Acadia National Park

Two days before we left, I made a reservation at the Wonder View Inn for August 13-16.  Classes at BU started on August 18.  We left for Acadia on August 12, 2026.  On the way we stopped at the Quabbin Reservoir and took a walk there with John. 

We stopped for the night outside of Portland.  The next morning, we picked up lunch and chocolate cat cookies at Trader Joe's, and then spent some time at the Portland Head Light.

Lighthouse is in the background by Laura's elbow.

 before continuing on to Bar Harbor.  On the way we made a reservation for Cadillac Mountain at 4:30.

Dave heard that a marker identified the exact top of Cadillac summit, so we decided to search for it.  We found 3 summit markers!

Laura gave her rock climbing persona full range!

After Cadillac Mountain, we checked in at the hotel and took the Island Explorer shuttle to downtown Bar Harbor for dinner.

We ended up eating dinner at Route 66.

The next day we went into the park again.   After picking up our park pass, we tried driving to some of the sights in the park, but parking was so difficult, we drove back to the visitors center and ended up taking the bus to Jordan Pond where we hiked for a bit.  The hike around the pond has lots of single path boardwalk, which we didn't take pictures of.  We ate our picnic lunch afterwards overlooking the pond.

Acadia has lots of rock climbing opportunities.

We didn't get all that far because we wanted to save some energy to walk to Bar Island at low tide that evening.

  After we got back to the mainland, we picked up some fresh blueberry pie and ate dinner, pie and ice cream at the hotel.

Laura was very psyched to do the popular Beehive Hike in the park.  Dave went with her, but the boys and I did the less thrilling, but still somewhat strenuous hike requiring lots of scrambling over rocks, bowl hike.

We all got together at the top of the Beehive hike.

After that we were not up to any more major hikes for the day.  We stopped for lunch by the beach and then continued on the bus around the park.  We did get off at Thunder Hole, but our timing was not optimal to get the full experience of that particular stop.  Laura enjoyed some more rock climbing anyway.  

That evening we went back downtown for dinner at the Side Street Cafe.  We also bought more pastries to enjoy with the partially melted ice cream Dave insisted on buying our first morning in Bar Harbor.  

On our final day, we took Lulu's Lobster Boat tour before heading home.

August 2026 and Acadia National Park

 This summer Laura worked for maintenance at Binghamton University and took an asynchronous SUNY Broome Calc 2 class.  She found her Calc 2 professor annoying in many ways, but the first major even of August (the first Wednesday of the month) was taking the final (online, but monitored by the professor) and getting a reasonably good grade--the professor was particularly harsh with grading.

To celebrate, we made plans to go to the Met with Dave's friend, Mary, and then see the Book of Mormon in the evening.  We left home early (Benjamin didn't want to do all that traveling, so he stayed home and took care of the chickens!)  Made it to the Tower Center, EB bus stop about 15 minute before the bus to Manhatten!

Once in Manhattan, we rushed to the Apple Store in Grand Central Station where Mary was taking care of her broken laptop.  Eventually we found a falafel place nearby for lunch and then managed to get on the bus (after figuring out how to use our credit card on the bus and that we could use one card to pay for 4 people) to the Met. 

After the Met closed (at 5), we took the bus back in the direction of Grand Central Station with Mary and her 73 year old friend from West Point.  We parted partway.  Mary and her friend walked the rest of the way back to the Apple store while we continued on to the theater via the subway.  Unfortunately, we turned the wrong way getting back on the street, but we found some nice tables outside an office building to eat .  We made it to the theater on time and enjoyed the show!

Hanging out with Robin, Matthias and Emil July 2017

We drove from Binghamton to Chicago on July 8 and met up with Robin, Matthias, Emil and Mom and Dad on Sunday, July 9 (so Benjamin can do the CIT program at Camp Sertoma that week) in Maggie Daley Park.

Laua and Matthias did the climbing wall and Emil happily scootered around for a while.

After a picnic lunch we took an architectural boat tour.

and then checked in at the Embassy Suites for the night.  We met up with the rest of the group for dinner at Eataly Restaurant.  Emil was excited to choose a fish shaped pizza for dinner.

Monday Robin wanted to go shopping so we went to the Alder Planetarium

 and walked around for a few minutes in the McCormick Bird Sanctuary along Lake Michigan.

Then we briefly visited Ian at the University of Chicago.  After a tour of his lab we headed off to Saugatuck, Michigan.

On the way, we stopped at Aldi for food.  Our room at the Beachway Resort had a kitchen so that Dave could spend the vacation cooking 3 meals a day for our party of 10.  Fortunately we picked up Salmon because Emil loves fish.

Tuesday we went to Oval Beach.

Wednesday we explored Saugatuck in the afternoon because it was too windy for boating then hiked at River Bluff Park.

We enjoyed dinner at Wally's in the evening. Thursday morning we hiked at Dune State Park in the morning.

After lunch, we took the chain ferry across the Kalamazoo River and finally went kayaking and paddleboarding.

Kids turning the crank on the chain ferry.

Thursday evening, Dave cooked while Laura and Emil served dinner.  Friday we walked up to the top of the Mt. Baldhead near the Beachway hotel.

At lunchtime we left to go home.

Laura and Emil outside out hotel room getting ready to serve dinner.

Emil enjoyed playing games at the Beachway.