PAW 2005 - wk 24 - Mt. Desert Island

Bar Harbor, on MDI is a quaint tourist town, but it is certainly is AnotherMaine than where I live. I'll break my rule for the PAW this week and show you some typically cliche stuff from our short trip to MDI the weekend of the 18th of June for a wedding.


One of the many tourist destinations in Bar Harbor.

Acadia National Park is the only National Park in the North Eastern US. It is beautiful and mostly unspoiled when you can fight past the crowds of folks there. I had lived my whole life in Maine (aside from my 4 years enlistment as an Army Photographer in the late 80s) and had never even made the 5 hour drive up the coast to see this greatest draw of tourists to my own home state until a few years ago.



Now a few times a year when I am hired to shoot weddings on the island I usually make a weekend of it with my wife and kids and we get to act like tourists in our own home state. Above we are shell hunting at low tide on the "Bar" that gives Bar Harbor its name. Sometimes we get to go out to the Park and experience the rugged mountain wilds on the coast that is quite different from the rugged mountain wilds in which we live every other day of the year. This year, we spent the whole time in the towns on the island.


There are plenty of scenic cliche images to be found on the water front of Bar Harbor.


The Margaret Todd is a schooner that offers cruises in Frenchman's Bay. Very picturesque ship (and of course, typically cliche of Maine imagery) but at $90 round trip for a family of four for 1.5-2hr cruise, it is a bit too costly for most Mainer's whom I know and there's lots of cheaper stuff to do that is pretty fun as well.


This is a stained glass window in Bar Harbor's Acadia National Park Info building. I liked it, so photographed it.


I was laying down on the dock to rest and refresh myself after a long day's shopping and this whale just jumped right over the dock! (Well, ok. In reality this is the tail of a life sized whale model on the dock off West St in Bar Harbor.)

All in all, if you feel that you must visit Maine in the summer time, I highly recommend Mt. Desert Island.
(Our own neck of the woods is far too crowded this time of year as it is!)


(Nikon D70 & 24-120VR Nikkor)