Mt Desert Island, ME

Well, here we are, at the Northern most part of our journey.  We made it to Mt. Desert Island, Maine, which is the home of Acadia National Park.  After a long overnight sail from Boston to Matinicus Island, we had to motor the entire day to Mt Desert Island.  The sea was a flat calm.  The sun was shining with fog looming on the horizon.  We never did encounter any fog, thankfully.  As we left Matinicus Island at 7:30 am, we navigated the lobster pot buoy's with ease.  Just as you think you have passed the last pot, there are more to come and more after that.  They were never ending even when the water depth was over 250 feet.  The closer we got to Mt Desert Island, the more lobster pots we motored past.   With our 21 foot beam, sometimes, they were nearly kissing both hulls at the same time.

A lobster pot buoy.  Where there is one, there is more!  

A seal poking his nose out.  Really!  We also saw some small dolphins.  They were not as playful as the ones we encountered farther south.  

Mountains in the distance - Mt. Desert Island is one of them

A sea of lobster pots - pictures don't do it justice.  It is like a rainbow on the water.  Each lobster pot is painted a specific color to match the lobster boat/fisherman.  By law, there are no two alike.  They can have the same colors but have to have a different pattern.  How they keep track, I don't know.

A successful navigation through thousands of lobster pots, we anchored near Southwest Harbor.  We immediately got the sailing dinghy off the bow and ready to sail.  The girls took off.

We spent our first day here in Mt. Desert doing a mountain of laundry.  Actually 3 very full carts of sheets, towels and 2 weeks worth of clothing!  Then we went grocery shopping.  Which sounds easy enough, except we don't have a car and the nearest store was a couple miles away.  We headed in one direction and realized what we thought was the store, was another 5 miles.  So, we turned around and back tracked.  That was an hour, gone.  It was getting later and later.  We almost threw in the towel but rain was forecasted for tomorrow.  We boarded one of the free LLBean buses and he kindly dropped us off at the store.  We did our shopping and walked another 2 miles back to the boat.  Once we got back to the dinghy, we headed to one of the docks and bought some lobster right off the boat!  Then it was a very chilly ride back to the boat as the fog was rolling in.

All loaded up with laundry and trash.  yippee

Someone's pride and joy at the dinghy dock

The lobster dock where we got our fresh catch of the day

Here comes the fog

One of our anchored neighbors

Another neighbor 

And yet another

The cooked lobster ready to go in the pasta

Linguini with lobster in a butter, garlic and white wine sauce, grilled asparagus and a fresh baguette (on our elegant plates designed by Olivia for Mother's day)

Fresh wild Maine blueberries

Used to make this blueberry crumb cake

It rained all night and most of the day so we couldn't go explore.  We hunkered down and did a full day of school work and boat projects - including getting caught up on the blog.

The clouds part as the rain stops in the afternoon