More of Mount Desert Island and Hiking Norumbega Mountain

Thursday:  Mount Desert Island is essentially circular and we spent this day driving to a number of points along the coastal areas of the Southern half of the island.  We traveled along Indian Point Road to such scenic locations as Indian Point, Pretty Marsh, Seal Cove, Goose Cove and Duck Cove before enjoying a delicious lunch in the Bernard area overlooking the harbor toward the town of Bass Harbor.  Since Gracy was with us on this trip, it was nice that Thurston's Lobster Found had a lower deck with a deck just outside of the eating area where Gracy was able to enjoy the salt air and some shade while we ate, while being attended by a couple of kids who were quite happy to give her some attention.  We then proceeded on through Bass Harbor and on to the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse (I encourage you to do a search if you're interested in the history).  We then explored a natural seawall at the end of the island before heading West for some stops at Sothwest Harbor and Hall Quarry for a view of Somes Sound.  Again, this would be a lot more interesting if I could share photos of the area with you, but alas, uploading pictures with the currently available WiFi would take longer than actually taking these day trips, but I am hoping for a better connection next week and will publish a list of photo collections at that time.
Friday:  We had all pretty much decided that we would dedicate one day to a hike.  Acadia National Park has hundreds of miles of trails, some of which include paths to the summits of Acadia's many mountains.  These trails are of varying degrees of difficulty and are ranked as very easy, easy, moderate and strenuous.  I had spent quite a bit of time here some many years ago and had hiked quite a number of these trails over a period of months, but this is all new for Bill, Mary, Linda and Deb.  Knowing we would probably not want to take TOO long a hike, but still wanted to see something at least a bit impressive, I elected the ascent trail at Norumbega Mountain as a good choice; not too long (6/10 of a mile), moderate difficulty, some impressive views and a moderate elevation (852 feet).  Well, the tour guide, yours truely, was not aware until writing this blog that memory from well over 20 years ago did not serve too well.  What I remembered as a moderate ascent is actually rated as one of the more difficult.  I'd have to say that it was quite an accomplishment for us to have taken this hike without really any major problems.  Early in the ascent with Deb on point, she did suffer a bit of a scape on her leg when scaling a boulder with some loose gravel on it, but she pressed on.  Over the course of the ascent (2 hours) we decided that it would probably not be in our best interest (safety wise) to descend the mountain on that same trail so we elected a longer alternative that followed along the ridge; less difficult, but considerably longer, turning our entire hike into a 5 hour venture.  This was, without a doubt, the toughest hiking in their lives for Deb, Linda and Mary, but everyone seemed to have a really good time of it.  We enjoyed the views, the laughs and teasing along the way, but we'll probably all be suffering a bit tomorrow.