Acadia National Park: Seawall, Maine - October 9th to 11th, 2021
This is the third and last post about our visit to Acadia National Park. This one covers our last three nights when we camped in the Seawall Campground. From there, we explored the western half of Mt. Desert Island.
Our friends, Christy and Greg, were our tour guides again on Saturday. They picked us up from the Seawall Campground and took us on one of their favorite hikes in the area. We were thankful for the ride because the shuttle buses (Island Explorer) was not running any routes on the western side of the island in 2021.
The hike was a loop that included Flying Mountain, Acadia Mountain, and St. Sauveur Mountain. There were beautiful overlooks of Somes Sound all along the trail. The route took us to a small beach in Valley Cove. Christy expressed a desire to swim at that beach, but it was a little too cool that day. Perhaps she’ll get a chance to swim there next summer.
On the way up to Acadia Mountain, we found a nice spot to sit on a rocky outcropping with a gorgeous view of Somes Sound. As we were enjoying our lunch, two bald eagles circled overhead and gave us a show. The cries the eagles were making sounded a bit like squeaks. The cries of eagles are not very majestic. Many movies dub in the cry of a hawk when they include eagles in the film.
Greg and Christy hike faster than we do. Their pace pushed us to increase our pace, but we’re sure we were still slowing them down. It’s good to be challenged every now and then. Hopefully we didn’t hold them up too much.
We completed the 5.8 mile hike with 1575 feet of elevation gain in four hours and 19 minutes. If we were hiking by ourselves, we’re pretty sure this route would have taken us another hour to complete. This was hike number 47 of our 52 Hike Challenge.
As we rode back through Southwest Harbor, we looked for an ice cream place, but didn’t find any that were open. So our friends just dropped us back off at our campground and we said our good byes. It was so nice to spend time with our friends. Since we didn’t have ice cream, Right Buddy (RB) made apple brownies in the Omnia Oven (paid link) with some of the apples that our friends had graciously given us. Christy hand picked the apples herself.
Sunday was a cool, cloudy day, so we relaxed and stayed pretty close to the Seawall Campground. First we walked over to the Seawall Picnic Area, just across the road from the campground, for lunch. The picnic area is along the seawall along the shore. It is a natural seawall created by the tides depositing rocks along the high tide line. After eating our food, we walked along the seawall and rocky shore. The rocks of the seawall were about the size of a fist or slightly bigger. They were rather hard to walk on, but it was manageable.
We walked back to the campground and got our bicycles out. It was only two and a half miles from the campground to the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse. It was a short, pleasant ride along the road lined with trees that were taking on their fall colors. There is no shoulder along the road, but the traffic is light.
As we approached the lighthouse parking lot, there was a long line of cars waiting to get a spot. RB remembers hearing someone on the shuttle bus a few days before talking about the long line.
The parking lot at the lighthouse is small and there is no parking allowed along the road leading to the lighthouse. So cars line up on the road, waiting their turn for an open parking spot. Riding bikes or walking to the lighthouse seems like the best option. There are a few other trailheads and pull-offs along route 102A where you can park and then walk or bike to the lighthouse from there.
While we were on the jagged rocky shore on the east side of the lighthouse, LB spotted a couple of loons out on the water. They were fishing for food. It amazed us how long they would stay below the surface during a dive. One of the loons caught a fairly large fish. He kept dunking it in the water. Perhaps he was trying to get a different grip on it, positioning it so he could eat it. It looked like he lost the fish in the process.
The path at the west end of the lighthouse parking lot takes you right up to the west side of the lighthouse. Another path at the east end of the parking lot leads down to the rocky shoreline with a view back up to the east side of lighthouse. Other than the two different views of the lighthouse and the rocky shore, there is not much else to do, so don’t plan on spending a lot of time there. If you drove in, be nice and leave after you’re done taking in the views so the next car in line can get a parking spot.
On the ride back from the lighthouse, we stopped at the Ship Harbor Trailhead and walked the trail. It is a short trail, about 1.3 miles round trip. The figure 8 trail is alongside a small cove and circles back once it reaches the ocean shoreline. We stopped and sat on the rocks along the shore.
Not far off shore was a lobster boat. The men were pulling up their lobster pots. We watched them for a little while.
Before dinner, we walked over to the Seawall Picnic Area again. This time to wander around the tidal pools to try to find something interesting. The tidal pools that we visited the previous week at Otter Point were more colorful and interesting to us, but it was still a fun search.
This was our last full day at Acadia National Park. We felt we got a good tasted of the different highlights of the park. The fall colors were nice, but we believe we were about one week too early for the peak color. Hiking in the park was harder than we expected, mainly due to the challenging footing along most of the trails. We needed to leave the next morning before 10 am because the Seawall Campground was locking its gate for the season at 10 am sharp.
As we drove out of the park on Monday morning, we stopped at Echo Lake Beach to take in the view. The sun had come back out and we were hoping to get a nice reflection of the autumn trees on the lake. We were not disappointed. After snapping off a few pictures, we climbed back into our Red Tail Lodge (our camper van). It was time to start driving south.
Check out our related video: Acadia National Park: Seawall, Maine
(RB)