Hiking the Schoodic Peninsula

When we came home Tuesday from our drive to Cadillac Mountain we went about four miles in stop and go traffic getting back across the only causeway to Mount Desert Island. There are two other sections of Acadia National Park. One is an island, but it costs $44.00 each to ride the ferry out there; that’s a lot of money to pay for a hike. The other is the Schoodic Peninsula, just northeast of Mount Desert Island.

I used my All Trails App to find what I hoped would be a nice hike on the peninsula. I chose a loop formed by three trails, Anvil Trail, Alder Trail and Schoodic Head Trail. We opted to hike it starting on the Anvil Trail, which is right to left on the elevation profile. As hiked, it was closer to three miles.

We started with a drive up Mountain Road to the trailhead.

The area at the top, at the start of the hike, had a lot of exposed granite. Notice the clear blue sky.

When we descended a bit the woods got higher and thicker.

There were still plenty of rocks!

On an eastern slope there were a lot of scraggly conifers with this air plant growing on the branches. It looked like Spanish Moss, but Spanish Moss is supposed to grow no further north than Virginia. I couldn’t find any references to what else this might be.

After a bit of hiking we came to the uphill side of the Anvil.

It was tall enough to warrant stone steps on the approach. At the top of these steps was a place where I had to lift Matey up before I could scramble up.

Then, of course, we had to come down the downhill side. That involved some scrambling down rocks.

This is looking back up at the final downhill scramble. Matey was off leash for this so he didn’t tug me down. He goes up and down stuff like this at full speed. I have to be a lot more careful!

At the end of the Anvil Trail we came out at the ocean. Where’s that blue sky now?

The Alder Trail was pretty level and a nice break.

Then it was back up over roots (these were all live roots), and as we got higher, stones and stone steps.

We emerged back in the sunshine and were treated to this view of Cadillac Mountain across Frenchman Bay.

It was a good hike, about all any of the three of us could comfortably do. Although there were not too many people on the trails, and the roads in and out had little traffic, when we drove down to Schoodic Point on our way out we were unable to stop because there were no open parking spots in the lot!