Tom showed Liisa up by using just his 5 minutes for his shower this morning while she needed 10 minutes in order to finish shaving her legs. After 5 minutes you still have a little water to rinse with, but it’s very cold unless you put in another token. And what’s a dollar when shaving off goosebumps is at stake?

We found a health food store in Bar Harbor yesterday where we picked up some pancake mix and Maine maple syrup, so we decided to make pancakes this morning. We put blueberries in them and they were delicious. Actually, pretty much everything you make over the little stove at camp tastes pretty good. I’m not sure if it is the clean crisp air or the effort that goes into cooking this way or the simplicity of the food, but it all tastes pretty yummy.

Tom wanted to see more of the park, so we headed off for the Park Road. Tom had noted that “look, they have one of those crappy nature center things you like”- so we headed there. The nature center wasn’t great, but the Wild Gardens of Acadia were pretty. The parking at the Sands Beach was atrocious and we decided we didn’t need to see it that badly at that moment. After a few more stops, we decided we wanted to check out the Jordan House. There was a serious parking problem there. We wandered from lot to lot circling. I told Tom “We’re from NY. We lived near Palisades Center. We know how to trawl a parking lot.” But of course it still took forever to figure out where to leave the car. We finally found a place along the road and got the dog settled for a car nap. Then we headed over to Jordan House and got our names on the list for lunch.

Since my bloodsugar was getting a little low and from Tom’s grumpiness I figured his was low as well, I went into the giftshop and bought some taffy and chocolate covered blueberries to hold us until we got a table for lunch. It looked like the wait might be excessive, but it wasn’t too bad. We got a table on the patio looking out at the lake and ordered iced teas, popovers and chicken salad sandwiches. Tom and I both judge restaurants on their chicken salad and Jordan House did not disappoint. It was curried with cranberries, which is always a nice combo. We had ordered a side of popovers not realizing they would give us some along with the sandwiches. So we ended up with 5 popovers, which was plenty for us for lunch and then some to take to the dog (he likes a little lunch as much as anyone) and two leftover for another meal. The strawberry jam was excellent and we were inspired to go buy a popover pan to bake our own once we get home (I can’t quite figure out how to bake over the fire- yet). We decided that Jordan House was worth the wait for the parking.

After leaving there, we decided it might be a nice evening to take the 6pm cruise on the Margaret Todd. We headed into Bar Harbor and out to the dock, where we bought the last 2 tickets for that sailing. It left us with a little time to kill in Bar Harbor so we headed into town to try to solve my camera card issues. For some reason, the USB card reader I had with me was not reading my cards. I only had enough pictures left on the cards to get through the evening since the plan had always been to dump the cards to the computer and upload to Flickr as we went. A nice lady at the drug store suggested we go to Radio Shack where we were able to buy a new cardreader. We got the dog settled into the car for a nap while we road the boat and grabbed sweatshirts to go. (Seriously- the dog loves to sleep and he loves the car. He’d stay sleeping in the car all the time if we didn’t make him get out once in a while.)

We boarded the Margaret Todd after having our picture taken. We found space near the middle of the boat on the starboard side and got settled in. We quick did the math and realized that with 150 people per sail and 3 sails a day, they were pulling about $15K a day for this boat. It seemed a more lucrative gig than running a campground, but we figured the insurance and upkeep on a 151ft. schooner were nothing to scoff at. Tom was less than impressed with the fact that we had to leave the harbor with engines and get out to a place where they could set the sails. He was a little more impressed with the hoisting of over 4000 sq. ft. of sail. The boat sailed slowly through the harbor while Tom commented “and this is how they made it to the new world? really?”.

We saw a porpoise’s dorsal fin as it swam through the harbor, but no other wildlife of note. There was a family with a german shepherd on board who whined when he dropped his tennis ball and required constant bribes to stay quiet and not bother the two mastiffs that the captain had on board. With 3 large dogs on the boat, we were glad we left our little one behind.

We saw the Cat Ferry that used to run between Bar Harbor and Nova Scotia and was cancelled in February. They had told us in town earlier in the day that the boat was for sale. We also saw a couple of huge private boats moored in the harbor and lots of fishing boats and other small craft. There was another cruise ship just leaving the harbor and we found out there are about 5 ships a week that stop here.

The sunset was amazing as we sailed and then motored back to the dock. After we got off the boat, we wanted the dog to stretch his legs, so we walked through town stopping to look in shops. Many people told us to avoid Bar Harbor, that it had “sold out”. And though we’d agree it has it’s share of tourist-y shops, we think it is a cute little town with some interesting flavor. It may not be “ramshackle downeast Maine” per se, but it’s not bad.

Pics from today are here- http://bit.ly/blr15N