Last day in Acadia, then off to Baxter State Park
So for our last day in Acadia National Park we wanted to start by seeing the Wild Gardens of Acadia. This is an incredible area where they have essentially condensed the entire park down into a couple of acres.
This particular pitcher plant was found in the bog area. One of my favorites! But they did have lots of other sections too. They did ponds, upland woodlands, evergreen forests, deciduous forests.... And the best thing about the entire place is that everything has a name tag. Except this guy from the pond section…
Here is Lithobates catesbeianus the American Bullfrog.
But what we really set out to do today was hike to the North Bubble and the South Bubble. We did the North Bubble first because it's a much less popular hike. Here is Mike sitting at the summit which is 872' .
Solitude was lovely, especially since the hordes seemed to have descended on Acadia this Monday. We had had a blissful weekend, not very much traffic, not too many people, and all of a sudden they came! Lucky for us, just not to this slightly more difficult hike. Mike is looking out over Jordan Pond, and of course because we're still in Acadia you can see there are islands in the distant body of water which is Frenchman Bay.
This is the hike to the South Bubble. Hopefully you can tell by this photo why it is the more popular of the two. The water you can just see peeking out from the left side of the rock is Eagle Lake. You had better views of this in other posts from our hike up Cadillac Mountain.
One of the nice things about the hike down from the South Bubble is that it's actually a rock scramble. You can see this in the opening photo as well as the photo here. It's about 6/10 of a mile down, and you come out looking at Jordan Pond not far from where we stopped the bikes and took a picture of me on one of the bridges.
We arrived in Baxter state park this afternoon only to find out that we can't take the van because we're over 9'! That's OK because we decided to move to the way north of the park and go in at the much less touristy section. Tomorrow we will enter through the Matagamon Gate Entrance.
This photo doesn't really do it justice. There were about thirty mosquitoes clinging to our window. We talked very seriously about moving on, but both of us really wanted to see at least some part of Baxter.
We prepared for our hike today by putting on long pants and shirts. At the gate I asked the park ranger what the mosquito season is here and she told me that it should be most of the way over but because it's been so wet the season is extended.
You can see Mike's clothing in this picture as he signs the trail log. We are on our way up to Horse Mountain and hoping that the mosquitoes will not be as bad. This was a lost cause of hope. They were as bad as, if not worse than, they were at the campervan. It's like some kind of crazy movie when I looked at Mike's backpack and the back of his arms and he had an entourage of 50+ mosquitoes! I tried very hard not to think of the fact that I probably had the same entourage. We walked 1.1 miles to the top and found that there was a turn-off for an overlook.
When we got here, the mosquitoes vaporized and we were able to just chill and enjoy the view. You can see Great Lake Matagamon off to the left. This is a stunning Lake that we walked next to on our way into the park. We also saw more Cedar Waxwings in that small area than I have ever seen before. They are a beautiful crested bird that usually spends the majority of their time in the canopy so you don't see them. In fact we saw and heard many of them on this hike. Here is one from All Birds so you know why I was so excited to see them.
After coming down off the mountain we ran into this beautiful pond called Long Pond. You can see a cool video of long pond and its neighbor High Pond on our YouTube channel.
Right behind me while I was taking this picture was a fairly rare flower called the White Lady's Slipper, Cypripedium candidum. It is quite rare and endangered in Canada and the United States. This is my photo of the one that we saw, but you may want to Google it as this one is a bit past its prime.
It is amazing how many of them we have seen in these areas where conservation is the most important value. In fact in the Katahdin Woods and Waters we saw so many of them you would swear that they weren't endangered at all.
A little further along at Billfish Pond these dragonflies decided to roost on my hat. I much prefer them to the other flying insects that have been around all-day. Luckily when we're close to the water the wind keeps the bugs at bay.
There have also been a ton of beaver dams around. We haven't seen any actual beavers though, which is very disappointing. Down near the end of our walk we did see this beaver damage on two trees, so I guess we're getting closer!