Acadia National Park

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"

John Keat's words come true in Acadia. Last weekend, I visited the Acadia National park located on the rugged coast of Maine. This is one of the most beautiful parks I ever visited. Compared to Western national park standards, Acadia is a small park. What it lacks in size, it makes up with amazing beauty. This is one of the most visited National parks in US and it is very evident as soon as we stepped into the park.

We started for Acadia on Saturday morning. It took some 5 hours to reach the park. The weather in Maine is unpredictable. They say: If you don't like the weather, justwait a minute. The whole place was covered in fog when we entered. We felt that this weather only added to the beauty. We started exploring Acadia by taking the park loop road . This spectacular 27-mile scenic drive explores Acadia National Park and covers most of thebest places there. Our first stop was the Cadillac Mountian. This is the highest point along the North Atlantic seaboard and is the first place to view sunrise in the United States. The park is full of breathtaking vista points and we covered most of them. By evening, we all were dead tired and decided to check into the hotel and relax for a while. Our hotel had a swimming pool facing the Atlantic ocean. We had an option of either swimming in the pool or in the Atlantic ocean itself . The whole experience of getting into Atlantic ocean and swimming in this pool overlooking the ocean was awesome.

Maine is a gorgeous state. It is very different from most of the other states in US. Our hotel was located in the city, Bar Harbor. It is a quintessential Maine town with a harbor, great restaurants and special mystique. Maine is also very famous for Blueberries. You get everything in Blueberry flavor from Icecream, pies, jam to soda and wine. I think the Blueberry pie and the ice cream are the best.

We started our next day by taking the horse drawn carriage ride. One of the most unique and interesting features of Acadia National Park is the network of 57 miles of gravel and crushed rock carriage roads built by John D. Rockefeller Jr. I was just amazed to know that the world's richest man spent 30 yrs building these roads at that time. But, it's a totally different and wonderful experience taking the carriage tour into the woods and escaping the automobile. The carriage was pulled by 2 horses and each weigh 1 ton. The power they generate is much more than 2hp. After that, we wanted to do some hiking. I found out that the hike to the Beehive mountain is the best. But, somehow we missed the trial and ended up hiking the Gorham mountain. The 360' view from the mountian summit is worth the trouble we took to hike it. This is one of the most scenic and toughest hikes I ever did. You will definitely find solitude by exploring quieter, more secluded mountain paths like these and thats exactly what we found. We were totally exhausted after the hike and we headed to Bar Harbor again for some nice lunch and Blueberry icecream for the final time.

All the beauty of Maine comes together in Acadia National Park. Even though it was mostly rainy and cloudy, we had wonderful time in Maine. I 've never been in such a peaceful place. I am definitely going to Acadia again and next time I will hike the Beehive mountain and visit the schoodic peninsula.

All in all, Acadia is gorgeous and it should be at the top of everyone's “must-see” list.

Lake Tahoe: Diving Into the Blue World

I had a wonderful July 4th weekend. Thanks to the floating holiday on July 3rd, I made a mini-vacation out of it.

This is my second time to California in less than a month. I guess even I suffer from a syndrome called: California-philia. I just keep coming back to California. When Gopi and GK planned this trip just one week back, I was very doubtful if I can make it. But, a great Jet Blue deal made it possible. I heard a lot about Lake Tahoe and I was very excited to finally see the highest alpine lake in the United States.

The weekend started on Saturday morning. I took a flight from Boston to Long Beach in California. Oh yeah..the drive to Lake Tahoe. It took some 12 hours for us to reach Lake Tahoe from Los Angeles with a stop at San Jose. On the whole I spent some 20 hours travelling on the first day. But, it was not very tiresome. We reached Lake Tahoe around midnight. I booked a big house for all of us. The house was awesome and the stay there turned out to be much better than what I expected. The house itself was worth the trip. Someone framed this nice Frederick S. Perls quotation there in the house :

"I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations. And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, And if by chance we find each other, It's beautiful."

Next day we took the Gondola ride to the mountan top. I had my fist view of Lake Tahoe then.
Lake Tahoe's beauty is absolutely stunning. There are tall mountain peaks, still snowy even in midsummer, vast swaths of pine-covered forest, and of course, the wide, sparkling blue expanse that is the lake itself. This is the place Mark Twain once described as "a noble sheet of blue water . . . as it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface." I took some 12 minutes to reach the montain top and the ride was very scenic. Just when it seemed that the ride can't get any better, we arrived at a observation deckwhich treated to excellent shore-to-shore views of Lake Tahoe. After soaking in the views on The Deck, we hadsome fun rock climbing the 25-foot wall. We then went to the most scenic vista point in Lake Tahoe, the Emerald Bay. You can see from the photo above, why it is the one of the most photographed spots in US. Later in the evening, we rented some bikes and did some biking along the rim of the Lake Tahoe. It was very pretty watching the sunset at the lake.

The final day was dedicated to water sports. We planned to take a 10 seater boat and go for the lake cruise, but since it was busy weekend, we had a tough time finding the boat. Somehow, we managed to find one boat in the end. The Boat ride is the highlight of the trip. We took turns riding the speed boat for 2 hours in the lake and it was just awesome. I feel that no trip to Tahoe is complete without at least one boat ride and I am very glad we managed to do it. We ended our Tahoe trip at a nice Thai restaurant.

On the whole, Lake Tahoe is quite a scenic place with the huge lake and its sparkling blue water and snow-capped peaks rising high in the background. Although it is primarily a winter destination, it still has something for the nature lover during summer also. There is so much to do there! We can easily spend some 10 days. It was definitely a vacation to remember. I can't wait to go back there ..