the campground on the grounds of the Seawall Motel. They had a sign out from that said Popovers, Oatmeal, Free Coffee and WiFi. It seemed like a good breakfast stop. Actually it was all free, donations requested. The volunteers running the cafe, which is only open in the morning and only serves popovers and oatmeal, offer the breakfasts during the summer in order to collect donations to provide free meals to people who need some help over the winter—a worthy endeavor. We had the popovers, which were quite good, some oatmeal, so-so, coffee and, of course, used the WiFi to upload the Speedy Journal and collect mail. We left a hefty donation.
After breakfast, it was off to the top of Cadillac Mountain to the Hawk Watch. Since the forecast was for partly cloudy, with winds out of the north, it seemed like a good day to watch. The hawks prefer the north winds to push them south and sunny conditions cause thermals to rise off the mountain to give them lift. Unfortunately, the winds were more westerly than northerly and partly cloudy was really mostly cloudy. There were a few birds, but not much. We watched for a while, went back to Speedy to make coffee and warm up, watched some more, had lunch and decided to take a hike.
It was off to Sieur de Monts Spring to visit the Nature Center and hike from there as there were several trails starting at the springs. Our original intent was to do an easy trail that ran along the pond called The Tarn. We "accidentally" climbed a mountain instead. It looked like there was a loop trail, so we started up the inland side of it. This was the "Emery Path", which didn't appear on our map. It wasn't actually a meandering path, but a granite staircase that went pretty much straight up and eventually came to a trail junction that indicated the Diedrich's Trail heading back down. That one was rated difficult so we decided to continue up.
At the junction there was also a sign that said that the trails had recently been renamed to their traditional names. Unfortunately, it didn't say what the previous name was. Our trail ran across the face of the mountain (Dorr Mountain) and provided great views back to Bar Harbor. We finally figured out that we were on the trail the map called the Dorr Mountain East Face Trail.
The next intersection was with the Ladder Trail. As we were better than half way to the top, we decided to continue on upward. The map called the trail to the top the Ladder Trail. The trail sign called it the Schiff trail. It must be a very old traditional name since our 1976 AMC Trail guide called it the Ladder Trail.
After more granite steps and a bit of a friction pitch over a wet granite face, we topped out at the intersection with the Dorr Mountain Ridge trails. The actual summit was about a 1000' further to the south, but it was blowing, cold and damp, so we decided to head down the North Ridge Trail figuring it was not as steep as going back down the way we came up and was shorter than the loop via the South Ridge Trail.
This was not such a good choice (although I'm not sure there was a better one). It started with a long friction pitch over granite slabs and when this ended it was a fairly steep trail over boulders most of the way down. Ellen didn't really appreciate this since she opted to bring binoculars and camera rather than hiking poles and knee braces.
Eventually we came back out at the springs and took a brief tour of the Wild Gardens of Acadia next to the Nature Center. This is a garden which has been planted in groupings which replicate the various habitats in the park, with all of the plants labeled. After this it was time to head back to camp.
Tuesday was a bicycling day...at least it was supposed to be. Once again, the forecast called for partly cloudy with winds out of the north. After a leisurely breakfast we headed over to the Eagle Lake parking area. This is an access point for the carriage trails. Our plan was to cycle around the lake (stopping for any interesting birds, of course). At about a third of the way around, it started to rain. We glumly headed back, getting rather soaked on the way.
It looked like it was going to continue for a while, so we headed back to camp, stopping at Milagro Coffee in Southwest Harbor for coffee, a cinnamon bun with cream cheese icing and Internet Access. The coffee was good, the cinnamon bun a little too sweet and the Internet access pretty fast. By the time we finished, the rain had stopped so we decided to, once again, try the Hawk Watch—back to Cadillac Mountain. It was still cloudy and windy up there and the wind was still northwest so not much was coming through. We watched for a while, had another lunch in Speedy while overlooking Bar Harbor and watched some more.
Since there were few birds and it was pretty chilly and damp, we called it a day and went down the mountain. There was a ranger-led bird walk scheduled for Wednesday morning that Ellen was interested in so we went over to the visitor center to find out more about it. It started at 7AM in the Sieur de Monts parking lot and it was by reservation only. This would mean that we'd have to leave Seawall by 6AM, but we bit the bullet and signed up anyway.
Time for a shower. It had been a couple of days and we weren't far from the showers outside of Blackwoods campground. We remembered them as a bit more modern than the ones near Seawall and they had dryers, so we could dry our towels, a good idea in this damp weather. We took advantage of both the showers and the dryers. Clean and dry, it was time to return to camp.
The route from Backwoods to Seawall ran through Seal Harbor. As we were passing through we noticed a shop called The Naturalist's Notebook. An intriguing name so we decided to stop. It was a three story house turned into a shop with books, art, writing and art supplies and games, all about nature and the environment. Each floor had a different theme, the basement was about plants, gardening and farming, the main floor was about nature and animals and the second floor was about the universe, geology, physics and space...flora, fauna and everything else.
There was an incredibly wide range of books from children's books to Darwin to a three inch thick volume on the black flies of North America, complete with anatomical drawings and DNA sequences. It was such a great store and we spent so much time looking around, I had to buy something. I settled for QED, Richard Feynman's lectures on Quantum Electrodynamics.
Today was a birdwatching day. We set the alarm for 5:30AM. It went off on time. We got up, got dressed and drove off to Sieur de Monts, arriving in plenty of time to make coffee and have breakfast while waiting for the ranger. Ranger Todd was our guide for the morning. There were only seven of us for the walk, but most were beginners. Ellen was the intermediate birder and there was one fellow who seemed quite experienced. This meant that the walk was more oriented towards the beginners than we would have preferred.
Todd was quite knowledgeable, but turned each sighting into a lesson where, rather than naming and describing the bird, he went through the process of elimination based on size and shape and marks and habitat and location while using a guidebook before coming to a conclusion. He also asked that when we saw a bird, we weren't to name it but only point it out. This made things a bit slow and even wen we knew the birds, we had to wait for the analysis.
It was a three hour walk and we made three stops, going in caravan from place to place. We walked around the Sieur de Monts area where the most interesting sighting was a Golden-crowned Kinglet. We then went up the Park Loop Road to a the Beaver Dam Pool and saw a Red-breasted Nuthatch. From there we went over to Schooner Point to look at seabirds, finding Gulls, Eider Ducks and a Loon as well as a Red-eyed Vireo on the path down to the point.
After the bird walk, we again drove up to the hawk watch. Today was drier and brighter and the wind was out of the north. We watched for about an hour, had lunch at the top, and watched for another hour or so, right up to 2PM, when the watch ended.The sun came out, there were thermals lifting the birds and lots to see for a change. We probably saw about two dozen hawks—Bald Eagles, a Red-tailed Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawks, Broad-winged Hawks, American Kestrels, an Osprey, a Harrier and a Turkey Vulture. They only one we missed was a Northern Goshawk, which zoomed by while we were looking at a Sharp-shinned Hawk.
It was a good day.
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