What in blue blazes?!

Yesterday morning we had a plan to get up early and do a bike ride on the carriage roads. Chuck picked out the route and the parking area. We had heard parking is tough everywhere here - that's why we wanted to get out earlier. Of course we didn't.  It wasn't too late when we headed out though. When we got to the parking, there was already a long line parked along the side of the road, so I pulled in at the end. Chuck got out to go see if that's where we wanted to go before we unloaded all the bikes, and I looked over and saw him waving furiously. The parking lot had like 10 spots and he had found one open, so I drove over and got it.

The ride he had planned was a loop that was supposed to take about an hour. The carriage roads are gravel and for bikers, walkers, and horses. It's a very nice system, but some of them are private and bikes are prohibited. The map says that, but unfortunately, it's not really clear on the map which ones are. So we were a little perturbed when we got to the bottom of a long downhill section and found several large signs marking it private from there. They couldn't have mentioned that at the top of the hill? But I digress...we got to the fork of our original loop in like 15 min., so we decided to keep going.  I think we ended up riding about 2 hours, but I'm not sure because I kept forgetting to stop my watch when we stopped.

We stumbled onto Jordan Pond again on the ride. We saw signs for a Jordan Pond house. I kept thinking it was going to be some kind of historical home, but all we could see was a modern looking building. We walked up to it and it appears to be maybe a hotel with a restaurant. They had some amazing views of the "pond".

After the ride we came back and had lunch and a good rest.  Around 4pm, we set out to do the Sand Beach/Great Head hike.  The road to that parking area is one way, but you can park in the right lane. I found it best to just drive in the left the whole time (which goes against everything!) because you never knew when you'd come up to a random parked car. When we got near the parking area, there was a huge line of cars parked in the right lane. The parking lot had a sign that said "full", but we figured that late in the day there would be an opening. Sure enough, there were tons of open spots. 

Sand Beach is pretty self-explanatory. We walked across it to get to the Great Head trailhead. Definitely not like the beaches we are used to. The sand is very coarse. The water was pretty cold as well.  

The hike was pretty easy if you are good at scrambling up rocks. The scenery was spectacular.  The boys decided to take a lower, rockier route. See them in the bottom pic? I stayed on the actual cliff trail, following the blue blazes. And yes, every time I saw one I said to myself, "what in blue blazes?"

On the way home we had a classic family argument with Chuck taking a ridiculous position and the rest of us arguing against it. In this case it was Charlotte is in the middle of nowhere and Acadia is not. I'll let you, dear reader, figure out who was on which side.

Then dinner, sunset, showers, campfire. No SpikeBall.