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Acadia Vacation (2012) Pg 3

continued from of our November 2012 trip to Bar Harbor & Acadia National Park:

The majority of our time was spent in the Sand Beach / Great Head area.  The entrance to Sand Beach is fairly near the off-season entrance to the park. This photo, taken further down the park loop road, gives a nice view of both the beach and Great Head.  Great Head Point has a nice loop trail that goes around it.  Directly below that is a picture taken from Great Head, looking back to where the 1st picture was taken.  If you look above the sand beach, you can see the park loop road cutting through the trees.

The beach itself is very sandy, in contrast to most beaches in the park which are rocky.  There certainly weren't any bathers at this time of the year, but we did have some company on the beach.

There were occasional people as well.   But it was a chilly time, so the people were scarce.

This next picture provides a wonderful view of the beach and surrounding area.  The mountain seen behind the beach is called The Beehive. 

At the far side of the beach is a set of stairs leading to the Great Head hike.  (The hike is also available, during the season, from a separate parking lot.) 

This is a very nice, varied hike and provides some marvelous views (some of which are shown in the pictures above).  The next picture is taken from the tip of Great Head, looking back towards the park look road.  Around the tip, to the right, is where Sand Beach is.

The picture below is also taken from the tip of Great Head, looking back up the inlet at Sand Beach and The Beehive Mountain.

This is Paul taking the above picture (or a similar one).

The end of the Head has some gorgeously colored rocks.  There is a large but accessible cliff there; at least it is accessible at low tide when the weather is not bad.  I'm not certain it would be so friendly in other conditions.

Go back and look at that picture above again.  About 1/3 of the way from the left, on the top of the cliff, you can see Anne, providing you some scale reference. I'm the little gray & blue speck.  Also look at the lovely colors in the rocks.

One of the views from Great Head is of Otter Cliffs, which you see across the water here.  That will be featured on a different page of this trip report.  This vantage point is just after rounding the tip, starting to work our way back.

After going around the point, the path goes through a nice birch tree stand, before going back over the point and back to Shore Beach.

Particularly this time of year, the beach area provided some wonderful opportunities for photographs.  Most people did not walk to the far end of the beach, and thereby missed the wonderful view across the salt water pond and to the Beehive Mountain. Notice in the second picture the ice; it was rather chilly on some mornings.

Some additional beach pictures.  

Here is another long exposure art work by Paul. 

Departing from Sand Beach and leading us to the next page of the trip report...

 

Continued on  

 

Updated July 2020