I spent most of the following day (5-2) riding
through Acadia National Park.
The main park road is a 20-mile loop, partly along the
coast and partly through the woodlands covering the center of the
island. By island, I
mean Mt. Desert Island. Acadia
National Park includes about half of Mt. Desert Island, plus part
of Isle au Haut and part of the Schoodic Peninsula.
The island was discovered by French explorer Samuel
Champlain in 1604, who named it Mt. Desert after its landmark
barren top. This
barren top, now called Cadillac Mountain, is named for another
French explorer, Antonine de la Mothe Cadillac, who took
possession of the island in the late 1600s under a grant from
Louis XIV. (Cadillac
later went west to found the city of Detroit.)
By the early 1900s, the island was divided among
numerous landowners, many of which were among the wealthiest of
Americans – Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt and such.
A number of these people, who greatly loved Acadia and
wanted to see it preserved for future generations, began to buy
land from their neighbors, then donated it to the National Park
Service. John D.
Rockefeller Jr. in particular donated over 11,000 acres, about
one-third of the park’s total area.
Acadia National Park was then established in 1919, the
first National Park in the eastern United States.
The film at the Visitor Center says that Acadia is
not a place for superlatives – no “Old Faithful” and no
“Grand Canyon.” Rather
it is a place of better values – solitude, diversity and
harmony. There was
certainly a lot of solitude (as well as a fair measure of
diversity and harmony) on this day.
It’s pre-season in Acadia (and will be for another month)
and there just aren’t many visitors this time of the year.
The park was ready though.
The Atlantic was rolling in against the rocky shore as it
always does. The forests and the lakes were pristine, just as they
always are. The mountaintop was windswept and barren and offered
magnificent views just as it did when Champlain arrived nearly 400
years ago.
Click
on bicyclist to see photographs of Atlantic. 
Click
on bicyclist to see photographs of forests and lakes.
Click
on bicyclist to see photographs of mountaintop.
| Click on thumbnail to
see full photograph.
|
In addition to riding the loop road, I also traveled
about five miles on one of the carriage roads.
There are 45 miles of these roads in the park, all
developed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. between 1913 and
1940. These
had deteriorated over the years, but were extensively
rehabilitated by the National Park Service between 1992
and 1995. Today,
they are a terrific place to ride a bike or take a hike or
ride a horse – no motor vehicles permitted. |
I finished my visit to Acadia by riding the
three-mile road to the top of Cadillac
Mountain. At 1530’, it is the highest point on the Atlantic coast of
the United States. It’s
also the spot where rays of sunlight first strike the United
States each morning. I
was thinking about going back to the top tomorrow morning to
witness the sunrise. Let’s
see, sunrise is at 5:15; first light would be about 4:45; wake-up
time would be about 3:30 – I don’t think so.
I’ll save that one for my next visit to Acadia National
Park.
(Great
Adventures to Scenic Places)
