Acadia National Park: Gorham Mountain Trail and The Bowl

Jack and I on top of Gorham Mountain

Tuesday I had tentative plans to climb Mt. Katahdin - which I have never done before.  It's a bucket list item that I hope to cross off next summer.  So with a day off from work and hiking plans fallen through, what was I to do?  Find another hike, of course!

I chose Acadia National Park because they are a dog-friendly park.  If I had followed through with Baxter State Park, I would not have been able to bring Jack with me.  When I got to Acadia, I was not sure what hike I would end up doing because they do not allow you to bring pets on every park trail.  A quick stop by the Visitor Center was all it took to figure out which hike to do.  The park officials were very helpful in answering my questions about the hike, how long it would typically take, and my dog's ability to complete the hike.  We settled on a loop that started at the foot of Gorham Mountain and traveled up and over the mountain with a quick hike up to The Bowl before heading back down to Sand Beach and the Ocean Path.  As I was coming back to the parking lot, I could hear people making comments like "I didn't realize dogs were allowed in the park."  Well yes, folks, they are!

There are some trails that you can take without actually going through the park gate, but this is not one of them.  Should you decide to try this hike, you will need to either pay a $20.00 access fee (good for 7 days access to the park) or you can pay a $40 access fee for a season pass if you plan on coming back again.  Both are available right at the park gate where they will also give you a complementary trail map.

To get to the beginning of the hike, take the Park Loop Road past Sand Beach and Thunder Hole.  The parking lot for this trail is clearly marked with signs.  In our case, the parking lot was full - but no worries!  A short drive past that parking lot there was another.  The loop that we hiked can be found here minus the quick hike up to The Bowl.  Without the added trip to The Bowl, the hike is approximately 3.5 miles at a moderate difficulty.  The trail is clearly marked with blue trail markings and cairns.

While it is a pet friendly hike, I'd like to make some recommendations when bringing your pet:

• I would not recommend taking any smaller dogs on this hike.  Jack is a 75lb dog, and he could easily navigate the climbing that was required.  I would not be surprised if any smaller dogs would need to be carried over part of the trails.
• Be sure to bring appropriate supplies including baggies to clean up after your pet, water/water bowl for your pet, and snacks for your pet.  Like any human hiker, dogs have needs, too!
• Do NOT bring your pet on this hike unless they are very good on a leash.  The trail can be very steep in places.  No hiker wants to tumble on their descent when their dog decides to pull on it's leash.
• Do NOT bring your pet on this hike if they are not good around other people and/or dogs.  This is a popular hiking trail for families with small children and pets.
• I would highly recommend alerting any hikers you may come upon with children of your presence before you get close.  No matter how friendly your dog is, some children have a fear of large dogs.  A simple "Is your son/daughter okay with dogs?" is much appreciated and gives you and other hikers a chance to scoot around each other in a comfortable manner.

Now - back to my hike! :)  This is the one photo that I got on my hike that day.  Unfortunately when I got to the actual summit of the mountain (about 525 feet), I was holding my phone in the same hand as Jack's leash when he decided to pull on it.  A < 3 foot drop later, and my phone was toast.  The photo above is courtesy of a very nice family that I met from NY.

From the Gorham Mountain Trail.

I took this at a little turn out just before reaching the summit where Jack and I stopped for a water break.  In the left of the picture you can see the coast over near Sand Beach.  There are spectacular views from this mountain, and I am very sad to have not gotten the opportunity to capture them.  But that gives me a reason to hike it again!

There were many people of all ages on the trail that day, and Jack and I stopped for a chat with quite a few families.  The family that took our photo at the top actually hiked most of the rest of the way down the mountain with us, and the little girl probably would have taken Jack home with her if she could! haha  We said goodbye at the start of The Bowl trail, as they were headed on their way directly to Sand Beach.

The Bowl is not a very long or difficult hike.  A map of the trail can be found here (minus The Beehive portion).  The "Advanced" difficulty rating you see when following the link is specifically for The Beehive which takes you up a cliff face with iron rungs set in to help you climb.  Jack's lack of opposable thumbs took that off our itinerary for the day ;)  I was surprised to find that The Bowl trail was made up of mostly steps that were set into the trail.  It was quite the flight of stairs to climb, but the view at the top was worth every one of them.

Looking across The Bowl.

Acadia National Park permits swimming only in certain areas of the park.  Lucky for us, The Bowl is one of them.  This is what makes it such a popular spot on a hot day.  Sand Beach is very busy during the summer months, as everyone wants to swim in the ocean.  While there were people here swimming yesterday, it was not over crowded.  As soon as Jack saw the water he was very anxious to jump in and cool off.  We made sure to make our way around to an area of the pond where there were no swimmers.  While the park has restrictions on taking your pet off a leash, I did sneak in a few minutes of free time for Jack to get a swim.  We spent 10-15 minutes just playing fetch in the pond before turning back to the trail to make our way down to Sand Beach.

The hike back down to Sand Beach seemed to take no time at all.  There were some very rocky areas on the trail, but it was fairly easy going.  Once we reached the Park Loop Road, the Ocean Path was like a stroll in the park - literally.  The Ocean Path is just what it sounds like.  It's a dirt pathway that takes you along the ocean between the shore and the Park Loop Road.  We walked by Sand Beach and Thunder Hole on our way back and stopped to talk with several people along the way.  Something about having a dog makes everyone want to be your friend, or so it seemed.

The entire hike took us 4 hours or less.  I was timing our hiking time on my phone, but we all know what happened there!  Jack was tired enough when we reached the Jeep that he took some coaxing to get him to jump in the vehicle.  I think he had a good time making new friends, getting some exercise, and swimming in a new pond, though :)

For more information on park trails, where you can swim, and where you can take your pets - please visit the Acadia National Park website at http://www.nps.gov/acad/index.htm.

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Rafting the Penobscot with Three Rivers Whitewater Rafting

I'll start this out with saying - best day EVER! :)  I had done a whitewater rafting trip on the Penobscot with Three Rivers Whitewater Rafting a few years ago with some girls I work with.  Our guide, Josh, was great, and we had an amazing time.  Due to one of the girls in our raft not being able to swim very well, we didn't hit the rapids as hard or surf like the other rafts - no complaints to the guide, as he was just doing his job and doing it very well!  But I had always wondered what it would be like to get in a raft full of crazy people like me .... this weekend that's what I got!

I'm always trying to drag my friends along on these little adventures, so when I had a weekend open up to book a trip I called up Sarah and Rashell to see if they wanted to join.  I don't think they had to think too long on that one!  We packed up and headed for the Penobscot Outpost on Friday afternoon with plans to spend Saturday rafting and Sunday hiking.  The Penobscot Outpost is worth the trip all by itself.  Friday night was karaoke night, and between the guests, the staff, great food, and cold beer we had an awesome night.  Three Rivers has several options when it comes to accommodations, but being that we are all County girls - we obviously chose to rough it with a tent campsite. :)  The campsites are very reasonable at $10 per person per night, and with The Boatman's Bar & Grill on site - there were definitely some good times to be had.  I will also say that this is one of the cleanest camp sites that I have ever stayed at.  The staff at Three Rivers have high standards, and it was a pleasure camping there.  Should you ever visit them and not want to rough it in a tent over the weekend, they also have several other options available.

We started our Saturday off right with a buffet style breakfast before gearing up and running through a safety briefing.  Being that we had such a good time on the last trip, I had requested Josh as a guide on this trip, as well.  While they accommodate those requests whenever possible, it turned out that Josh was on an overnight rafting trip that weekend.  No worries, though, as we ended up in a raft with one of the owners, Tony, and I dare say there is no one that knows the river better.

Once everyone had their guide assignments, we loaded up onto the buses and headed for the starting point of our 13 mile rafting trip.  The water level wasn't quite as high on this trip as it had been a few years ago, but I think that was a good thing.  We were able to take the time to put the raft in and go through some of the basic commands Tony would be giving us during our trip.  The first time I had rafted the Penobscot, we did not have this luxury since the water was running at about 3,200 cfs rather than 2,600 cfs - which sucked us right into the first rapid rather quickly.  After going through "all ahead", "all back", "back left", "back right", etc. we started on our way down the river - with our first rapid being a Class V!

To sit here and give you an accurate description of how much fun this river was.... it can't be done.  It's one of those things you have to experience to understand.  All I can say is that they live up to "The Home of Serious Fun".  We had a raft full of crazy people like me that wanted to hit every rapid as hard as we could.  I've heard people say before "I went rafting, but I wish I had been in the fun raft."  Well we were that raft!  We took one hit so hard it broke the zipper on our raft!  Don't worry, we were fine - it didn't affect the raft's ability to hold air, only it's ability to hold it's shape.  It was loud, but we were almost to our first stop on the trip so we just picked up another raft there.  Plus we got the bragging rights that we were so awesome the raft couldn't handle us ;)

Lunch is included as part of the rafting trip, and I remember sitting there at the picnic table just being in awe of Maine.  Which, if you have read other posts on my blog, happens quite often and with good reason.  Here's just a sneak peek of why I say that now:

Photo by Three Rivers Whitewater Rafting.

Here we were, all 100+ of us, sitting around picnic tables having a hot lunch that the guides prepped for us over a fire next to the river.  People from all over were connecting, enjoying the great outdoors, and it's just always a good feeling to witness that.

Directly after lunch, we were set to hit Nesowdnehunk Falls.  I have always thought this was funny.  Let's feed you and send you on the equivalent of a rollercoaster ride.  My last experience with the falls was in 2011, and it was memorable enough that Josh remembered me even though it had been two years since I had seen him.  As I said before, we had a raft of 6 women (most of whom I worked with).  One of the women is deaf, so it made it a little more challenging for her since she could not hear Josh's instructions from the back of the raft.  She could only watch me and do what I did, as I was sitting in the front of the raft.  Before hitting the falls, Josh gives us the "game plan" - how are we going to approach this section of the river.  He told us that he needed us to paddle all ahead as hard as we could right up until he told us to hold on.  If we didn't give him all we had right up til that moment, we weren't going to hit the rapid how he wanted to.

The river bends left just before the falls, and you can't see the falls until you're about to head into it.  It's not really that rough before the falls, so you can actually hear the roaring of the water well before you get there.  The anxious feeling of not being able to see what's going on around the corner is crazy!  And it's heightened when you see a raft go around the bend and all you can hear is people screaming like they would on a rollercoaster.  When it's our turn, Josh gives us our instructions and we start paddling with all we have.  Till we hear "Oh sh**! Hold on!"  As one we immediately stop paddling and grab onto whatever we can near us.....and realize it was not Josh that yelled.  Being deaf, one of the women hadn't gotten Josh's instructions.  If someone could have gotten a picture of his face in that moment, it would have been priceless.  There was no time for us to grab our paddles and recover, it was all on Josh at that point.  When we went over the falls, the left side of the raft took a hard hit - which is where I was.  I got thrown across the raft and remember thinking along the way "Oh well!  It will be a good story!"  While I didn't end up going out of the raft, I did end up caught half in/half out of the raft and took quite a pummeling from the river.  But nothing I couldn't handle!  Thanks to Josh we came out of it without flipping our raft and a story that both us and the guide would remember.

Because of the last time going over the falls, I was a little anxious already.  Then I heard the falls.  Then I heard the screaming as the first raft went around the bend.  At this point I was pretty confident in the group I was rafting with NOT to stop paddling, but still my stomach was all butterflies.  We came around the bend following Tony's instructions and I remember that moment as the raft was starting to go over the falls.  Picture it - there you are in a raft at the edge of a 13ft waterfall looking down over the falls.  It's one of those moments where you get a huge adrenaline rush and time slows down... until we actually went over it.  On the first run of the falls (yes that's right we did it more than once!) we took the biggest hit.  The raft tipped up on it's left side.  I had a hold on the rope and leaned way back trying to transfer my weight as far that way as I could to keep the raft from flipping.  I joked later that it felt like riding one of those mechanical bulls.  We came out the other side with the raft upright but we were missing several passengers - including our guide!  There is a pool after the waterfall, though, so getting everyone back into the raft really was no problem at all.  With everyone loaded up, Tony asks us "Are you ready to do that again?"  That's right - we did the falls not once, but three times!

This view of the falls is from the opposite side of what we run.  It's more impressive from the other side of the river, but here you can see the exposed rocks in the middle of the river.  That's where we carried the raft upriver to run the falls again.... and again!  We also got the chance to do some surfing at the falls - which was a lot of work but so much worth the effort!

 The raft in the above photo is actually facing upriver.  Tony referred to the falls as "recess" because after lunch we stopped there to play for at least an hour.  Eventually we had to head back downriver, though, even though I honestly could have spent an entire day at the falls.

There are many rafting companies here in Maine, but I was impressed by everything about Three Rivers.  We learned a lot about the area we were rafting through, heard some great travel stories (I swear my bucket list doubled in size), and anyone that can put up with all those bad attempts at British accents and over abundance of sarcasm in our raft deserves kudos.  We had so much fun that we decided to stay another night and leave on Sunday rather than head north Saturday night.  With nightly bonfires, a band on Saturday night, and great people - how can you turn that down?! :)

Three Rivers Whitewater Rafting also has trips on the Kennebec River and the Dead River that run out of The Forks.  I have not had the opportunity to do either of these trips yet, but I plan on being there for Last Blast on the Kennebec in October.  Next year maybe I'll get up the nerve to do a Jump & Raft package with them (which includes rafting and skydiving).  For now, though, find Three Rivers Whitewater Rafting on Facebook and check out their website for more information on the trips they offer.

Lobster SUP Cup 2013

I'm a little late getting this entry in, but better late than never!  Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of being a volunteer for the inaugural Lobster SUP Cup.  If you haven't read my previous post about Stand Up Paddleboarding, you can find it here.  SUP is relatively new to Maine, and while constantly growing in popularity - it's still relatively unknown to most people who live here.  It seems every time I am out on Brewer Lake I will get questions about "What do you call this?", "Where can I get one?", and a range of other questions about the difficulty of the sport, what I like about it, etc.  As such, Maine hasn't developed much in the area of competitive SUP racing.  Until now...

Thorfinn Expeditions hosted the first SUP race here in Maine with their 2013 Lobster SUP Cup.  The race spanned two days and covered 25 miles of Maine's rugged coast line.  Being that I just picked up the sport this year for exercise more than as a serious racer - I only attended as a volunteer this year.  My best friend, however, did race.  That's right.... she's a super star!  She just picked up the sport in May, and already has done a long distance race.  Here she is at the start of the SUP Cup in Rockport Harbor:

Our trip started the day before the race, as we wanted to make sure to be there with plenty of time to help out in any way necessary.  All of the SUP racers and volunteers were very friendly and in no time at all we felt like we had always been part of this group.  We filled out all of our paperwork, and then were left with the rest of our Friday night to just chill in the Lincolnville area.  Saturday morning would be when all of the festivities/race would start.

Saturday morning's race began in Rockport Harbor and traveled to Lincolnville Beach with a detour into Camden Harbor.  I spent my morning helping load up the boats while Sarah and the other racers prepped for start time.  Typically I consider myself to be a fairly athletic looking person, but looking around at the athletes in this race I no longer felt that way.  These people were in some serious shape - which is a testament to exactly how great a workout SUP can be.  This race had drawn people from as far down the coast as NC and even a former Olympic gold medalist from Canada named Larry Cain.  You can find his blog post about the race here - his post is probably much better.... he does this for a living, so cut me some slack!

While everyone else was going to spend their day on a board, I got the opportunity to spend my day on a boat taking photos of all of their hard work.  Jared Cumming's boat The Osprey was the place to be if you were a volunteer.  I'm always amazed at how openly welcoming people are in Maine whether they grew up here or have come from away.  The volunteers on The Osprey were no different.  All of the volunteers were so much fun to spend the day with, and Jared was a very gracious host.  This race featured some spectacular scenery along the Maine coast, and it was a pleasure volunteering to photograph it all.  Some of my favorite shots were as the racers passed the lighthouse coming out of Rockport Harbor, shots as the racers came through Camden Harbor, and catching video of the start of the race.

Lighthouse coming out of Rockport Harbor.

Marta Downing coming through Camden Harbor.

As the racers came through Camden Harbor, there were plenty of spectators all cheering them on.  From there they traveled up the coast to finish in Lincolnville Beach where they were rewarded with an after party at McGlaughlin's Lobster Shack.  There they had their choice of a lobster dinner (not one, but TWO lobsters), fried seafood platter, and BBQ chicken.  The food here was amazing, and the atmosphere was on par with the food.  It was great to be able to spend some time with the SUP racers, share some of the day's photos, and make some connections for some future races.  As part of the after party, awards were given out to the top 3 male racers and top 3 female racers.  

Day Two of the Lobster SUP Cup started in Lincolnville Beach with a finish line in Belfast.  Rather than start from the water as they had in Rockport Harbor - the racers were doing an actual beach start.  Unfortunately given the nature of the start, I could not get some video of this one.  I did get to spend the day on the water again, though.  I'm constantly amazed at the things that are available to people right here in Maine.  There is so much to experience if people just seek it out.  Being out on the ocean for the day was no different.  Everything from the scenery to the people - could not have planned a better weekend on the coast.

Since I was on a chase boat rather than the photography boat, I did not get quite the same photos on the second day of the race.  With my camera it always seemed that the SUP racers tended to get lost in the rock face they were paddling by - but here's a peek at part of their trip that day.

I think that my favorite part of day two was following the last racer's trek towards Belfast.  She showed such perseverance and determination that it was inspiring.  Inspiring enough for me to agree to do a smaller race (only 5 miles) in Cape Cod later next month. :)  Here's my absolute favorite shot of the day - her crossing the finish line while everyone cheered her on from shore.  I wish the angle had been better so I could have gotten everyone else in the background - such a supportive group!

This day the after party was in Belfast, and we all headed for Rollie's.  Rollie's is such a great little bar - the beer selection had something for everyone and the food was awesome.  We spent a good bit of time there refueling before heading to the unofficial after party place - Three Tides.  I can't think of a better place to have had the after party.  This is an eccentric bar/restaurant that didn't disappoint.  They even have bocce ball set up for their patrons.  Being that we were in a competitive crowd, it didn't take long for us to make use of that.  The evening ended with all of us exchanging contact information and making tentative plans to meet up at future races. All in all, it was an amazing weekend with some really great people!

Saying goodbye at Three Tides.

For more photos of the race, find me on Facebook or visit the Lobster SUP Cup Facebook page.