Most of Acadia National Park is located on Mount Desert Island. But there is a significant part of the park, a new part, that is located just across the bay from Bar Harbor on the Schoodic Peninsula. When we first looked at going to Acadia, we looked at the campgrounds in the National Park. In the main part of the park, the 2 campgrounds were built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps and are mostly suitable to tents and smaller trailers. As they don't even have electricity, it's really not a good fit for a large motorhome. But the new part on the Schoodic peninsula has a new campground, designed to fit RVs. These sites have electricity and water, so that was definitely an option for us.
The Scoodic area is remote, and largely undeveloped. As it is a 45 minute drive from the main park (or more), we decided not to stay there and found a private RV park just across the bridge from Mount Desert Island that suited us just fine.
We went to Schoodic for a day. And found rough and rocky terrain. And a puffin! Here's a view of the area from the boat ramp in Winter Harbor.
And of course, more rocky coastline.
In addition to the new campground, the Schoodic area has a 7 mile one-way road, an old historic lodge, and a former Navy base. It's now home to the Schoodic Institute. We stopped at the lodge as it's an old historic building and bumped into this man in the parking lot. That's the lodge in the background.
After chatting him up a bit, Jane discovers that he's a local wood bird carver. He was there to show a sample carved puffin that might become part of a project at the Institute. So naturally she followed up with inquires on puffins. Like why we had not seen any.
Well it turns out that puffins are visible along the shoreline only during a couple months of the year, in the spring if I recall, during the time that they are nesting and rearing their chicks. After that they are off shore again. So we would not be expected to see any in October. But what's worse is that puffins are somewhat picky eaters. And changes in the climate have changed the availability of the food that they eat. So this year there wasn't enough food to feed the adult and chick populations, and they suffered an almost 100% loss of this years newly hatched chicks. If this happens again, there may be no puffins to see in Acadia anymore. So, we'll have to settle for this little carved wood model. He does look a bit sad, doesn't he?
At the end of the peninsula, there's a place where you can see a cool geologic formation. This is a band of darker rock that had formed a layer between earlier and later layers of rock. If my memory serves me, this is a volcanic layer similar to dolomite indicating volcanic activity long long ago. During subsequent upheavals, this formerly horizontal layer was now made vertical, bringing it to the surface where it can be easily seen. Pretty cool, huh?
There isn't much in the way of towns on the Schoodic peninsula. But there are some houses, like this one right after you exit the park boundary on the one-way road.
They don't have much yard, and have to park their boat a bit downstream as it would be sitting on the bottom when the tide is out, as it is right now. This is a place for hardy people. While the weather was cool but relatively mild for our visit in early October, I can't imagine how inhospitable it might be during a major storm in January. You need to be tough to live there, I think. If you're a puffin, you'll have to be even tougher, since you're dealing with tough weather conditions, and humans messing up your food supply. Let's hope the puffins can tough it out.
by Steve
