Acadia and the hotel pool

Well, as expected, we were blown away by Acadia (the twins’ were probably more blown away by the pool at our hotel then the actual park, but more on that later). I’ve been wanting to go to Acadia ever since my best friend in high school built trails there one summer. I was placed in Yellowstone, and at the time we both thought I got the short end of the stick. However, in the end, we both had an amazing, exhausting, life-changing experience. Yellowstone never fails to impress!

But, back to Acadia. It’s always amazing to me how much one can back into a 3 day/2 night vacation. It was gorgeous. Although it can be a bit chilly, it’s definitely worth visiting famous parks in their off-season. For those of you who know Acadia, we visited the lake at The Bubbles, the Southwest shore (at low tide! Got to see tide pools!), Jordan Pond, and the area around Sand Beach. As a family, we have found our niches of experiencing the outdoors. Flannery likes to move. She likes the hikes with impressive views and climbing over rocks from one place to another. In general, Collin likes to hike as well – usually sprinting ahead of everyone then looping back to the tail of the family, then back to the front again. Cayla, on the other end of the spectrum, likes to find an old log, a sandy bit of trail, a stream, or the foamy edge of a lake and plop herself down for a day of playing. And, if she finds a beach, there is NO MOVING HER. Me, I’m happy drilling holes in old logs and filling them with pinecones all day. However, if everyone else is hiking, I’m happy to bring up the tail end. So, you know where this leads. Our final afternoon found the kids and I playing on the beach while Flannery hiked up some nearby mountain. Flannery tried to hike with Collin around Jordan Pond earlier, but he just wanted to be back with his sister.

Which leads me to the first mistake Flannery and I made. Don’t take Cayla to one of the most beautiful beaches ever on the morning of the first day. If you do, she will insist upon dragging the beach bucket out of the car at every stop and spend much of every hike asking if we are almost at the beach, ad infinitum. Our second mistake was getting a hotel with a pool. We should have just driven 5 minutes outside of Boston and found a place with a pool. It’s really all the twins wanted to do. Cayla spend most of the way home (5 hours . . . ) demanding we turn around and go back to the ‘our hotel with our pool’. Speaking of which, this was the first time the twins have been swimming since last summer, and they had a blast! Cayla was doing somersaults and trying to swim (but not going anywhere). Collin was definitely swimming. Woo Hoo!

(photos coming soon - stay tuned)