Today we started our national park adventure at the Hulls Cove Visitor Center.  After watching a short movie about the park, purchasing a park pass and a drivers guide to the Park Loop Road we were underway.  The guide has 18 stops along a 27 mile loop road showing many of the highlights of the park.  We got through about 14 of the stops before we’d had enough for one day.  It’s a beautiful park and we spent quite a bit of time hiking along the rocks on the shoreline.  Here are some of our photos.

Egg Rock Overlook was our first view of Frenchman Bay.  The island in the middle of the picture is Egg Rock and there is a lighthouse on the highest  part of the island.  This lighthouse was built in 1875 to help ships navigate into Frenchman Bay.

One of the next stops was Sand Beach.  This is the only sandy beach in this area of rocky shoreline.  The sand is mostly made up of crushed seashells which collect here because of the secluded nature of the cove.  They say that hundreds of people a day are at this beach in the summer, there weren’t many today.

We went for a walk along the rocks at the top of some cliffs at the shoreline.  This is what most of the coast looks like.

It was amazing to see small pine trees growing out of the rocks.

There were also plenty of big trees along the coast.

When we were walking down one of the trails I saw this old log in the woods and thought it looked like it would make a good photo.

When we got down close to the sea at one point, there was a gallery of cairns that people had made that were fun to see.

After we finished with the park for the day, we went into Bar Harbor for dinner.  We picked another great place and had a very good meal. Tomorrow we’re going to rent bikes and ride on the carriage paths that crisscross the island.  The weather is supposed to be sunny so it should be great fun.