Day 5 - Rainy!

Woke up to pounding rain outside. Decided to visit the "Natural History Museum" at the University of the Atlantic. It looked promising, with a large whale skull (like at Pt. Lobos) outside. Also a fire hydrant. But inside was disappointing. It was about the same size as our house, and (as Callie put it) "Just a bunch of dead animals" - apparently one of the required courses of study there is taxidermy, and student projects are all displayed here.

They did have a very nice tidepool touch tank, where the kids got to touch all kinds of creatures - even more than at the big aquarium in Boston!



That's our very own, very brave Callie holding a large moon snail - she said it was "The slimiest thing ever invented!" They also got to hold or touch big sea stars, all kinds of crabs, some sea cucumbers, sea weed, etc. They loved it and spent pretty much all their time there.

Then we went to lunch at a great place - called Jeannie's Breakfast & Chowder House. This was pretty much the only restaurant that Callie & Brynn ate very much. They both pigged out on french toast. The rest of us had sandwiches or soup (or both) and the food was good and reasonable priced.

It was still raining, so we just looked around the shops a bit until Brynn's doctor appointment. She just had fluid (no infection) in her ears, so the doctor recommended we just keep using the decongestants and hope the fluid drained before we flew home. (It did, she was fine)

By then it had cleared up some, so we headed out to see more of the park. We visited Thunder Hole again, but this time the tide was too full and it was just sloshing around. Didn't even take pictures.

Drove down to a place called Otter Cove. It was beutiful! Here are a few pictures:





There was an old stone bridge that was built in the 1930s - it connected the ocean to a small pond. The daisy picture shows the pond, it was taken from right by the bridge. The watermarks on the bridge make it looks as though the water is much higher, and that the bridge is reflected, but truly the water level was very low when we were there. There was a good 50 feet of seaweed piled up along the shore, we couldn't even get to the water because it was far too slippery to walk on. (You can see some in the foreground of the bridge photo) We let the kids wander the rocks and look for sea shells. We let them make designs out of the shells and they just left those. Callie was fascinated by the living mussels that were everywhere.

We drove the entire scenic loop that day, stopping at a few other places that looked interesting. Drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain and were rewarded with this view:



It was disappointing - all the things I'd heard about how great the view was from there and all I could see was fog! We took this picture, the only picture we got of the whoel family together on the trip. I cropped it here, so you can't see how terribly off center it was. But using the timer while the camera is perched on a rock doesn't always work so well.



That night we ate at a place called the "Lighthouse Restaurant" - it was great! There are places all up & down the roads out there called "Lobster Pounds" - outdoor restaurants where they boil up the lobster in big outdoor pots and serve it on picnic tables covered in newspaper. Most of them are located where they have a good water view. We'd planned to get lobster at a place like that, but the rain forced a change of plans. We ended up here instead, it was similar to a lobster pound, but indoors. Darrin & I ate lobster, it was delicious, the best lobster I've ever had.

Kyra & Callie thought we were gross to eat something that looked like that, so they had bacon burgers. Callie complimented the owner/waitress, saying it was the "World's Best Bacon Cheeseburger". Brynn still had no appetite, so all we fed her was corn on the cob and chocolate milk. If you ask her, this was the best meal of the trip!