Bridge, lighthouse, lighthouse, lighthouse - Bar Harbor to Rockland, Maine

We headed out fairly early this morning for our next destination - Rockland.  It's less than 2 hrs away, but Bill had 3 lighthouses he wanted to check out in the area.  Additionally when we met my friend from high school the other night her son's girlfriend told us about a cool bridge that you could go up into - and I'm into bridges so.... off we went!  First stop - Penobscot Narrows Observatory.  Fort Knox is here and you have to pay to see the fort, that we were not interested in, to go to the observatory at the bridge so we did.  It was AWESOME!  Besides being a gorgeous bridge, you could go up to the top and see all around up and down the Penobscot River.  Beautiful!

Views from the top of the observatory

It's TALL!

Then we headed on to the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse.  This lighthouse is out there - we had to walk 7/8 of a mile down this breakwater to get to it but it was a beauty!

A lighthouse selfie!

This looked like ice, but it was salt that was left after water evaporated.

This little guy was so used to people walking by he just sat on the warm rock when we walked by.

These guys were a bit further out but just as inclined to stay put.  They were there when we walked out and still there when we walked back!

On our way to the next lighthouse - Owl's Head we passed this adorable post office. 

We found the lighthouse!  Not as impressive as the last, but still nice.

Next stop was Marshall's Point lighthouse.  This was made famous by being in the movie Forest Gump.  Apparently when he ended his run it was here.  There was a cute museum here at the light keeper's house.

Looking from the light to the house.

Flags at half mast for Las Vegas.

Schoodic Peninsula and Tidal Falls

As I mentioned in a previous post, Acadia is not a contiguous chunk of land.  There are parts of it that are about an hour away from the main part of the park - in the Schoodic Peninsula.  So today we set off to check that out.  We just pulled off at a few of the overlooks and took a few pics of the lovely scenery.  There's a lighthouse over there!

And there's a squirrel up there!

These hunks of granite are everywhere here.

Then we stopped at the Schoodic Institute.  This used to be a naval facility and after the navy left it came under the care of the park service.  It's now a campus.  There was a nice little hike that we took here (well there were others but we only did one).

Some other stops along the circular scenic drive thru the area.

A lobster boat doing it's job.

On the way out, we saw some cute fishing towns.

One of the stories we heard when doing the carriage ride was that one day Rockefeller was dressed down and hanging with the workers who were cutting stone for these borders that you see everywhere here by the roadway.  He leaned over, his false teeth fell out, and they shattered.  After that the workers teased that these were Rockefeller's teeth.  Now when they clean between them to keep them clear of debris they say they are flossing Rockefeller's teeth.

On the way to this part of the park we saw a small sign for Tidal Falls.  We stopped on the way back and it was quite something to see - the water was going two different directions!

We say a fond goodbye to Acadia having left much to see - will we return?  Only time will tell.