Hernandez's Arrive at Acadia National Park

Hello Again,

Yes, we've arrived at the Bar Harbor KOA (Woodside) and after being on the road for about 12 hours, we were exhausted.  Sound like a perfect time to setup camp!  With darkness starting to settle in.  Yeah, that was fun...

List of stuff that worked out well:

• Screen room Eureka tent (awesome!  breakfast without mosquitoes!)
• Coleman mini lanterns (kind of expensive but very versatile and can hang off the top of the tent without making it sag)
• Our old Cuyahoga tent (larger than most NYC apartments)
• Long cord that prevented Luke from visiting the domesticated dingo in the camp across the way from us

What did we forget this time (we always forget important stuff and this time we were so busy with work and life that we knew we were going to screw up, but so far not so bad):

• My belt (a problem today though it seems in to be "In" to show your boxers)
• Air mattress air pump (I though we packed it and I'm sure that I'll find it amongst the rubble of our gear, especially after dishing out $20 for a new one)
• Our coffee pot (for a couple of coffee addicts like Di and I as you probably know, that's a problem and we're currently living on Starbucks insant coffee, which isn't too bad,  More on this one later).
• Our coffee pot (I thought this was so bad I had to mention it again to help it sink in... ok, if you're not caffiene fanatics like us, you're thinking I'm over doing it.  If you're like us, you're probably immediately running to the Dunkin Donuts web site to send us the address of their nearest location, God bless your heart.)
• A sound-proof cage to lock the kids and dog in (did I mention I brought the dog?) so the Mrs. and I can go to get a lobster dinner in peace... only kidding... mostly...

I probably forgot more but I'll mention it when I remember it...

It's at this point I want to thank my teams who are working really hard on software development rollouts.  When I planned my vacation the rollouts were to occur a few weeks afterwords.  Unfortunately, we had to amend the dates to occur perfectly in the middle of my vacation.  I'd like to apologize to the teams though they seem to be doing very well without me, and my wife isn't getting too mad at me when I read my e-mails while we're waiting for the kids to come back from the bathroom.  Good luck guys!

So here's the chronology so far:
- 8/21: Drive all day to get to Mt. Desert Island (that's where Bar Harbor and Acadia Ntional Park is) and after setting up camp slept on a friggin' hard ground (did I mention I forgot my air pump?)! 
- 8/22: Drove all over Acadia, including up Cadilac Mountain (wow, what a view!), along Sandy beach (most beaches here are rocky so this is a little out of place), and went looking for locally made Ice Cream (one of my hobbies), and went to the store to pickup some supplies, like an air pump for my mattress (can you say "Aaaahhhhhhh!!!!!") and instant coffee (sacriligeous for latinos, but starbuck's instant is actually passable... well, when you're desperate anyway...)
- 8/23: Took the family and bikes to ride on one of the carriage trails in Acadia to a place called Jordan's Pond House where they made homemade ice cream (Did I mention I like ice cream?) and something called poppers (kinda like a muffin that tasted like a pancake, i.e. really good).  The trail was fantastic with beautiful views and granite bridges built by the Rockefella family, though there were some uphill parts that almost made my family mutiny.  That's where dangling the "homemade ice cream" carrot worked!  At the Jordan Pond House there was a little dinner theater where a woman lost her son, and my oldest son, 11, and I wanted to help so we went in the woods looking for him.  Luckily the kid showed up (mother hugged him and the dad looked like he wanted to wack him over the head but couldn't in public.  I wanted to tell the dad it was ok to "biff" him for driving everyone crazy but decided I should stick to drinking my coffee instead and eating my mocha-oreo and blueberry scoops of ice cream with my popper (ala mode, yummy!!!!)).  After fattening up on lunch and awesome ice cream, we then decided we were too bloated to ride back so we took a tour-bus back to our car (bikes, kids, dog, and all!)... except it went as far as a spot about 2 miles from the car and from there I rode back with Luke, our dog, to pick up the car.

That's where we are so far.  Here's some of the pictures we took so far:

How many tourist can you fit on top of a mountain?  A lot!

Chris climbing one of the crazier trails and helping me to lose more hair or turning what's left of the brown hairs to gray

Luke and I on the carriage trails at Acadia National Park.  Di and Luke traded off (sometimes he rode the bike and Diana sat in the crate, other times Luke did... actually Di wished she could have been driven around...)

The kids climbing up a rocky ledge on Sandy Beach and driving us crazy.  Notice they're barefoot.

The kids loved this thing at the Ice Cream Outlet (yes, that's what it was called!)  The ice cream there was pretty good too (Gifford's of Maine).  Note Lauren doing all the work while the boys enjoyed the fruits of her labor...

Di and the kids at the Jordan Pond House, with the remnants of icre cream and poppers on the table and the excellent view of the bubbles (those two mountains in the background that Dan thought should wear a bra).  Note the coffee and food was pretty good here!  I really liked the curry chicken sandwich.

A view from one of the adirondack chairs sitting on the lawn of the Jordan Pond House.  After the ice cream and poppers, a nice place for a nap or watch the dinner theater!

The carriage trails had a bunch of these beautiful granite bridges built by John D. Rockafella.  It's nice to be rich!  That's Luke and I up there...

There's the kids on Cadilac Mountain. Note the cream soda can and cheese-its, the dinner of champions! The view was spectacular!

Tomorrow's our anniversary and if all goes well, we'll take a horse and carriage ride on the carriage trails (how appropriate!), hang out at Bar Harbor town (one cool tourist town), and maybe if we're lucky, we'll even play Pirate's Cove miniature golf (ooh, I can't wait!)