The campground is dark and quiet this Monday evening.  We are exhausted but warm and happy after our last day of exploring Mt. Desert Island and Acadia National Park.  Our northern expedition is drawing to a close, but we will make a two-night stop at Twin Mountain in the New Hampshire White Mountains region and then stay for the weekend at Schenectady before returning to our home and winterizing our motorhome, “Harley,” for the season. 

Our stop here provided a first visit to Acadia National Park for both of us.  I knew this park would be different in character from many national parks.  Most of the land was privately donated, so the park is interspersed with private lands.  The park is a patchwork of lands upon the island.  There is an entry fee, so one is constantly passing through checkpoints and displaying the pay stub.  This is a small nuisance, but with a little care one may enjoy most of the park without passing any checkpoints.

The autumn bird migration has now largely passed us by and we did not expect to find new birds here.  Instead we planned to enjoy the scenic vistas, the rocky coastline, and the fascinating geology.   We were not disappointed - except by the weather.  The sun shined on our arrival day and we quickly set up camp and drove to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, the high point of the park to walk about on the bare granite and gaze for tens of miles in all directions.  We knew the forecast for the next three days was bad and made the best of what would likely be our last clear weather while we were here.  That was good because the next day was rainy and foggy.  We went to the shore early but could see almost nothing.  To make the best of it we went to downtown Bar Harbor and tried to explore it.  The rain put a stop to that.  So, we spent a couple of hours in the library reading magazines and checking the Internet.  We also scheduled our joining a bird walk the following morning and a geology hike this morning.  After that we returned to our motorhome, turned on the heat and read.  We also turned on the generator for an hour and watched an episode of a tv show. 

Yesterday morning started out drizzly.  We arrived at the rendezvous point and found the ranger and three other intrepid naturalists.  The walk started well but then the drizzle turned into a hard rain.  We returned after a time to the parking lot.  The ranger said she would make two other stops if we liked in spite of the weather.  Only Anne and I liked.  We enjoyed the company of our “private” guide for the rest of the morning.  Then we returned again to the camper to warm up and dry out.  We decided to make a motor trip to the far side of the island to visit the “Wonderland” coastline that the ranger had reported as a good spot for birds.  The ride went well, but when we arrived at the southwest shoreline we faced a strong and wet wind that made birding a challenge.  Still, we made the walk and watched waves crash against the spruce covered shoreline.

This morning we awoke early - we have enjoyed too much sleep in this awful weather - and found the morning somewhat brighter.  So, we went early to the Sieur de Monts Spring and “Wild Gardens of Acadia” to see the many labeled plants, the lovely spring run, and look for birds.  The garden was lovely and perhaps the best collection of cultivated wild plants we have ever seen.  The trail through the wetlands was also lovely and included about one thousand feet of floating boardwalk.  The birds were few but a flock of blackpoll warblers, a species we seldom see, entertained us along the way.  Unfortunately, a drizzle began.

We departed and drove to Sand Beach, the only such beach in the park.  It is situate at the end of a narrow bay between two rocky points.  A rocky island between the points calms the waters of the bay enough that the waves deposit a lovely shell beach there.  A handsome young ranger, Sonya, (where is our son when he should be with us) greeted about ten of us who came to find out the geology of this rocky island. 

She started with basics - igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic - and then briefed us on the remarkable history of the rock here.  In short, marine deposits  formed sandstones that were pushed up to form a small continent called Avolonia which had the misfortune to be shoved into North America by an advancing southern continent (which included parts of Africa).  The collision was devastating and triggered an upflow of magma here that broke up through the sandstones before hardening into granite and finally being pushed up.  Today, a couple of hundred million years later after Africa has removed itself from the region, erosion has washed away most of the surrounding weaker rock and left this amazing mass of granite rising from the North Atlantic Ocean. 

Recent glaciers have all but scraped the rock clean and then departed too.  So, we are left with much bare rock providing clear evidence of its formation.  On one section of coast is rock incorporating jagged bits of volcanic “ejecta.”  On another is granite with pieces of sandstone that fell into the magma.  The region of granite is roughly circular and surrounded by a “shatter zone” where bits of the older sandstones are incorporated into the intruding granite.  Outside of this zone in places are remnants of these sandstones free of the granite. 

The surface also shows much evidence of recent (ten thousand years ago) glaciation.  One fascinating feature is a layer of marine mud some one hundred feet up a mountain slope.  This is clearly a recent feature.  How did it get there?  The sea level has been increasing since the last ice age.  So, the only explanation is that the land has risen by more than one hundred feet!  Why did the land rise?  Because it had been pushed down by more than a thousand feet of ice.  When the ice melted the land rose, some from below the surface of the sea.  We fools who think of the terra as firma!

The walk was a three hour exercise in field geology.  It concluded at a spot where the ranger pointed out three very different looking boulders of rock types that we had not seen exposed during our rock.  She told us where there is bedrock that matched each of them, tens and hundreds of miles away.  Why are these “erratic” boulders here?  She reported that glaciers are a bit like conveyor belts and push a great deal of material ahead of it and underneath it.  Such erratics are typical of glaciated areas. 

The presentation was excellent.  One need not be told that glaciers roamed this land when one can see what glaciers did to this land.  Science is making sense of the evidence, and here the evidence for the volcanic formation of this island and its shaping by glaciers is easy to see. 

After the walk and our lunch, Anne and I made another hike along the coastal trail and then over a small granite hill, Gorham Mountain.  The surf was up from the recent weather and crashing waves sent spray fifty feet into the air.  Visitors oohed and ahead as swells turned into breakers and thundered into the cliffs.  On one beach the waves shuffled ten-pound pebbles up and down a section of shore.  They crackled loudly.  As we turned to climb the mountain the sky cleared for the first time in three days to give us grand views of the raging ocean.  But, upon reaching the peak, we heard the fog horn sound and looked to see a wall of fog advancing from the north.  In minutes it obscured the coastline and threatened us with rain. 

We returned to the car and drove to town to buy Maine lobster and mussels.  We also stopped at the library to check the Internet, but it is closed on Mondays so we will miss our e-mails for a couple of mored days.  We’ll make do.

Will arrive Schenectady on Thursady afternoon.

Postscript - October 4 - Twin Mountain NH

Have arrived at Ammonoosic Campground.  It is raining but forecast is for clearing tomorrow.  We will hike tomorrow if not too windy.  Leaf color is fabulous and approaching peak on the Presidential Range.