The bridge opened December 30, 2006, and is 2,120 feet long
and 447 feet high.
Per Wikipedia, the bridge was an emergency replacement for
the previous bridge and took only 42 months to complete: from conception to completion. From the bridge, you could see the Penobscot
River below.
The bridge also houses the Penobscot Narrows Observatory
which is the first bridge observation tower in the US and is the tallest public
bridge observatory in the world (also from Wikipedia).
What we thought was interesting was that the suspension was
in the middle of the bridge with the lanes of traffic placed on both sides of
the single suspension.
In addition, the bridge supports a 33,000 pound motorhome
towing a 3,500 pound car and does not charge a toll to cross.
At the recommendation of another camper at Moody Beach, we
stayed at Timberland RV Park, which is about 15 miles away from the Acadia. We were given Site #233.
On Friday, we drove to Acadia National Park.
From the road into the park, you could see down into Bar
Harbor below…
…and some of the islands surrounding Bar Harbor.
The tide was out and we could see the walkway out to Bar
Island (to the far left of the picture).
When the tide is up, the walkway is submerged. In other words, if you are out on Bar Island
when the tide comes up, you are stuck there for about 12 hours or so until the
tide goes back out.
We could also see a lighthouse way off in the distance.
The views going up to Cadillac Mountain, the tallest peak on
the Atlantic coast, were awesome.
The picture below is Eagle Lake (which we biked around later in
the week).
You could see some mountains to the west way off in the
distance.
Further up the road, you could see Jordan Pond, (which we
hiked around on Sunday).
Before reaching the summit, we pulled into a couple of lookouts with beautiful views:
The summit of Cadillac Mountain is almost solid
granite.
You could see out for miles and miles.
We think Chuck was at the tallest point here:
After driving down Cadillac Mountain, we took the one-way loop around the island. We pulled off at Sand Beach. This is the only sand beach in the park.
The waters were a freezing 50 degrees; but people were still getting in to at least get their feet wet.
On the way up from the beach, we saw this little
squirrel. (The squirrels are much
smaller here than in Tennessee.)
The coastline was beautiful along the loop.
This is Long Pond which is an inlet…
…where the tide was flowing in while we were there.
We even saw a couple of white-tail deer on our drive:
When we finished our loop tour at Jordan Pond. Those two bumps in the horizon are the “Bubbles.”
The water was crystal clear.
We also walked across one of the many carriage road bridges that were constructed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. throughout the park.
We finished up our tour by driving through Bar Harbor. We had lunch at Stewman’s, a dockside restaurant.
In case you were wondering, that’s a lobster I was sticking
my face through. He was supposed to get the entire lobster in the picture but just got my face instead. Another one of Chuck's good pictures! :)
The skies had cleared up and we could see this lovely
sailboat in the distance…
…this schooner...
…and this ???? Not
sure what this was, but it looks like they have their bathroom facilities taken
care of.
Acadia National Park is a beautiful park. I can understand why Rockefeller went to such
lengths to design the carriage trails and bridges throughout the park to enable
people to not only enjoy but preserve the beauty of the park. The pictures just do not capture the beauty like being there does.
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