Today was a day for investigating old ruins. For an easy-hike day, we still managed to walk well over 4 miles.
For breakfast we tried a new spot: Pink Pastry Shop. Rich had a croissant that was bready and therefore not so great, but I had a maple pecan pastry that was excellent – I would get it again in a minute. We had our customary tea and coffee as well. (The coffee earned much higher marks than the croissant.) We sat in the park by the waterfront and watched the cruisers come in on their cattle boats. It began to sprinkle, but the air was still warm and we were comfortable.
Farmers’ market again
Next we headed over to the farmers market, where we always find awesome local Maine goodies. Along the way I stopped at the Bar Harbor tea shop for my annual order of Swan’s raw honey and blueberry and cranberry honey. I got the blueberry and Swan’s, but I couldn’t find any cranberry honey on the shelf. According to the girl in the shop, they hadn’t gotten any in all year. She didn’t know why.
The farmers market offered the usual gorgeous array of fresh vegetables, artisan cheese and sausages, jellies, jams, sauces, and other delicious treats. We headed right for the Smith Family Farm tent to pick up some salami for our neighbors. I was tempted to buy more honey from the Brown Family Farm, who were also serving a delicious frittata with eggs and sausage. Right around the time I was sampling the frittata, Rich came over to me with a sample of sauce from a local Italian man. That was fantastic too and would be excellent on fish. We couldn’t carry much more but will be ordering from him online. We picked up three more containers of goat cheese from Sunset Acres, too. You (or we, anyway) can never have too much goat cheese!
Investigating the ruins near Eagle Lake
Our main goal for today was to investigate some ruins near Eagle Lake: the old water tower near Duck Brook and the abandoned house along the eastern shore of the lake. Parking near Eagle Lake can be tight, so we planned on taking the bike shuttle, sans bikes, to Eagle Lake. We’ve done it before without a problem; the shuttle was never full and no one ever said anything. But this driver was pissy and made us wait until the last minute to see if all of the slots would be filled. Of course at the last minute a huge group showed up with rentals from the bike shop. Fortunately after they had arranged themselves there were still two seats available on the bus, so we were able to get to the lake as planned.
From the Eagle Lake carriage road parking lot, we walked down the shoulder of Eagle Lake road for about .14 miles until we reached the unmarked woods road heading north. As an old road, this was a very easy path to follow, and we took it right to the old stone water tower. It was so cool to see the tower come into view as we hiked closer! It was built in 1874 and taken out of service in 1895. A 12″ diameter cast iron pipe leads away from the tower, south toward Eagle Lake. A large pile of granite blocks is heaped up adjacent to the pipe, and we had also noticed other smaller piles of granite alongside the woods road.
We hadn’t even noticed on the way in, but along the road leading toward the tower there was actually another road heading off to the right. This old road leads down to some foundations in the woods-what we later discovered were sand filters for the water operation. They were huge! And they contained two small inverted-beehive-shaped brick structures that had once been sealed with cement. At the time we had no idea what any of this could have been, other than that it was quite obviously connected to the water company operation. Pretty impressive, in sheer scale alone!
For more about the water company, check out Peter Morrison’s 2005 report “History of the Bar Harbor Water Company, 1873-2004“.
Next, following directions from J. R. Libby’s blog (thank you again, J. R.!), we went back out to the road we’d come in on, and this time went left instead of right. We came to a clearing with a large, smooth rock ledge and then a woods road beyond it, easily followed (it dwindles into a path but remains easy to trace). This too leads to a foundation but a much smaller one; it may have been a house or small building. I also suspect that the trails leading up Brewer Mountain can be found in this area, but we didn’t look for them today.
After completing this exciting investigation, we crossed Eagle Lake Road and headed along the eastern shore of the lake via the carriage roads. It was a peaceful walk, with overall silence broken here and there by a passing cyclist but overall the carriage roads were practically deserted. Completely unexpected for a day that was warm and getting clearer by the minute.
About halfway to the southern end of the lake, Rich easily spotted the drainage culvert and the unmarked trail we were looking for. The trail leads right to the shore of the lake, to a fancy foundation from an old house that was never built. Three arches in the foundation face the lake and supports are in place for a floor. This is supposedly where Park staff and/or volunteers sometimes come for lunch breaks (we can see why!) but no one visited while we were here today.
For a while we sat on a large boulder jutting into the water and had a brief snack. Then while taking photos of the structure I discovered that one of the arched openings was particularly warm, being sheltered from the wind off the lake and in full sun. So we sat there and had another snack (not the meat bar, although we were joking about it the whole time—the ticks won’t want to eat us if we’re eating that, etc.). It was such a beautiful, serene, peaceful place and neither of us wanted to leave. We eventually continued our hike to Bubble Pond, where we caught a bus that took us back to the Visitors Center, and from there another bus that took us to the green. The day was cool, but 100% sunny and gorgeous. We took a very slow walk back to our room.
Chef Johnny is cooking dinner at the Black Friar!
Supper was at the Black Friar, which we’ve been looking forward to all week after finding out last weekend that chef Johnny cooks on Sundays! It was exquisite, as expected. Like last time, we started with buns served with maple blueberry butter, of which I could have eaten a dozen. Along with that I had Gritty’s Halloween seasonal (which is fortunately not a pumpkin ale) and Rich had Bass Pale Ale. Next we had mushroom soup with homemade cheese croutons and Caribbean cod cakes, which were slightly spicy and came with an herb sauce—also excellent and very different. Our entrees were alarmingly huge! Rich had chicken stuffed with herbed boursin cheese and delicately fried, and I had haddock française with a lemon butter sauce and capers. Both came with garlic buttered green beans and cheesy mashed potatoes that were fantastic; the cheese almost tasted like blue cheese. We couldn’t resist another slice of blueberry pie for dessert!
On the way back to the room we stopped at Hannaford for some more wine for our last two nights. Well deserved after our explorations into the island’s hidden history!