While we usually confine our adventures to MDI, today we decided to travel to another part of Acadia National Park: Isle au Haut, which is a ferry ride of about 40 minutes from the mainland town of Stonington. Of course, the trip also requires a drive from Bar Harbor to Stonington, which takes about an hour and a half. It’s a beautiful drive through gorgeous scenery on the Blue Hill peninsula, in particular.
We had planned on taking the 10:00am ferry, which left us plenty of time to pick up a snack and drinks at Morning Glory (which ended up being lemon and cheese danish, coffee, and Earl Grey tea), and drive to the ferry launch. We bought our tickets, found a decent parking spot, and boarded the boat. Everything was going smoothly!
The morning along the coast was very foggy, which is typical for this time of year. But the sun started breaking through while we were on the ferry.
We followed our route on my GPS, which has marine functionality and therefore shows all kinds of interesting nautical navigation objects like green cans and red nuns - always amusing! In this instance, one of the red nuns was rather pink, which we got a kick out of. The ferry ride also gave us a chance to document (from a distance) two NGS landmark stations: ISLE AU HAUT LIGHTHOUSE and ISLE AU HAUT CHURCH SPIRE.
It was still foggy, and cloudy, when we arrived at Isle au Haut’s Town Landing, but by the time we made our way to Duck Harbor, the sun was out.
Our plan was to hike the Duck Harbor Mountain trail to the summit, where we would search for the Duck Harbor triangulation station. The trail offered a typically stunning Acadian-style mountain ramble, with many high, open outcrops with wooded areas interspersed, some tough rock scrambles, and plenty of up-down-and-around.
The triangulation station is set on an open ledge and was very easy to find. The nearby reference marks were similarly easy to find just by walking around the immediate area of the summit, although we read their descriptions thoroughly to make sure everything matched up and that we wouldn’t need to submit any changes to NGS. Reference mark #2 was set quite precariously close to the edge of the ledge!
At the summit we were above the fog, so we were able to enjoy the warmth of some strong June sunshine, but the views weren’t as expansive as they would be on a clear day. Still, the closed-in feeling and the fact that we had the entire mountain to ourselves made the whole experience particularly special and intimate.
Our original plan was to loop around on the Western Head Trail, but we took our time on the hike up Duck Harbor Mountain, and we were concerned that we wouldn’t have enough time. We’ll save it for our next visit. Instead, we spent some time resting, relaxing, and enjoying the hazy sunshine at Deep Cove. We walked the road back to the town landing, checking out the Cliff Trail along the way. (It looks amazing, and is another trail on our list for next time!)
We returned to the landing and boarded the ferry by 3:45.