Life in the Slow Lane (The Pearl): Aug. 25

Northeast Harbor Mooring
Mount Desert Island

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” —Helen Keller

We woke to another beautiful day here in Northeast Harbor, but high winds were predicted for later in the day...so we decided to spend one more day hiking the trails of Acadia National Park instead of moving on. There are so many wonderful trails and carriage roads in the park; we could spend weeks hiking all of them.

This morning we headed over to the eastern shore to hike the Gorham Mountain Trail and part of the Ocean Path Trail. These trails gave us views of the rugged east side of Mount Desert Island, Sand Beach, the Atlanta Ocean, Egg Rock Lighthouse and the Otter Cliffs. The trails are closer to Bar Harbor and were a lot busier than the ones we did the past two days. Despite the crowds we enjoyed the views and finding more berries. The mountain is covered in blueberry bushes and we picked at least a quart of the delicious little berries.

We began our hike at Sand Beach and made our way to the peak of Gorham Mountain and along the ridge before we descended toward the ocean and met up with the Ocean Path trail. It was fun at Otter Cliff watching climbers repelling the cliffs that are 110 feet high...one of the highest headlands north of Rio de Janeiro.

I have an app on my phone that keeps track of how many miles I walk in a day and how many flights of stairs I climb. According to my app we've hiked over 19 miles since we arrived and climbed the equivalent of 146 flights of stairs.

The beginning of the Beehive and Gorham Mountain Trails