The Beehive and the Bowl

Maine Week Travelog #8
Acadia National Park - Wednesday, 16 Jun 2021, 12:30pm.

Having paid with sweat and sore muscles to climb the Beehive (see previous blog) I wasn't going to leave right away. Hawk and I explored the summit and its 360° views from all angles.



It was also a good time to enjoy a light lunch that we'd brought in our packs.



(Lunch not pictured. Just the views.)

Climbing the Beehive was an epic hike. The thing is, it's a short hike. Epic, but short. Going up the front and down the back, looping back to the trail head, is less than 1.5 miles. Fortunately the Beehive is not an isolated point of interest. Nearby it are other mountains, connected by a network of trails. I planned to loop up and over neighboring Gorham Mountain and return along the coastal cliffs, bringing the trek to over 3.5 miles.

"We should also hike The Bowl," Hawk added. "It's right there."



"The Bowl" is another of the goofily named places in Acadia National Park. It's a natural lake that does not look at all like a bowl. (It's not even close to round.) But it's pretty and it's so close that it seems like no extra effort to visit that we headed down toward it.



The Bowl was pretty. It reminds me of Alpine lakes in the Sierra Nevada. And it added only 1/2 mile of walking with less than 100' of extra ascent.

To be continued....

Wrapping up the Beehive Loop

Maine Week Travelog #9
Acadia National Park - Wednesday, 16 Jun 2021, 3pm.

After climbing The Beehive and visiting The Bowl we were not done with our hike for the day. Not by a long shot! From the Bowl we looped around back to the saddle below the Beehive then turned south to climb Gorham Mountain.



Here's a view of the side of the Beehive (above) from partway up Gorham Mountain. It's just partway up because at the top the view back north is blocked by trees. If you could zoom in on this image you'd see a conga line of hikers ascending the steep eastern face of the knob. You can't actually zoom in; the pic is 720px wide for bandwidth issues. But in my 26MP original I can see them when I zoom to 100%. 😅



Gorham Mountain, like the Beehive, provides views in all directions. Above is the view to the southeast, overlooking Otter Cove.

Having hiked up one side of Gorham Mtn we hiked down the other. I said we were going to make it a longer hike.



On the way down we took a slight detour to see the Cadillac Cliffs. Honestly these were underwhelming to me... because of the epic-ness of climbing the Beehive earlier in the day.

Descending all the way down the mountain we arrived back at the park road along the coast. Bad news: we were over a mile from our trailhead. Good news: There's an easy trail alongside the road packed with views of coastal cliffs and rocks.



These last two pictures (above and below) are scenes from the coast. Featuring in both of them is the classic pink-tinted granite of Acadia National Park. The color comes from one of the minerals in the granite.



These cliffs we had pooh-pooed Monday at dusk and yesterday in the foggy weather really came alive in today's sun. And speaking of alive, the cliffside trail was humming with crowds. It's a little too bad we were verging onto the just-get-home portion of our energy reserves.