Pretty pictures from Acadia

Since I am bogged down researching and writing essays right now, here is the last installment of my pictures from the now not so recent trip to Acadia.

Warning: This post is picture heavy, and full of gratuitous "art shots".

Bleeding Hearts from Mom's garden.

Lilac leaf and flowers from the yard.

Wild blueberry flowers taken on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, a closeup of a rocky puddle with lichen and moss.

Tuesday evening.

Lichen. Very obvious focal length.

Also from the garden on Monday morning.

Tuesday.

Barnabas and Ben overlooking the ocean on top of Penobscot Mt.

Spiderweb on the bridge.

Watercolor painted on the Tuesday evening while Barnabas rappelled.

Cadillac Mountain through Jackpine needles on Champlain Mt.

A Cairn on Champlain Mountain.

The entire mountain was made of a rosy granite spotted with green and gray lichen.

Thunder Hole.

Granite breaks into simple geometrics. It's part of what makes the trails so easy.

This one's for you Dad

Happy Father's Day and all that. 

I found a puzzle for you.

This is a tree that grows beside my residence hall. Clearly, there is something strange going on. What are the (I'm assuming) two types of tree here?

A little history of The Vines, my residence hall.*

It was built in 1889 by Sydney Howard Vines (1849-1934) after he was elected a fellow at Magdalen College, where C. S. Lewis was a fellow between 1925-1954. Vines, after which the building was named, was an excellent botanist, though not a great teacher. He eventually withdrew to his house to tend the garden. Eventually it passed into the hands of Oxford United Hospitals as a nurses' home, then to Oxford Brooks University as a student residence hall, and finally to SCIO, the program with which I am studying, in 2004. 

I'm thinking that Vines grafted two trees together just to see what would happen and it seems to have flourished.

*Adapted from the SCIO Handbook

Bonus:

This is a 1,100 year old yew tree next to the Norman Church in Iffley. I never got a full shot of it, so ignore Dr. Jenkins. They were sacred to the Saxons and were often put on the south side of sacred burial grounds. The church was built after the tree was already a couple of hundred years old in c. 1170 and hasn't changed much since.

Acadia: Friday

Edit: I had a couple of posts which I was preparing but then they got lost, so here is one from Acadia. 

On our last full day at Acadia we decided to take it easy. Everyone was feeling a bit worn-out from hiking and biking. My everything hurt. We spent the day as a family riding around the Loop Road and seeing all of the sights to be seen directly off the road. The first thing we did was climb the South Bubble, a not quite mountain on the edge of Jordan Pond. Sylvia and Mom went around the easy trail but we went straight up the rocky slope on the South side. 

We paused to catch our breath and let our legs stop hurting.

Almost at the top, we found a ledge that overlooked Jordan Pond and the Cliff Trail that we took on Tuesday.

At the top we found the Bubble and tried to push it off.

It didn't work.

The entire family!

There is not trail there at the moment, so Barnabas is contemplating adding one.

Post hike maybe-this-will-make-it-feel-better stretch. It didn't.

After descending we drove to Thunder Hole, which we reached at low tide. When the tide is higher the surf bursts from that hole with a bang and soaks everyone nearby.

Sometimes you just need to nap.

In front of us is the Monument of Monument Cove. Not very impressive from this angle, but no one felt like climbing down. This was just before a Ranger stopped and told us not to fall down. Most people don't try to, so I'm not sure what he was trying to accomplish.

Back at Sand Beach Sylvia and I strolled along the surf looking for interesting things.

Which we found, including a live starfish.

We finished the day with a walk around Bar Harbor. Barnabas and I joined Dad, Ben, and John after they had talked with this native and ship's carpenter. He invited us onto the Margaret Todd, a four masted Schooner.

Mind the Gap!

Note the correct phonetic spelling on the sign.

Governors for dinner.