Thursday morning dawned misty, but cleared by the time we were organised enough to leave the boat.  Having stocked up with a picnic at the local supermarket, we set off to cycle to the park, a short ride out of town.  What everyone we spoke to failed to mention was that it was a 'short ride' of a couple of miles up a steep hill - not a great start to the day! Anyway, once we arrived in the park, it was easier, although there were some long, tough, hills made even harder by the fact that we have fold-up bikes with small wheels and only 6 gears, rather than a rental one with normal wheels and 21 gears - that said we still managed to overtake a good few people on the way round.  The park is deserving of it's fame and is beautiful, with lots of trees and lakes as you go round, much the same as any other national park.  We found a great rock on the edge of Bubble Pond to rest our weary selves on while we had lunch, and entertainment was provided by a group of children determined to catch a tadpole or a frog on the water, the tadpoles and frogs, however, were much too quick and all the children managed to catch was probably a cold from falling in the water!

   Acadia National Park, on a slightly foggy day, some parts were clearer than others, the fog seemed to be trapped between the hills

When we arrived in Bar Harbour, we spotted the boat of some people we had met while in The Saintes off Guadeloupe in March this year.  We had heard of them on our travels through Maine as we have some mutual friends, and we had expected to see them in Nova Scotia.  For various reasons they had stayed in Maine, and were just leaving Bar Harbour that morning, and heading to the Cranberry Isles then on to North East Harbour, which is, rather confusingly, on the south of the island.  We arranged to meet up with them on Saturday/Sunday depending on when we decided to move on.

Friday morning - well - what to say except that we had a somewhat foggy start.  This was 'real' fog and didn't seem to be lifting at all by lunchtime.  In fact, it actually didn't lift until 3.30pm on Monday! We were for the first time ever, 'fog bound'.  We have been storm bound before but never fog bound - this was a definite first! Over the next few days we had some short periods where the visibility was 'up' to 100 metres, the rest of the time it was a maximum of 50 metres and sometimes even less.  

On Sunday, for want of something exciting to do as we had exhausted the limited options in Bar Harbour, we set off on the bus to North East Harbour to have a look. Lots of people have recommended this place to us, so it seemed a shame to miss it.  We went, the bus took about 45 minutes and it was so wet, foggy and miserable that we didn't even stay for lunch as planned, we just got the next bus back 10 minutes later.  Nowhere, to be fair, would have been inviting on such a wet & miserable Sunday.  Time was now getting on, we had been stuck for a few days, and as Monday was John's birthday, ( I have not been given permission to divulge which one), we decided to go then, weather obviously permitting. Another highly recommended place to stop is Soames Sound, again on the south of the island.  We phoned the harbour master there on Monday, and asked about the weather, we had thick fog, but he had a crystal clear view all the way down the Sound.  Mid morning, still foggy, lunchtime, getting better but still poor visibility, the fog had been trying to clear and the sun was trying to shine, just not quite hard enough.  Soames Sound was about 3-4 hours away, so we gave ourselves a deadline of 3pm - if the fog hadn't cleared by then we would have to stay another night.  3pm came and went, still foggy so we resigned ourselves to another night. By 3.30pm we had bright blue skies, and sunshine, typical, just an hour too late.

To make the most of the sun, we went for a walk across the causeway to Bar Island. The island is joined to the mainland by a sand bar and is accessible at low tide, whic is the reason the town name was changed from it's original name of Eden, to the current name of Bar Harbour. 

 The causeway over to Bar Harbour

  John showing he can still skim a stone, even at his age!

Then we get to the reason for the title of this blog post. When we were first looking at the cruising guide for Maine, we noticed that a shop called Bill and Ben's Chocolate Emporium no less, actually sold lobster flavoured ice cream.  Lots of shops purport to sell lobster ice cream but, on closer inspection, it usually involves vanilla ice cream, with either chocolate or jelly lobster shaped sweeties mixed in.  This however is the real thing, and proof beyond all doubt that there is little the folk from Maine won't do with a lobster, in a strictly culinary sense of course! Obviously, you are going to want to know what it tastes like?  It is disgusting!  Why was I surprised??  The vanilla ice cream is good, all you would expect from a handmade ice cream, creamy sweet, etc etc, and then you get a crunch and a really odd taste explosion from the bits of frozen lobster meat, it was real lobster meat as I had a bit of claw in mine, which really ruins the taste of good ice cream, so much so I had to have a scoop of salt caramel ice cream to take the taste away!  The shop generates a huge amount of business from the lobster ice cream, as they will give you a spoonful to taste.  I am not sure anyone actually goes in and asks for a scoop or two of lobster ice cream, you taste a spoonful and then you buy a proper flavour - it's a great marketing ploy, even if it tastes awful!

  The famous ice cream shop

 Just to prove that it is real!