Day 5: Bar Harbor, Part Deux

We woke up to rain in Bar Harbor, thinking it might be a gloomy, chilly day, but luckily it ended up being a beautiful day. We had found out the night before that there was a 4th of July parade downtown, and got up early to head to the parade. We didn't have to go very far; the parade went right by the hotel so we just stood on the sidewalk. The parade was very cute; they did throw candy, but I don't know if a lot of people complained to the Bar Harbor Open Line about it afterward. The parade featured one of my favorite parts of any parade I've attended: shriner cars. Not only were there shriner cars (which nearly took out some pedestrians), but shriner semis and shriner cars that went down slides. EXTREME SHRINERS!! There were also some people dressed up in extremely creepy costumes that were bargain basement versions of Goofy, Papa Smurf, Kermit, and Sylvester the cat (which reminds me, I saw a man wearing a sparkly Sylvester the cat shirt at Carmen Verandah's the night before). Post parade we got more lobster rolls at a place called the Log Cabin (not as good as Testa's, but still mouthwatering) and headed to Acadia National Park for some nature time. The park was spectacular; it's hard to describe it but we will be putting up a ton more pictures when we get back. One of my favorite parts was Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the Atlantic Coast. While we were atop the mountain, I decided to have Brian take a picture of me in which I was posing as though I was falling off the mountain and holding on for dear life (Shannon, I was going for an "end of 'The Good Son'" kind of pose). There are several parts of the mountain that look like they drop down into nothingness from afar, but actually have plenty of walkable area down below. However, my posing must have looked pretty realistic because after I got up, an older woman came up to me and told me that I had really scared her until she realized I was faking. I assume she did not notice that Brian was taking a picture of me at the time. At one point in our visit, I may have heard another ponytailed man (there were a SLEW of them) calling the island "Mount Dessert" instead of "Mt. Desert." Delicious, but inaccurate. At one point we found a gift shop that had a children's book called "Who Pooped in the Park?" I did not purchase it for my classroom, but I was very, very tempted.

After Acadia, we went downtown for dinner and 4th of July fun. For dinner we got, you guessed it, another round of lobster rolls at a deli (better than Log Cabin, not as good as Testa's), and then we stopped for ice cream to sample some local flavors. What flavors, you ask? Lobster and Grape Nut. The Lobster was basically lobster chunks in vanilla ice cream (not bad, a nice combo of salty and sweet), and the Grape Nut was mashed up grape nuts in vanilla, which was delicious and tasted kind of like butter pecan. We checked out a local Irish pub in which people were coming in to pay previous bar tabs and drank out of giant glasses called "schooners," briefly stopped by a concert in the park, then watched the fireworks. People in Bar Harbor seemed to be all about cheering on the fireworks as if they were the Red Sox. We had planned to check out the night life a little further, but some creepier denizens of Maine seemed to be coming out. While we had expected most of the locals to be clad in boat shoes and making comments like "this weathah is not typicah for the season," (like one woman actually did), there were also some ne'er-do-wells in town. Exhibit A: the woman that made us decide we'd be better off drinking beers in our room and watching "Top Gun." This woman had a patriotic bandanna on her head and looked about as weathered as the rocks in Acadia. We heard her loudly refer to another woman she knew as "Hoorface," and said that if she saw "Hoorface," she would give her a "five fingered discount," illustrating this discount (which I don't think is available at Old Navy) by waving her fist in the air. On that note: on to Massachusetts!