Acadia National Park, Mt. Desert Island, Maine - August 25-28 '07

For my vacation from work, Erika and I took a week to travel through part of New England. We had booked some campsites throughout Maine and had planned to do some exploring through New Hampshire. Our first campsite was in Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island, just outside of Bar Harbour, Maine.

Acadia National Park is an amazing place. There is so much hiking to do, historic sites, and relaxing beaches. There is also a n Island Explorer bus route that takes visitors from the various trail heads or sites. The hiking trails range from short, relaxed journeys to the ocean all the way to technical climbs up sharp cliffs to the top of various mountains. Wanting to be a little more adventurous then some of our other hikes, Erika and I decided that we would tackle Cadillac Mountain, the longest trail in the park on our first day, and then attempt one of the climbs with gaps and rungs for the second day.

We woke up in the morning and headed for the trail head of South Ridge of Cadillac Mountain. We were camping in Blackwoods Campground, and there is a connecting trail that leaves not far from our site. This trail leads us from Blackwoods across US Route 3 right to the trailhead for South Ridge. As we were dealing with glacier carved faces for the trail base, most of the trails we were dealing with were hard rock and tough on the knees. Where there wasn't rock, there was tree root on top of rock; either way, it was tough walking. It was an incredibly hot day as well, so we were polishing off our water supplies at a really fast rate. The first section through to the trail head was relatively short, but it was a very rocky, and root covered trail making for slow moving.

Once we were across Route 3, we were mostly out of the woods and onto the South ridge of the mountain. This helped speed us along as it got the roots out of our way, but the terrain was still essentially all rock. As it was so warm (it was nearly 25 degrees at 9:30am) and we were now on open rock, our water started to go even quicker. We had packed our camel pack with almost three liters, and I was carrying a nalgene and water bottle giving us another 1.5 liters. I'll tell you now, this didn't last. By the time we got to the summit, we only had about half a liter remaining, and still had to make our way down the North Ridge.

Now that we were on the open rock, with only a few pine shrubs and low bushes, the higher we climbed, the more impressive the view. The heat from the day was starting to put a bit of a haze in the sky, but the views were still incredible. It is impressive to see how the glaciers have shaped this area. There are islands scattered everywhere, and large coves carved from the sides of hills. The south side of Cadillac Mountain was littered with huge boulders from where the glacier decided to drop them, as well. It was interesting to come around the corner and see a huge boulder sitting alone by itself on the side of a mountain. The open-ness of the trail was beneficial though. It made it very easy to see where you had to go. Pretty much, if you were going up, you were going in the right direction. If you started to go down, check around and make sure you can find some trail markers.

After about three hours, we were finally starting to see the light at the top of the hill (sorry no tunnel). We climbed to what was the local peak and we could now faintly see people through the haze who were taking the easy way out, and driving to the summit. Climbing to this local peak was no small feat. We had polished off all of the camel pack and were now dealing with only our bottles. We came across a few other groups, with people dragging in the heat because they did not have enough water. One group of four had only brought two quarts (Americans) for the group, and had polished that off by the time they had reached Route 3. Only a few more kilometers to the 1530 foot summit though, so we made way.

In the photo to the left, you can really see the ridge that we were following, and how exposed you are to the sun. The whole way along this ridge though, you had incredible views over the surrounding bays and harbours. It was incredible how silent it could be up there; just the wind, a few seaguls, and whatever weird noise I was making at the time. Anyways, we finally made it to the summit. We took a good break here and spent about half an hour relaxing and taking photos / video of the view. It wasn't quite as peaceful as I had hoped, as so many people had driven up to the summit. Despite this, the summit was a large area, so we just found a rock away from everyone else, and had our lunch and snacks. We had a seagull take a picture of us at the summit, overlooking Bar Harbour, to prove that both of us actually made it.

From the heat and the long, hard walk both Erika and I were pooped. We had two choices now; turn and walk back the way we came, or drop down the North ridge, and catch one of the Island Explorer rides back to our campground. Since we were getting low in water, we figured that our best bet would be to head down the North Ridge trail and catch a ride back to Blackwoods. This wasn't an easy journey by any means though; it was a steep ridge with little vegetation. This ridge would have been wild to have a crazy-carpet there in the winter! I spent most of the time trying to watch my footing so I wouldn't roll down the mountain; in other words I didn't take many photos of this area. In any case, we made it to the park loop, and jumped on the Island Explorer. All in all, we covered between 15 and 20 kilometers from ridge to ridge.

On our second day in the park, we decided that we would attempt one of the more crazy, vertical climbs; Beehive Trail and The Bowl. It was said to be a little more exhilarating, but more insane would have been a better description. The trail consisted of loose rock and iron rungs hanging off the side of a mountain. The trail was all of maybe two feet wide (much less in some sections) and bordered on the edge of open cliff faces. To say people with a fear of heights would be scared is a major understatement.

First we had to walk a small intro trail to get to the Beehive trailhead. This trail was all large rock scattered around, making for interesting walking / stumbling. As we cleared the trees we entered the shadow of what we were to climb. We could look up and see people hanging from the sides. This sight started running questions through our heads to whether or not this was a good idea. The thrill-seeking side won out, and we ventured ahead.

We were amazed that this trail was open to hikers of all skill levels as it had many open gaps to cross and free iron rungs to scale walls. The trail took an incredible route. If I were to come across a gap, I would not consider placing down some rungs to make it passable, I would find another route; but where is the fun in that? But in order to maintain the scenic views and to stay on one side of the mountain, there were a number of sections where you would deal with either a runged gap or rungs drilled into the face for you to climb. No matter how nuts this trail was, the view the entire way to the top was incredible; you overlooked Sand Beach, where we later spent the afternoon relaxing. In between chaotic sections, we take a break and just look out at the view.

We finally made it to the top, and sat down to enjoy a well deserved lunch. We had read that there is a trail connected to Beehive that has a swimming area, so after our snacks we headed for The Bowl. The trail to The Bowl was a much more relaxed trail. We only had to climb over a few rocky sections, but it was relatively straight forward. Nestled in the valley of a few mountains, is a small lake known as The Bowl. It is a quiet fresh-water swimming area, and as we were dealing with another warm day I took a dip. It made for a great way to cool down after the questionable climb.

After relaxing most of the afternoon at Sand Beach, we figured that the view from the top of Cadillac Mountain for the sunset would be pretty nice. Instead of venturing out on another 20 kilometer hike, we took the easy way out and drove to the top. The sunset was beautiful only interupted by the massive crowd that had the same thoughts as us. Turning 180 degrees gave a very nice view of the moon rising up over the horizon, as well. It was a really nice sight!

Fundy National Park - August 3-6

Erika and I headed Fundy National Park for the long weekend. I left Halifax for my last solo trip to Moncton, as Erika has now finally moved back to Halifax. Once I picked Erika up, we made way for Fundy. We left early on Friday afternoon, so we're on a roll. That's four tents in a row that we've been able to setup in the daylight. It is certainly easier than fumbling around in the dark.

We have recently bought a number of new hiking and camping toys including a mini-stove, new sleeping pads and a new sleeping bag for Erika. So once we had the tent setup, we (mostly me) were eager to try out the new toys. The stove worked out very well; always nice to cook pork tenderloins and tomato alfredo in the middle of nowhere and have it turn out tasty!

We spent the first night relaxing around our tent and chopped up some wood for a fire. Erika's parents were staying at the chalets, and they found our spot and hung around for a little bit of the fire. We planned our trek for the next day and hit the hay. We woke up to a weird day, but no rain (yet) so we hit the trails.

Our plan for the day was to hike through Matthew's Head and then head for the old copper mine trail. Matthew's Head is a looped trail that follows the coast along the edge of steep cliffs overlooking the Fundy tides for about 5km. First we walked through some wooded areas that had some small streams and nice views of open fields.

After the fields and wooded areas, we made way to the coast the views of the bay. However today was weird, there was a pile of fog over the water and you could hear thunder off in the distance, so we did not get the spectacular views that we were expecting. However, the fog made for some interesting photos.

We sat at the edge of one of the cliffs for a few minutes, and we could watch the fog roll in and fall back with the waves. The sun would burn off a little bit of fog, but then the waves would bring it right back in.

After watching the fog for a few minutes, we got back on the trail and got to experience some more thunder. Erika had to curse it by "isn't it weird how there's no rain with all this thunder?" Knock on wood, the rain started about 10 minutes after Erika brought it up. It wasn't too bad though, as it was quite warm and we were pretty well covered by the trees along the cliffs. This was good, because we had left our rain coats in the car to keep them nice and dry while we were on the trail.

After a few more km along the coast, the trail headed back into the woods, and helped cover us from the rain even more. The trails in the woods were really interesting. You could really see how glaciers had carved out areas and deposited features in this area; there were massive rocks just sitting in the midst of trees. Then there were the streams running through the trees surrounded by moss and clover that made for some good photos, too.

After a quick break for lunch, we headed for the old copper mine. The mine was started in 1892 in an old quartz vein. Generally, where there is quartz, there is gold. This place was no different, so why was it a copper mine? Well, they found gold, but only enough to get people looking for more. All they found afterwards was copper, so copper mine it was.

The whole way into the mine there was root-covered trail and a continuous climb. This would have been a terrible way to make a living as it was almost 3km in and another 3km to get back out, all for one dollar a day. The terrain made for some neat steam areas and as it had been raining for a few hours now, the streams were running well. After a very steep climb to the mine entrance, all that remained of the mine was the steam boiler and a small opening from where they had back-filled the rest of the entrance. All the tailings from the mine were scattered all over the area and made it a lot more obvious that a mine was there, not just an old steam boiler.

Kouchibouquac - Canada Day Weekend

For Canada Day weekend, Erika and I headed to Kouchibouguac National Park on the coast of New Brunswick. I took the afternoon off work, and headed to Moncton to get Erika, from there we drove for roughly an hour and a half to the park. We had to take it a little slower them some other people as we had two bikes strapped to the back of the car. In any case, we got there with plenty of sunlight left to setup our camp. It's always nice being able to setup a tent when it's still light out; we are getting pretty good at setting them up in the dark, too.

Kouchi has a pretty big camp setup, and the wooded sites are huge. We could have easily fit three or four tents on our site. As it was just the two of us, we had plenty of room to ourselves.

Once we had the camp all setup, we hopped on the bikes and went to explore the area. There is a great deal of crusher dust bike trails, a reasonable mountain bike trail, accessible walking trails, and some wooded hiking trails. Erika and I mapped out what we wanted to cover, and then setup a fire to relax by for the night.

The next morning, we hopped on our bikes again, and headed for the big sandbar. It was about a 12 km ride from our camp to the boardwalk. We locked up the bikes at the boardwalk, and went over to the sandbar. The sandbar was full of dunes and was a huge nesting area for piping plover. We walked along the sandbar for a few kilometers looking for shells and sand dollars, but still never made it to the end of the sandbar. It started to rain a bit, so instead of getting soaked, we turned and headed back for the bikes.

The weather was really weird, cause it would rain for about 20 minutes at the start of each day, but then it would clear for the most part. There would be a few showers, but they were really isolated. You could come across parts that looked like they hadn't been touched by water in days. This being said, our first little shower ended by the time we got to the camp, so we decided to keep exploring. That afternoon we covered pretty much every small trail in the park, adding up to about another seven or eight kilometers. These trails were more of nature walks then hiking trails, but we got to see some interesting stuff in any case. There were interpretive panels setup explaining how the land was originally used and the how the land has changed. There was a tipi at the start of one of the trails, but it wasn't exactly made of traditional materials (I don't think they had much extruded aluminum bars back then).

When we got back to our camp for supper, there was a little bunny (Buddy the Bunny) hopping around our camp. I ran into this bunny a number of times while we were at Kouchi, but it was scared of me, so never got close to it. The chipmunks and squirrels though, would come right up to you.

For the evening, we went for a bike ride and got some ice cream from down by the beach, and watched some raccoons trying to raid the garbage cans down there. We then went back to the camp, made a fire and planned out what we were going to cover for the next day.

Again, it rained for a bit in the morning, but once we had some breakfast in us, we headed for the Osprey Trail. This was the best hiking trail that we found in the park. The trail followed the water around a point, and brought you through wooded areas filled with lady slippers. I had never seen so many lady slippers in one spot. This single trail had probably around 150 lady slippers, and the trail was only 5.5 km.

There were also a lot of woodpeckers on this trail. We could hear a pileated woodpecker calling while we were walking, but never saw one until we stumbled across one sitting in some ferns. We heard it calling, and were looking in the trees, so it scared the crap out of me when it flew up out of the ferns in front of us. I'm not one of them quick draw Gunn's, so I didn't get my camera out in time. However, there were a bunch downy woodpeckers throughout the trail and I was able to snap a shots of some of them.

With Osprey Trail covered, we stopped for some lunch, and headed for Claire Fontaine trail. This was a pretty good trail as well, and you had lots of evidence that deer loved the trail too. Unfortunately we didn't see any deer, just lots of their poop. Erika powered through the first portion of the trail, barely stopping for any views. She was on a mission to conquer all the trails in the entire park, I think. She eventually decided to slow down a bit, so I took the lead and Erika took the camera. After a brief break under a tree down by the river, hiding from the rain, we started off again. With me walking at a closer to normal pace and avoiding the piles of deer poop, we finished up the four kilometer trail.

For a quick trail before supper, we head to Bog trail. This trail is mostly board walk, but it really interesting. The area started off as a small marsh, but due to the clay ground in the area, the water couldn't drain. As a result, the marsh took over the area, spreading and taking over more land. The entire area is really mossy, filled with lady slippers, pitcher plants and some other really different plants that I hadn't seen before. This area is supposed to be really good for spotting moose and other animals, but we weren't there at the right time to see any. It was still a really interesting area.

As it was starting to rain a bit again, we packed it in and headed back to camp. By this point we had covered all but two trails in the park. One tiny, short 700-meter boardwalk, and the long 11 km one-way trail. If it wasn't raining the next morning, we may have covered the long trail, but instead we just packed up in the rain and headed back to Moncton for the afternoon.

All in all, Kouchibouguac is a nice park, that seems to be very under used. There were very few people out on the trails, and a lot of the camp sites were empty. It made for a quiet getaway for us, so I won't complain too much.

New Camera - Moncton & Halifax

Recently I have graduated from uni, and for a graduation gift my parents got me a new camera. It is a Canon S3 IS, and has an incredible zoom, really funky settings for color adjustment and enhancement, plus it was a new toy to learn how to use. I spent some time exploring around Moncton and Halifax with Erika and learning how to use all the settings on the camera.

Heading up to Moncton on the weekend of June 8-10, I explored around Erika's house looking for photo subjects to test some of the settings on. Her cat Josie made for some good photos, partially cause she is an attention hog and has to be around you no matter what.

As I had mentioned, the camera has a really crazy zoom; 12x optical and 48x digital. I started playing around with the macro and super-macro functions on the camera, and they can lead to some really neat photos. It gives you a different view into how things actually are, because you rarely see the tiny details in objects in a regular day.

The next day, we headed to Mapleton Park. I hadn't been to the park before, and figured it would be a good chance to explore some more of Moncton. The park was pretty large and had a good selection of trails to explore. There were a lot of bike trails throughout the park, as well, so we'll have to go back with our bikes sometime and explore some more. Maybe Erika will leave a crusher dust path for real bike trail.

Throughout the entire park, the number of squirrels and chipmunks was insane; they were everywhere! Just walking down a trail, you'd be chased by three or four of them at once, and there would be another three or four up the trail waiting for you. Plus if you looked up, there'd be some waiting there too.

This is all for Moncton, as I had to head back to Halifax for the week to bring home some bacon. The next weekend, Erika came down, and we went to Point Pleasant Park to throw a football around for a bit. I brought the camera incase we saw anything interesting, and to give us a break from football for a bit.

We started by just walking around the park and taking some photos of different things. Then we headed for Fort Olgivie to toss the football around. It was a wicked nice day out, so we threw the ball for a good long time. Once we were done with that, we explored the fort a bit. While we were in Moncton the week before, a blue jay kept landing on the deck and stealing peanuts. I wasn't quick enough with the camera to catch a picture of it, but while we were exploring the fort, I noticed a blue jay sitting in a tree. I lucked out this time and was able to get a picture of this one before it flew away.

I have some pictures of our latest camping adventure to add, so I'll get to those sometime soon.

Until then, keep on keeping on.

Park Falls, New Glasgow, Nova Scotia

Okay, one last old one, and then I'll start posting new stuff.

As I had mentioned in the Fundy Park post, I was living in New Glasgow last summer and working for Michelin. I met a lot of good people there, and had a lot of fun biking and exploring the area with them. Whether it was hanging out with my roommies Sean and Fenny; biking with Patrice, Garrett and Fenny or swimming with Garrett and Dan, it was enjoyable place as long as you stayed busy. This photo is of a portion of "Beaver Dam" bike trail in Trenton Park.

New Glasgow has that typical small town mentality, so when 4:00 rolls around, everything except for Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire closes. Erika and I would try to go out to dinner only to find all the restaurants closed by 6:00 some nights; at least Swiss Chalet stayed open.

While I was there in the summer, there was lots of stuff to do. On the hot days after a good bike ride, we'd head to Park Falls for some falls jumping.

This gave us a good break from work, and made for some fun times.

Fundy National Park, New Brunswick

Well since I am just starting this blog, I might as well start with something from the past. Last year, Erika and I made a trip to Fundy National Park for some time away from work.

I set out from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia on a Friday and drove up to Moncton, New Brunswick to pick up Erika. From there we headed to Fundy, stopping only for pizza at a little shop just outside of the park. As the drive from New Glasgow to Fundy was nearly four hours, we had the adventure of setting up our camp in the dark.

In any case, things worked out fine, and in the morning we hit the trails. We started out towards Third Vault Falls, one of the tallest falls in the area. The waterfall itself is surrounded by thick woods and rocky terrain. As a result, the trails were a little rough, but made for some nice scenery none the less.

Along the trail, we crossed a number of small streams and the sound of falls was getting louder. These pictures were taken with my old camera, so the least bit of shake or the tiniest bit of glare resulted in a blurry photo. Plus, I wanted to see the falls, so I was in a bit of a hurry and never really took my time with the photos.

At last we arrived at the base of the falls. The water was freezing cold, but it was too tempting, so I took a splash. The force of the water hitting you was intense! Trying to swim towards the falls was pretty much impossible. It is really quite incredible to see how water carves its way into the rock faces though.

Erika and I spent some time just relaxing around the base of the falls, watching the tons of water falling over the top edge. There were more trails to cover and more things to see. So we eventually got back on our way and headed towards Moosehorn Trail.

Moosehorn Trail essentially follows the lower portion of Salmon River which empties into the Bay of Fundy. Along the trail there are a number of falls and pools. Some of these falls and pools made for natural waterslides, but others were pretty intense. Both Erika and I took a swim here for a break from all the hiking. It was a hot afternoon and we had covered a pretty good distance by this point. It was a blast playing in the current from the falls; they would carry you all the way to the next pool if you were to float with them. After swimming and jumping in the from the falls, we made our way to Laverty Falls.

This part of the hike was still along the edge of Salmon River. It was pretty calming to have the river flowing beside you, and gave us the opportunity to take a couple breaks from the heat. After a quick duck through some trees and wooded area, we were at Laverty Falls. It had been pretty dry leading up to our time in the park, so there was not the normal amount of water flowing over the edge of Laverty Falls, but it was still impressive. I was able to crawl up onto a ledge under the falls, and the water hitting my back was enough to put you back in your place.

All in all, we covered a bit under 15 km that day, with many breaks for snacks and swimming.