Timeline

Trip to the Botanical Gardens

Riding the Carriage Roads of Acadia National Park

A full day on a rental bike, out at half past eight and back late in the afternoon — 47 miles of Acadia's crushed-gravel carriage roads with some 3,700 feet of climbing, six hours of it actually rolling. The route came out at Jordan Pond with the Bubbles standing clear across the water, ducked through the big granite arches, and passed one still pond and marsh after another with clouds doubled in the surface. Somewhere in the day there was fog sitting on the rocks at the shore, a cool grey contrast to the blue over the pond. Long, steady, and quiet, the kind of ride that earns its miles slowly.