Bah Haba

And now we get to the place that sparked the whole trip!  With Grace graduating in the spring, we let her choose the destination for this year's road trip, and Bar Harbor made a big enough impression when we were here in 2017 that she wanted to revisit it's magical shores.  Haha.  Obviously, we didn't do a point-for-point replay of our entire east coast road trip from 6 years ago, but in Bar Harbor, at least, I made sure to leave in some of the old experiences to go alongside the new.  {And just as a heads up, this post will be 95% pictures since there's not a ton of commentary to tag on.}

To provide a framework for the (literally) hundreds of pictures I took during our 3 days in Bar Harbor, I'm going to recap this leg of the journey under 3 main categories -- touristy stuff, nature stuff, and family fun stuff.  Even if one might argue that most of the pictures represent all three.  Hahaha.  Be that as it may, I now present Bar Harbor in all its mist-ical, magical glory... 

[TOURISTY STUFF]

The first thing we did when we got to Bah Haba was to embark on the first of the many bus tours we took over the course of our trip.  And while Isaac began staging his revolt rather early on, he was at least attempting to be agreeable for our tours of Downtown Bar Harbor our first day and Acadia National Park the next.  The tour through Acadia National Park was more interesting, in my opinion, and we got a nice overview of the park with a few mini stops along the way.

The rest of our touristy adventures involved lots and lots of walking, some gift shop perusing, and plenty of recreating photo from our 2017 trip.  I have to say -- I really got a kick out of some of those pictures.  It's crazy to see just how much older and bigger everyone looks compared to 6 years ago.  Crazy, I tell ya!!  

How could I NOT pop into a bookstore that's been open since 1886??

This first pic showcases his initial I'm-not-actually-impressed-by-this-bus-tour-but-I'll-pretend-for-your-sake look.  Hahahaha.

Flashback to 2017.  Look how little they all were! 😭

[NATURE STUFF]

When you're staying in a place with as much natural beauty as Bar Harbor -- and the whole of Maine, really -- practically every outing involves nature.  From the beautiful flowers in gardens around the town to the gorgeous Bold Coast shore and intermittently misty tableaus, it really was a feast for the soul as well as the eyes.  

Just as an FYI, this shot was totally staged and posed at Isaac's insistence.  Lol.

An almost perfectly heart-shaped rock!  Did I spend the next 20 minutes searching the shore for rocks that looked like an "I" and "U"?  Yes.  Yes, I did.  Hahaha.

(I was successful, though!)

Flashback photo to the same shore with much smaller renditions of Jane and Isaac.

When I saw this rock formation, I thought it totally looked like a giant stone foot and had to take a picture.  I was gratified to hear that Alex at least saw the vibe I was going for when he commented afterwards that it look like something that would be on Easter Island with the Rapa Nui statues.

Don't let the peaceful, reflective pose fool you -- this was only halfway through our walk to the beach and the complaints about the long walk were already going strong.

(Alex's pose is the more accurate portrayal of how everyone was doing.  Haha)

[FAMILY FUN STUFF]

Like I said above, pretty much all of our "family fun" included elements of nature or tourism or both.  Case in point -- our Acadia National Park bus tour allowed us enough of a glimpse of the America's Vacationland to want to come back for more the next day.  This time with swimsuits and a final destination of Sand Beach.  The amount of walking the kids had to do to get from where we parked all the way down to the beach (stopping along the way to climb on some rocks, of course) was decidedly NOT fun, but all's well that ends well and Scott really took one for the time and walked back to the car alone to drive around and pick us up when we were done.

For some reason, this shot of the boys gave me flashback vibes to the picture below from 2017...

...Can you see it?

Those little curls, though.  😍

An added experience to this year's Bar Harbor trip was a quick jaunt to the town right next door to attend The Great Maine Lumberjack Show.  It lasted about half an hour and showcased some cross-cut sawing, pole-climbing, and log rolling (amongst other things) while pitting two lumberjacks against one another with an actual, real-life Survivor cast member acting as emcee.  {Tina Scheer from Survivor: Panama -- Exile Island, in case you were wondering.}  

And that, my friends, is that.  All in all, it was a delightful return visit to lovely Bar Harbor!  I don't know if we'll ever make our way up here again, but if we don't, we have enough memories (and pictures) to last a lifetime.  😊