Canada and New England Cruise Live Blog: Day 5

Catch up on previous days here:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

We woke up docked in Friendship Bay, right outside of Bar Harbor, Maine.

We woke up especially early to make sure we got to our tour on time.  Today we had to tender into port.  What that means is that the ship cannot dock at the port, so little boats, or tenders, bring us from the ship to the shore.  This takes time, and we wanted to be sure and not miss our tour.

We woke up at 6AM, showered, and got dressed.  We chose to go to the main dining room for breakfast. While this may seem counterintuitive, it tends to be faster and less stressful eating with small children to eat at the main dining room. This is because rather than making multiple trips to the buffet to get food, drinks, and utensils the wait staff is bringing everything to you. Interestingly enough, the main dining room had a buffet option or you could order a la carte. The buffet was well stocked and had almost everything Windjammer typically has, but we chose a la carte so we could have our eggs made how we wanted.

We tendered to the shore by 8:30.  There were some very pretty views of the ship on the ride to shore.

We booked an independent tour with Oli’s Trolleys to tour Acadia National Park.  Having just come home from visiting Zion and Bryce Canyon 2 weeks ago, we were excited to continue our national park tour.  They offered a 2.5 hour tour and a 4 hour tour. We chose the 4 hour tour because it had one extra stop in Acadia and the stops were 30 minutes long instead of 15 minutes. You can read our review of the tour here. We were scheduled to leave at 9:30AM and be back to the the dock at 1:30PM. We didn’t have to check in for our tour until 9, so we walked around Bar Harbor for a bit.

We also found a little park that was right off the dock that the kids wanted to play in.

We checked in and waited in the queue for our turn to board the trolley.

Our first stop was Sieur De Monts, and it was the least interesting and least picturesque of the 4 stops we made. There was a stream there… it looked a lot like the one we have in our backyard. The kids did enjoy looking at a frog they found there though.

We did, however, get to learn of Maine’s Native American heritage, and the kids got to explore a wigwam.

We also got to stop at the nature center, and Zack got to stamp his National Park Passport. For those of you that don’t know, the National Park System has a passport you can buy for ten dollars and collect stamps at each National Park you visit.  We got several stamps when we went to Zion and Bryce Canyon two weeks ago. 

Our second stop was Thunder Hole.  This stop was actually pretty interesting and also very loud!  It is called Thunder Hole because when the waves crash into one particular hole, it actually sounds like thunder!

There were some very pretty views, too!

The kids enjoyed climbing over the rocks as always.

Our third stop, and my personal favorite, was Jordon Pond.  The landscape here was very pretty.

The kids as always enjoyed hoping along the rocks.

The skys were finally starting to clear up.

At this point in our day we were several hours into our tour and we are not above bribery to keep our kids, happy, content, and cooperative.

Our final stop was Cadillac Mountain.  The sun was shining by the time we arrived here and the views were stunni

Although Zack was such more interested in impersonating Captain Underpants than looking at the scenery.

Overall, we really enjoyed the tour.  We would have liked to either have picked another location for the first stop or eliminated it be given an extra 10 min at the other three stops. We would definitely recommend the tour, especially if you are time limited as it is very efficient for 4 hours.

It was about 2 pm by the time we got back on the boat, and we were all starving.  We went to drop our things off in our cabin, and headed straight to the Windjammer for lunch.  After lunch, we dropped both kids off at Adventure Ocean and they had Adventure Dining today so they were staying for dinner as well.

We headed to the Diamond lounge for some drinks and appetizers.

We decided to skip dinner as we just had lunch not too long ago and hit up the hot tub instead. So we went back to the cabin, changed into our bathing suits and hit up the Solarium.

The Solarium is the adults only pool area on the ship. Some ships it is an indoor area but on the Adventure it is an outdoor pool. It was actually very cool this evening and the crisp cool air definitely made our hot tub time that much more enjoyable.

We got out and picked up the kiddos from Adventure Ocean at 10PM and then went to the Cafe Promenade to feed them a late night snack so we would not be hearing how they are “starving” all night long.

We then headed back to the cabin and called it a night.

Tomorrow we explore Saint Johns, New Brunswick in Canada. Thanks for reading!

Read about our next day here.

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