Day 6 - Portland, ME to Acadia National Park

After packing up camp and admiring the pink lady slippers blooming around the edge of the site, we headed out to Acadia with an important stop along the way: the LL Bean flagship store.  It was only a 2.5 hour drive to Acadia, so we figured we could kill a little time shopping before heading up there.

To call it a "store" is just not adequate.  To start with, there are 5 free standing store buildings in a complex that make up the "store".  There's a store for bikes and a store for home decor and a store for clothes and... you get the picture.  The camping store was a wonderland of gadgets you didn't even know you needed, like stackable coolers, dehydrated ice cream, and propane crockpots.  Between the sales on clothes and the in-house coffee shop, we lost several hours of the day but did get a new, lighter griddle for our trip as the old one was getting a bit scratched.  We also found out that the Stonewall Kitchen brand was nearby.  We love what we've had of theirs (dips and salad dressings) but can only find them at Fresh Market around here.  There were products of theirs that we hadn't even imagined.  This started our collection of the "things to take home and taste".  That collection became a space issue later in the trip until we decided it didn't really matter if Brett could see out of the back window.  It's not a problem problem - it's a perspective problem.

At the LL Bean flagship store complex.

After tearing ourselves from the time sucking vortex that was LL Bean, we walked down to a highly recommended bakery and bought a few things for our week in Acadia.  When Pigs Fly Bakery was *amazing*.  They had samples out and everything was delicious!  We got yeast rolls for sandwiches, focaccia for some Italian meals and some outstanding giant cookies for hikes.

[Standby for tasting note]
140. When Pigs Fly Bakery: The lemonade blueberry sugar cookie was out of this world and stayed soft for days.  Unfortunately there's not a link available to the cookie as they change stock constantly. It's a good thing they do mail order because we will need to try more from them now that we can be at home and freeze some loaves.

We drove along the coast to get to Acadia and enjoyed the scenery and the nice weather.  It was getting cooler, but there wasn't any rain and we figured we'd get to the park in time to set up camp and then maybe go out for a quick hike or stroll around.  Sadly, the GPS did NOT understand that cars aren't allowed on the "carriage roads" in the park and was sending us in all kinds of wrong ways.  It added another hour to the drive but we got turned around and went to the appropriate campground.

We chose the Seawall campground for our stay because all of the reviews talk about how quiet it is.  In fact people call that side of the park "quiet side".  This sounded perfect because 7 days of listening to dogs barking and generators running isn't our idea of fun.  To further keep the campsite quiet, we requested the D loop.  It has walk in sites.  You tell them how far you're willing to walk and when you get there, the ranger picks a site for you and you borrow a rusty wheelbarrow to cart your stuff from the car to your site.  The ranger greeted us and talked about the coming rain (we had hoped we had left that in Philly!) and said not to worry because she'd pick an "uphill" spot for us.  Turns out that nothing is really uphill when everything is sea level.  There was standing water everywhere, even before the rain began that night.

The campsite on the "uphill" side.  This is also known as mosquito Disney World.

The good news was that we hurried and got camp set up before the rain and the sunset.  It was a bit of a walk but we weren't near anyone else.

Back at the start of the trip, when we were packing up the Edge after picking it up from the rental car, there was clearly an issue with space.  What had fit easily in the back of the truck was NOT going to fit in the SUV.  We had to leave some of our precious cargo behind.  We mostly picked things like some of our fire starting stuff, a table that we could manage without, and kitchen-creature-comforts, like tongs and metal marshmallow sticks (don't judge!).  We almost left a screen canopy/tent that we have.  It's big (14'x14') and doesn't pack down small or light.  We didn't think we'd ever bother to set it up, but Megan had insisted that it go in case of rain - so we could tie a tarp over it and have a place to cook.  That first night in Acadia we set up our tent and then went to put up the screen room (since it was clearly going to rain the next day) and it turned out that it was massive and barely fit in the site.  We had it crammed between trees and stretched in funny ways to get it out of the standing water.

Home sweet camp with our screen room sort of in the site.

However, it had 2 features that would be immensely important the next 6 days: the screen meant that the mosquitos couldn't eat us alive and a roof that kept us mostly dry.  It was like a 14'x14' slice of heaven in the midst of a cold, pouring, mosquito-y few days that started our time in Maine.