On Holiday

DAY ELEVEN
The morning in Portland was really foggy which made for awesome working conditions in the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge while we finished up our work in Maine. It only took until lunchtime at which point Ganesh and I parted ways with Jim (who is flying back to Baton Rouge) and began a bit of a holiday! On Jim's advice we headed further north to check out Acadia National Park, situated on Mt. Desert Island just off the coast of Maine. This was my second visit to a national park after spending a day at Yosemite with my good friend Darko over the Christmas break. We checked into our hotel (the nicest one yet) just out of Bar Harbor, and then headed into town to check out what it had to offer. Other than a bunch of tourist shops, restaurants, and cafes, not a lot really! So after an hour or so of wandering around we found a sandbar which could be crossed at low tide to get across to Bar Island. We managed to cross it just as the tide got low enough and we spent the next 90 minutes or so checking out the island which offered some nice views of Bar Harbor after a hike to the top. Then it was back into town for dinner and the hotel for a good night's sleep before a big day of exploring the park.

DAY TWELVE

The weather screwed us for our only full day at Acadia National Park! The cold temperature, wind, occasional rain, and clouds we could handle fine, but it was the persistent fog that hung around the entire day that messed things up for us. It seems that appreciating the true beauty of Acadia National Park relies heavily on being able to see further than 100 metres, something we weren't able to do the whole day. We started the morning driving on the park loop road, checking out major tourist attractions like Sandy Beach (the only beach with sand on the whoole island) and  Thunder Hole (a hole in a cliff which the sea rushes into causing a booming noise and lots of water to spray everywhere), stopping often to walk the short tracks around the awesome rugged coastline. We then rushed back into Bar Harbor to catch the scenic cruise we had booked for 10 am only to find all cruises were cancelled because of the fog - it was a shame, especially for Ganesh who had never been on a boat in the ocean before. Anyway, we headed back into the park to continue around the loop road. Despite the fog there were still lots of great sites to see, and we were stopping often along the way to check out attractions like Jordan Pond, the various carriageways, and Seal Harbor (although there were no seals). One highlight was climbing to the summit of the two Bubble Mountains and seeing the bubble boulder, perched in a seemingly precarious position on the edge of a cliff, after it was placed there by a glacier many years ago. Unfortunately, the view from the top was just of pure white fog, but we were sure it would have been spectacular in clear weather, as would have been the view from many overlooks along the road. We also drove to the top of Mt. Cadillac; the highest peak in the park at 467 metres and the spot where you can be the first person in United States to see the sunrise. It was no surprise that the view from the summit was nonexistent and the wind was bitterly cold, meaning we didn't hang around long. My pictures can't do the place justice I'm sure, so check out what it really looks like here.

Pushing bubble boulder into the valley below...

DAY THIRTEEN
New York, New York, New York! Getting up at 5:30 am we started our six hour road trip to get to NYC. We parked our car at at train station in Newark, New Jersey and took a train into Lower Manhattan, getting off at the world trade centre site. Unfortunatelty there wasn't an awful lot to be seen as it was all fenced off for the construction of the new WTC towers. We grabbed a quick lunch and headed towards the end of the island to get a view of the Statue of Liberty. We initially had wanted to take a cruise out to get a closer look, but the lines to get a ticket were ridiculous so we decided to take the train to Liberty State Park in New Jersey for a closer look. Despite the overcast weather we were able to get a pretty decent view of the statue, Brooklyn Bridge, and also the endless skyscrapers of Manhattan. For Ganesh these were the biggest buildings he had ever seen which was quite cool. After hiding out from a brief thunderstorm we caught the train back into New York and 34th Street, where the Empire State Building rises high above the rest. The line to go up that was also huge so we instead just walked around, checking out the Rockefeller Centre and Times Square, which was particularly fun. On one of the many big screens there the crowd could play an interactive game on a big video screen, choosing to dunk a man or woman into a pool of water and using a ball to hit the target - if you look close enough you may be able to find me in the picture below. Tired and sore from a long day of walking around NYC we made our way back to the train station in Newark and then straight to the hotel for a good night's sleep.

Where's Warwick?

Panorama view of Times Square (click to enlarge)

DAY FOURTEEN
Back into work mode today as we finished off our last day of work, collecting native plant material from our Estell Manor site to propogate back at LSU and finishing up Ganesh's transplantation experiment at our Maryland site, Choptank. The work was easy because the sites are nice, but the weather was definitely heating up as we moved south again, and we had to watch out for ticks! Tomorrow we begin the long haul back to Baton Rouge which will take a couple of days. Thankfully we're planning on taking a much more scenic route than the one we used coming north, which will make for much less boring driving.