Our 42nd and last Day in Acadia

Saturday August 17, 2013
Acadia National park

 

 

 

The question is how to close a wonderful visit.

 

This is our very last day at Acadia National park after 6 weeks here.  We want to close with a hike.  Day Mountain??  Flying Mountain??

We also want to talk to two other campgrounds on the Western side of the park about monthly and seasonal rates.  So we choose a Flying Mountain, Valley Cove, St. Sauveur Mtn, Valley Peak Loop Trail.  It’s located on the western side.  Day Mountain, which will have to wait for next time,  is on the Eastern side of the park. Our book says this is a 3.6 mile hike.

We plan to leave early and be finished early to go by and see the campgrounds on our way to the grocery store and back to Winnona to begin packing up.

Sounds like a great plan.

 

 

 

When we wake up we are socked in with fog.  Now ordinarily we wouldn’t go out to do a hike with views on a foggy morning but today is our last day. This is our last hike here,  so on we go.

We are on the trail at 6:10am.   There are about a dozen nice wooden steps at the very beginning………for a very short way and then it is a rock field path.  I pick my footing carefully.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trail is alternately steps and rocks and roots.

 

 

 

 

  

 

Until it becomes scramble over some larger rocks.  See where the light blue trail marker is leading us?

 

  

 

About 15 minutes later, here we are at the 254 foot summit of Flying Mountain where I’m squinting so badly I look like I”m in pain.  Yes it’s a really short “mountain” but we got here by going pretty much straight up.  Do not laugh if you are currently hiking the Rockies.

 

 

 

What is David looking at just in front of the summit marker?  He sees that folks have been hiking this trial for a long time.  There are two survey markers from 1934.  Yes I’m one of “those people” who takes pictures of the markers.  Don’t you??  I’m wondering why two markers are here within feet of each other.   Anyone know why the survey would do that?

 

 

The survey calls this Fernald Hill.  Hill is much more appropriate me thinks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the summit,  we get our first views and find that the early morning fog hasn’t lifted at all.   So we hang around for a while waiting to see if we can actually see any of the Somes Sound views promised.  It’s only a 3.6 mile hike so we figure we have plenty of time.

 

 

 

 

This Acadia mountain is very  accommodating.  It has provided a chair so I can watch and wait for the fog to lift.  I love seeing the mist and the water droplets. The fog drifts.  It teases me by opening the views for a minute and then closing them all up again.   I think ‘ha I can see the mouth of the sound’ and by the time I get my camera up it’s gone again.   Brigadoon! 

 

 

 

 

 

In about 20 minutes the mist has actually lightened some.  We can begin to see the grassy peninsula below us known as Fernald Point.  The road to the trail head is Fernald Point Road.  Wonder why they changed this hill’s name to Flying Mountain unless that was it’s “historic name”.  The park is returning all the trail names to those given in the early days of the “rusticators”.

At the summit of Flying Mountain you can turn around and return to your car or continue on to the Valley Cove Trail which is where we are going.

 

 

 

Time to move on down the path.  More things to see and discover like a tall bush berry.  Are they huckleberries?  They aren’t blueberries. They are almost black.  They are yummy.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

We are walking up the sound on the hills above it.  As the sun rises higher in the sky, it begins to burn the fog away.  We can see some of the water, a sailboat and a lobster boat checking pots.

 

 

As the the words Valley and Cove imply, the trail starts to drop down that distance we just climbed up.  We’re headed toward Somes Sound mostly over very rocky paths, some steps included.

 

 

 

 

I am startled when I see these rectangular holes.  There are only two large woodpeckers in the park, the pileated and the black backed.  I’m very familiar with the holes of the pileated since they nest and live year round at the farm.  I never saw anything square or rectangular.  I speculate that these holes were created by the black backed woodpecker which I know lives here but I have never seen.  Another reason to return to Acadia.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later I google it, of course, and YES I am right it is the black backed.  He’s also known as the Arctic three toed woodpecker.  I borrowed this picture of him from the web.  Wish I’d seen him in person.  But even his square holes are exciting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sound comes in to view and soon we are down in “the cove” on the rocky beach.

 

 

 

 

 

I am appalled when I walk over to lean against the big rock in the water.

Someone has painted it!  You can see it beside my hand where I am looking and also on the front of the rock which is pictured below.  This is the first of this sort of defacement I have seen in Acadia National Park.  I am very sad and angry at whoever thought it was cute to do this.  I wonder if this were not my last day here, could I get some paint remover and get this off.  What an insult to such a gorgeous place.

 

 

 

On a more positive note, someone has provided a wooden plank bench across two big rocks under a cedar tree.  You can’t see much of David in this photograph other than his feet.  The bench makes a nice spot to stay a while and watch at closer range both the sail boat moored in the cove and the lobster boat.   Are they the same ones we saw earlier in the mist??

 

 

 

 

Of course when we leave it is UP hill again.  This time it gets more serious.   This is not a trail for those with fear of heights or ledges.  We are crawling over giant boulders which are part of what looks to me like a former rock slide.   No one mentioned this in the description of the hike.  Too late to turn around now.  Thanks to David for sending me out first so I could be in all the pictures.  :-)

 

 

 

 

 

I stop in the middle to take in the view of the rock slide and the distance.  I think my friends Bill and Tricia will probably skip this trail.

 

 

 

 

David is contemplating the situation before heading on out.  He doesn’t stop in the middle, he just goes on across.  Notice I am looking back over my left shoulder not my right one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next section would seem hard if we hadn’t just done the rock slide scramble.  Can you see me way up at the top of this rocky hill climbing on all fours??

 

 

 

Next we come to some very welcome steps no matter how straight up they go.

 

 

 

Only problem is that they lead to this sheer cliff face rock slab onto which they have put some steel rods holding stones up next to the stop of more steps.   The steps are unique if you don’t mind walking across this open rock slab to get to them.   This is a spot you absolutely do not want to hike when it is wet so forget getting here early in the morning.

 

You may have to look closely to see the stones on the far left at the top of the rock face just before the little bush.

 

 

 

 

While I’m standing safely on those steps, I look back at where we have been.  WAY over there is Valley Cove with the little beach and the abused rock.   I also look back at David getting ready to start across the rock face.

 

 

 

 

 

  Can you believe that this rocky business is called the Valley COVE trail and we have yet to even start on the Valley PEAK trail?

From here we cross a few trail obstacles and then a series of very boggy muddy spots.  Some have log bridges, some do not.  We then have a stretch of tricky root path before we finally come to a lovely stream which flows down from into Somes Sound.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stream looks like a great place to stop and have a snack but the mosquitoes have that same idea.  They don’t seem to bother this red squirrel who sits in the middle of the path and chews away.  He finishes, runs up a tree and scolds us mightily for I have no idea what.

 

 

 

 

 

We reach the end of the Valley Cove trail and turn onto the last section of our hike, Valley Peak Trail.  Sounds like more UP doesn’t it??

 

It is pretty much up but I’ll let it speak for itself.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

The pay off is some great views of the sound which was fogged in this morning.  We are now up higher than we were then and have even better views.

 

 

 

  

 

I look down at the lobster boats and see this one just pulling out of a circle he’s made.  I assume he’s picking up or dropping off his pots. But maybe he’s just doing it for fun.

 

 

 

After this little respite, it’s back to more climbing UP.  Or should I say crawling UP?

 

 

 

 

But More great views of the mouth of Somes Sound.

 

 

 

 

We move on and detour taking a short side spur on the St Sauveur trail to bag that peak since we’ve come all this way -  elevation 674. 

 

David points out the view from the summit.  Glad we didn’t climb all the way up just for this.

 

 

 

 

More beautiful woods.  More gorgeous views and we reach THE VALLEY PEAK – finally.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now it’s DOWN over 500 feet in about half a mile. 

 

 

 

We finally reach the fire road which we take a short FLAT distance back to Ruby.

 

 

 

We hugged a lot of BIG trees on this hike and repeatedly heard the cries of the Peregrine Falcon which we MAY have seen gliding down toward Flying Mountain.

My knees are starting to complain.  My toes are seriously tired of that last steep downhill stretch.  David says he feels fine.  Maybe it’s that Beehive hike that has put him in better shape than I am at this point.

The hike turns out to be nearly twice that long as billed in the description in our hiking book and, at least for me, the most difficult hike we’ve done while we have been here.  But it was also very beautiful and quite different in each section.  It has made a perfect closing to our hikes in Acadia.

 

Time to celebrate and say a last good-bye to this area!  We stop at Down East Lobster Pound on the way home and pick up 3.5 pounds of lobster to share.  We add some corn and broccoli and the feast is on.

 

 

David says his Shipyard Monkey Fist IPA is Gooooooood!  He wants me to mention that Shipyard, located in Portland,  is “probably Maine’s biggest brewery”

 

We sure are going to miss pretty much everything about Mount Dessert Island.