Day 4: Bar Harbor

On Saturday morning we were supposed to get up at 5:30am and try to get on the road by 6:00am. However, I overslept by an hour. This hasn’t happened in a really long time, so when I woke up at 6:30am I was pretty surprised. So we quickly got moving to get on the road. For the past two nights the girls have slept on the dinette which converts into a bed. It’s just as much work to setup as the sofa bed, but the perk is that you don’t have to fold it up to get on the road, which is something you have to do for the sofa bed. And we can leave Nolan's car seat buckled into the couch. So it saves quite a bit of time in the morning. All that said, we were able to get driving within 30 minutes. We had to get a rental car in Bangor, which was 3.5 hours away.

I took a slightly longer route to stay on straighter roads and make the drive more comfortable for all. We actually drove straight to Bangor and to a Toyota dealership for our rental. This was the first time we’d rented a car from a dealership. I think we paid a little more for the rental, a Toyota Highlander, but it felt like a nicer experience to me. We were lucky to stumble upon the dealership option for the rental because we could not find a traditional rental car place with a 7-passenger vehicle anywhere around. Luckily this dealership worked out or else we would have had major issues. Once the motorhome is parked and set up it is impractical to move it until you are leaving the campground. As soon as we got the car we drove over to a playground nearby. We had another hour to get to the campground and if we didn’t give the kids some time to run around they were going to freak. Luckily there was a decent playground right down the road. We played there, made lunch and then headed to the campground.

We were staying at the Bar Harbor Campground. The campground is on Mount Desert Island which is the island with Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. We were only a couple miles from each, and the campground is right up against the water, so the location is great. Our site was tucked into the trees which was nice, because usually we are out in the open.

The site had tons of shade and great privacy. Our site had a water and electric hookup, but no sewer. At first that seemed like a disadvantage because we would have to be very conscious about water usage. But after about a day I realized that the lack of a sewer connection and the peaceful wooded site were related. If the campground had installed a sewer connection, they would have had to clear a lot of trees from around the sites. The water and electric lines can be run just beneath the surface, but the sewer lines would need to be buried deeper. Later, while walking around with Sam and Nolan I saw a couple sites of roughly 30-year-old guys drinking and singing. They weren't out of control but being away from that and in a quiet spot with the kids was really nice.

We set up the site for a longer stay which means we took out all the chairs and rolled out the mats. The mats are key for a comfortable site. When you have them out everyone can take their shoes off outisde on the mat and not track dirt into the motorhome. It is amazing how much upkeep Allyson and I put into keeping the floors from becoming a disgusting mess!

The past three stops were single night stays so it was nice to know we weren’t leaving in the morning. After setting up we headed over to Bar Harbor. There was a small history museum at a school called College of the Atlantic. The enrollment was a whopping 360 students, so this was a small, small school. However, the little museum had some cool stuff. They also had a pier so we went down to the water when we were done in the museum.

We then headed over to the downtown tourist area, and boy was it crowded. It made sense…it was a Saturday in the middle of summer and it was a perfect day. We crawled through the streets and then parked so we could get some pizza for dinner. As the kids get older we are able to eat out as a family in more places than Chipotle or McDonalds. This restaurant was not crowded when we got there so we were actually able to eat as a family quite comfortably, which was a nice treat for Allyson and I.

Later, after the younger three were asleep I went back downtown with Caroline and Natalie. It was still jam packed but at least with just three of us we could get out of the car and walk around. We checked out some stops, bought some late night donuts, and then headed back to meet up with mom for a campfire. It was a good day, but it was a long one. Nolan is in a pretty hardcore Mama phase. That’s tough on everyone, especially mom. Behavior from the others was mixed. Days where we drive a lot can be tough and behavior doesn’t always start at the peak level you’d like it to. The rest of the days in Maine should get a bit easier

This picture is a re-creation of the same picture taken 11 years ago (see below) when Allyson and I traveled to Bar Harbor together in 2014.