After going to bed way too early last night, as it was dark and our firewood had run out, I woke up at 6am and lay in bed reading for two hours. Eventually, Katie woke up and decided that we should go to a diner for breakfast. As luck would have it, she’d already read about one down the road in Bar Harbor that was famous for its wild Maine blueberry pancakes. On our way out of the campground we stopped in at the registration office to find out if there was a space available for tonight, which there was! For $30 we reserved site B5, right across the road from the site we’d had on our first night.
At Jordan’s Restaurant we ordered the pancakes which had their own special section on the menu. We overheard a server talking to the table behind us, telling them that the man making the pancakes is the 73-year-old original owner of the restaurant! When the pancakes arrived, we were slightly disappointed that there was only two of them, and they didn’t come with any sides. For the price, we’d thought there would have been more food, especially at a diner. I guess we paid the famous tax. After we finished eating, we debated for 15 minutes whether we should order something more, but settled on another round of coffee in the amazing thick-walled diner coffee mugs.
After breakfast we drove around Park Loop Road, the scenic one-way road that runs around the perimeter of the park, to Sand Beach, one of the only shell-based sandy beaches in Maine. After a quick walk on the beach (which felt very weird in hiking shoes) we set off on the Ocean Trail which runs along the shoreline on this bit of the coast.
We walked for about two hours, stopping for a while at the Thunder Hole where waves get funneled into a rocky hollow which produces a thunderous booming sound. The tide was too far out for us to experience the full effect, so we entertained ourselves watching the busloads of tourists with camcorders crowding around the railings.
For lunch we headed back into Bar Harbor to find some lobster. I’d done some research, and while eating a lobster out of the shell might have been a cool experience, I decided that it probably wasn’t worth the money or the mess. We settled for our third, and most expensive, lobster roll. This one came packed full of meat plucked from two lobsters, and was dressed with light mayo, lemon juice, and Old Bay seasoning. This roll was definitely the best we’ve had so far! There was much more variety in the kinds of meat in it, and you could easily differentiate between claws, body, and tail. Regardless of quality, three lobster rolls are probably enough for a lifetime, and we think we’ll quit while we’re ahead.
We called in for one more sampling of craft brew at the bar we’d visited yesterday, and then headed back to the campground. There’s a rainstorm coming tonight, so we’re going to get settled in before it starts pouring down.