July 21, 2018 Day
291
Our alarms sounded at 01:00 am for us to get up, get dressed
and hit the trail in the dark for a night hike.
The goal was to hike up Cadillac Mountain, the highest coastal peak, for
the first sunrise of the United States.
We were on the trail by 01:30 am with our headlamps on walking in pitch
black while the stars shown brilliantly above us. The trail was challenging but so worth it
doing it at night. Jason led the way and
when we stopped to pee he almost ran into one of the biggest spider webs I have
seen! I quickly went to pee in the
opposite direction making sure I ran into no webs. To try and describe the tranquility and
beauty of standing on top of a bare mountain under the night sky with the milky
way directly above is beyond words. I
honestly did not want daylight to come for it was so mind blowing. However, one cannot stop the sun from rising
and so we made it to the top at 03:40 am with twilight just beginning in the
east. We set up his air-filled lounge
chair, donned our jackets and a blanket and stared off to the east watching the
Earth awake before our very eyes. When
we arrived at the top of Cadillac Mountain we were the first people out there
but very soon the number of people increased and then a family from, I would
presume, India set up behind us and were so loud and obnoxious that many people
moved away from them and we even thought about doing so too. At one point, one woman came and plopped her
camera tripod right in front of where we were sitting not but two feet away and
completely blocked our view and ruined the time-lapse video we were trying to
take. If stares could kill I am sure she
would not be here today with the look I was giving her. Thankfully she left but still how rude and
ignorant can someone be of others around them!
With the sun now awake in the sky we headed down on the
gorge trail to the A. Murray Young trail.
It was amazing to think that it was only going on 06:00 am when we began
our descent/ascent for we hit a straight uphill waterfall section that was a
thigh burner! It was a perfect
temperature out and a perfect morning! I
am so happy right now. We made it back
to camp at 09:05 am completing 10.3 miles and 2,424 feet of elevation.
My feet were on fire and I immediately threw off my boots
and got to making a breakfast of French toast and eggs which we devoured like
people who haven’t seen food in a while.
Since we had to be out by 10:00 we cleaned up and then dumped and filled
the water tank back up. Leaving the campground,
we drove over to Ship Harbor to try and see some tidal pools and although it
was interesting it was not what I was expecting and only held snails by the
thousands and crabs. In search of cool
stuff, we ended up doing a total of 16.1 miles in all today! By the end of the day my left knee was in
such pain I could barely walk.
Before leaving Acadia National Park for the day we parked at
a picnic area around 15:00 to eat and then decided to nap. Waking up a few hours later I felt like
complete shit. I had a headache, could
barely walk and felt extremely tired. It
took a solid hour to feel better and, in that time, we drove to a Walmart right
outside of Acadia for the night. There
we bought a pizza and some facemasks and after taking a shower and eating the
pizza we put on our facemasks and played Skip-Bo.
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| Jellyfish |
 |
| crab |
 |
| pink crab |
 |
| soooo many snails! |
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| slug |
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