"He's got a crab! Drop it!"

After Joe's first week of working and my own week of playing housewife and job hunter (in case you haven't heard...I GOT A JOB!), Joe and I decided to spend the weekend outside, enjoying our surroundings. We started our Saturday of adventures by taking a needed trip out to Ellsworth, the first town you come to on the main-land. I needed an oil change and we had wanted to explore the town. We found an amazing cooking store with shiny gadgets and fancy foods which we'll surely be visiting again. We also stumbled upon this...



At first we thought it was just a waterfall from a dam...but then we got a closer look...and realized that not only was it not so pretty, but it was a hydro-electric plant.



I tried to do a bit of research on the location, but the best I could find is still possibly untrue. I couldn't find anything that definitively stated that it was this particular location, but there's apparently a scandal behind it (or whichever other location). Apparently the government felt like rushing into creating the plant and accompanying dam and wound up flooding a large area of the surrounding town, washing out a few buildings and destroying wildlife. There was also another incident some years later where the water levels rose so high that a bridge was wiped out. To go along with this destruction, I read (I'm not sure if this is true or not...) that the plant actually does not produce any power at all...

After Ellsworth, we decided to stop at "the point" to see what the place looked like during low tide. To our surprise and excitement, there were muscles all over. Our previous trip produced a good amount of muscles, but this time we could be picky. We were able to leave the small guys and only take the big ones home. While wandering through the drizzling rain, I was having a phone conversation with my mom when Joe yelled out "He's got a crab! Drop it!" and went running down the shore. I looked up to see him chasing down a seagull that had found himself a feast: a crab. But the poor thing could barely carry his heavy find and Joe's cry was startling enough to get him to drop his feast and fly away. Joe then proceeded to take off his shoes and wade into the water to scoop up the left-overs. He came out smiling with an unhappy crab at his side. The poor little guy's day when from bad to worse...









We bagged up our little friend and threw him in the truck while we continued down to the other side of the shore. After our big find, we didn't think we would find anything that fun, but we were wrong. The seagulls had found yet another prize...the muscle pit-as I'm choosing to call it.





Can you believe that? Those are all muscles. They form their own floor...tons and tons of the little guys, clinging to the bigger ones and the rocks that are buried waaaaay beneath. I couldn't bring myself to walk across them...but I'll admit that I really wanted to. Walking along the beach and hearing the empty shells crack under my feet is a pretty cool feeling...but this would be like walking on layers and layers of bubble wrap: so gratifying. But that would make me an intentional killer...and with no intentions of making use of my prey, which is just plain mean.

So after our trip to the point, we headed out to the sandbar. The sandbar is what we're conjecturing to be the reason for Bar Harbor's name--I'll have to do some research on whether or not this is true. During low tide, a sand bar appears that connects Mt Dessert Island to another smaller island a short ways off the shore--during high tide. When the sandbar appears you can walk out and dig for clams on your way to the other side, or you can do as we did, and drive your car right out onto the bar. It was pretty crummy out, so we didn't stay long, but it was a definitely a cool thing to do and we'll definitely be repeating the experience on nicer days.