Our last port on this cruise was going to involve tendering. On past cruises that were re-entering the US, I recall having to turn our passports in for customs inspections and getting them back later, but on this particular cruise, they wanted everyone to physically go to a customs inspection. Our tour was meeting at 9 and the inspections started at 8 followed by pick up of tender tickets at 8:30 so we got to the inspection a bit before 8 after breakfast in our cabin. There was a pretty long line already formed but it moved very quickly despite the grumbling by some of the other passengers about having to wait in line. While we were waiting, they were making announcements that anyone who was a non-US citizen could go straight to the front of the line. They made it sound like the non-US citizens were cutting in line but that wasn't actually the case - they had a separate, much shorter line to use. We walked past the U.S. customs inspectors who merely looked at our passports and then we were given our customs cards. We then went to tender ticket pickup and saw John and Leslie there picking there tickets up as well. They were in group 2 while we were assigned to group 3. We waited in the bar as instructed for quite a long time for our numbers to be called. I went ahead and called our tour company, At Your Service, to let them know that it was 8:45 am and we were still waiting to be called to get on the tender.
Luckily, they called both groups 2 and 3 together so we took the short tender to the port and easily found a guy in a red shirt from At Your Service who took us to the van to meet our tour guide, Mary.
We made introductions and could tell right away that this was going to be a much different tour than the one we had in Sydney. Mary was very friendly and full of knowledge. She really made us feel welcome. We drove through Bar Harbor and she pointed out a few historical places along the way. We also stopped at the street where people could walk over the sand bar to the island. This was a really interesting spot that I didn't read about anywhere during my research. During low tide (at around 8:30 this morning), the sand bar was exposed and you could literally walk to the island. When the tide came back in again (around 2 pm), the sand bar was completely under water. Low tide would happen again around 8 pm. Mary offered us the chance to walk over the sand bar (it looked to be about 3/4 of a mile long) but we declined and, in retrospect, I really wish we would have done it.
We stopped briefly at the Acadia National Park visitor center and saw the large model of the island. I picked up a mystery book for Rhys because it was set at Mesa Verde - one of the last places that my father-in-law was superintendent with the U.S. park service before he retired.
The scenery at Acadia National Park is just incredible. The weather was PERFECT and Mary told us the weather had been pretty dreadful right up until the day we arrived. We made a couple of scenic stops on the way to Cadillac mountain - the highest point on the island.
Amina and I really enjoyed climbing around the granite mountainside and just taking in all the beauty of the area. We could see the Veendam anchored in between the "porcupine islands".
We visited the cadillac summmit center and got some blueberry malted milk balls and blueberry soda to try. We hiked up to what we thought was the summit of the mountain. At this point, Mary wanted to know if we were interested in seeing more of the park or if we wanted to break for lunch. We opted to keep going and have lunch later.
Our next stop was the nature center where we filled our water bottle with spring water from Sieur de Monts. We walked through the gardens, stopped at another lookout (seal cliffs - but, alas, there were no seals to be seen) and then to Thunder Hole. The hole wasn't terribly interesting probably because it was still pretty low tides - I referred to it as "burp hole" rather than thunder hole. We even caught sight of a whale. We made our way out of the park and Mary dropped us back off in Bar Harbor at a restaurant that she recommended we try. We paid Mary for the tour and tipped her heavily - we were very pleased with the service we received.
Lunch was delicious. We shared some appetizers: fried (whole) clams and crab stuffed mushrooms. I had the lobster tail/claws while Amina tried the clam chowder and crab roll. We shared a piece of blueberry pie for dessert.
After lunch, we said goodbye to our tour friends, John and Leslie, and looked in a few shops before taking the tender back to the ship. I went back to the gym for one more run before the end of our cruise and then watched as the ship pulled the tenders back up.
We packed up our stuff and went up to the Lido deck for some dinner which wasn't particularly stellar but we had a huge lunch so it was ok. Since we were in our cabin packing, we didn't have turn down service and no animal on our last night. We were scheduled for expedited departure in the morning at 7:45 which means we would be taking our luggage with us and disembarking first to make our 9:30 am tour.
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