New England 10/9 Schoodic Peninsula

On Wednesday we drove to the Schoodic Peninsula. It is only 4 miles from Bar Harbor across Frenchman Bay, but a little further away driving along the coast.

If you could read the small print on this sign, you would see that the Sullivan Harbor Land Company hoped to subdivide and develop this area - declaring to visitors "the necessity of coming here instead of Bar Harbor." The company ran into financial difficulties in 1895 and their plans evaporated.



The Peninsula is largely undeveloped for tourists, but interesting to drive around.





There is a portion of Acadia National Park here, but we all know what the story is with the parks. At the (closed) entrance to the park, we met a woman from South Dakota and her boyfriend from from England. They were each riding a motorcycle and just stopped for a pee break in the same bushes that Nana used. She took a year off from her job as a hotel manager in South Dakota to ride her motorcycle. They spent 3 months in Canada and now are working their way down through the States to a goddaughter in North Carolina. During her time in Canada, she endured a lot of barbs about Guantanamo ("If you get a speeding ticket in Canada, we won't send you to Guantanamo, Eh?"). More recently she has had to put up with questions like "What do you mean, your government is shut down? How can a government shut down? Bloody Yanks!"

I wish we could have talked to them more. When we met them we were on a little bridge that ended at the signs saying "Acadia Park Closed". Another couple drove up in their car and joined the conversation. He was agitating for everyone to just defy the "Closed" mandate and drive in. She was saying "He's usually not this way!" I took his picture, just in case I would see him on the evening news:



From the same bridge we saw a beautiful island with a house and some boats - what a beautiful view they have:



Leaving the peninsula we saw where a small bay, Taunton, connects with Frenchman Bay through a small channel. The tidal flow going in and out creates rapids and dangerous waters for commercial boats:
Tidal Falls between Taunton Bay and Frenchman Bay

This sign tells some of it:






This neat stone building was used to store salt used by fishermen to cure their fish when they ventured out onto the Grand Banks - check out the movie "Perfect Storm".




- Tigger and Dottie seeing the country with Nana and Poppa