Life Outside the Law
ACADIA National Park Has Something for Everyone BY hon. david e. cain Ocean waves bursting into white foam as they pound against granite seawalls. Carriage roads winding up mountainsides overlooking inland lakes. Beckoning bicycle and hiking trails, whale-watching and lobster-boat cruises, fine dining and a spot where one can be the first in the country to see a sunrise. Sightseeing by railroad, trolley, bus, catamaran boats, small airplanes and your own two feet. There’s something for everyone. The stout-hearted can rock climb or paddle kayaks from island to island.
The more sedate can enjoy a variety of museums and nature excursions. Such is Acadia National Park— about a thousand miles northeast of Columbus near the north end of the east coast of Maine—accessible in a couple days by car or a few hours by plane. My wife, Mary Ann, and I traveled in an RV with David and Debbie Smith of Lancaster. Debbie is Mary Ann’s cousin, and David is the former mayor of that city. We stopped at a small airport just west of Mt. Desert Island and picked up a rental car. The island holds Bar
Harbor (a municipality referred to as “downtown”) along with inland (deciduous and evergreen) forests and lakes, glamourous harbors, other quaint villages with delightful restaurants and shops, hotels, campgrounds and a seemingly unlimited number of spectacular overlooks. A good introduction to Mt. Desert can be experienced by driving the 27-mile-long (mostly one-way) Park Loop Road. You can make the trip in about an hour if you can resist stopping. A better plan calls for spending half the day on the drive. The loop begins at the Visitor’s Center at Hull’s Cove (but can be entered at many points along the way). The next stop would be Sieur de Monts Spring, site of the Wild Gardens of Acadia which holds the Abbe (archeological) Museum, the Park Nature Center and the spring itself. The next likely long pause would be at Sand Beach, so called because it is about the only place on the island where “sand” can be found. A small offshore island nearby breaks up the ocean waves and allows the sand to accumulate. The sand consists almost entirely of ground
59 | Columbus Bar L aw yers Quarterly Winter 2019