Today was crazy fun. First, it was a day we didn’t have to hitch up and go in the morning, so that was quite relaxing. The plan for the day was for Richard to go on a long bike ride around Acadia National Park while I messed around exploring Bar Harbor. Then in the afternoon we would both hook up and ride the carriage trails together. We put the bike rack on the car and loaded up both bikes to head to the start of the big loop. Richard took off and I headed into Bar Harbor.
The town is pretty much nonstop adorable. It is situated in a picture perfect little bay and is jam packed with gift shops, restaurants and pottery places. I had a mission in mind which was to find a nice bag or basket to put maps and papers into, but some fresh baked blueberry pie was absolutely necessary in order to proceed with the plan.
I spent about two hours just strolling the town and then decided I needed to put my feet in the Atlantic before we turned West. Acadia is mostly shoreline so it wasn’t too difficult to find a perfect beach. Then it was time to meet up with Richard.
He was almost unbearably giddy after his ride. We headed to Jordan’s Pond House to start our ride and grabbed a quick lunch first. The trails are well maintained gravel roads, closed to cars. And you do actually cross paths with horse drawn carriages, so that’s pretty cool. The loop we took brought us to some gorgeous lakes, keeping always under the pleasant shade of lush woods. Waterfalls and bridges appeared from time to time, and spectacular views opened up that looked all the way down to the ocean. It could not have been more beautiful.
And what does one do in Acadia at the end of a carriage trail bike ride? Apparently, one eats popovers. So who were we to go against tradition? Jordan’s Pond House serves a “tea time” menu from 3-5 and they bring piping fresh popovers to your table with butter and fresh strawberry jam. Yeah. It was just as yummy as you’e thinking.
Perfect end to a perfect day, so we returned to Dory who was happily waiting for us right where we left her. The one thing that was a bit of a bummer was that we were really hoping the solar panels would have recharged her battery. Richard has a highly sophisticated monitor that can tell you the exact draw and charge at any time. But this is complicated to hook into a system. In the meantime, we basically have a monitor that will tell you on a scale of 1-4 little LED lights what your current status is. Pretty fuzzy there and not what Richard needs for peace of mind. The other tool you get is a plug in thing that gives you a number, but again, this is not highly accurate. Even so, based on both inaccurate measures, the battery had not recharged during the day. At best, it maintained charge, which actually meant it kept the 12v fridge running all day. But it wasn’t “topped up” or increased as far as we could tell. That was both confusing and disappointing so we’ll need to do more research on this. We suspect the use of the caravan mover at set up really drew a lot of power.
Tomorrow we head to New Hampshire and we’re both glad we reserved a site with electrical hookups. So much to learn!
Sounds wonderful! Was your site shady? That does seem to make a significant difference with our panels–but ours are not the standard ones SC uses.
That is exactly the question Richard has! Yes, it was very shady – which is nice – but we’re wondering how much that reduces the efficiency of the panels.
To us, it has made the difference in having to worry about power or not. Glad to see from a future post that yours are performing well in full sun.