Acadia National Park - Part V - Sand Beach

On our second day of exploring Acadia we decided to get on the road a bit earlier than we had the day before.  When we'd driven around the loop road the previous day we'd gone by Sand Beach but hadn't stopped since there had been so little parking available.

If you live next to another coast you might wonder why I'm making a big deal out of a sandy beach, after all they're quite common on many coastlines--but not the coastline of Acadia National Park.

All the other beaches that we saw in the park were rocky beaches, like the cobblestone beach where I recorded a video of the waves.  Sand Beach is an unusual beach in the park and quite popular due to its unusual nature.

Make sure you read up on the regulations before you visit the beach.

Apparently the property at one time was purchased by JP Morgan who gave it to his daughter Louisa Satterlee.  His granddaughter (the Eleanor Morgan Satterlee referenced in the sign) eventually gave it to the park service.  You can read more about the history on this blog I found.

A nice structure is provided for changing and we utilized it to get the kids changed into swim suits.  We knew the water wasn't warm and so the kids weren't likely to get in it much, but if we didn't change them they'd likely get their clothes soaked, so better safe than sorry seemed to be a wise policy to abide by.

The walkway to the beach just looked like typical Acadia scenery.

Once you got down on the beach you saw the interesting juxtaposition between the typical Maine coast and the sand.

You can see how much water runs over the beach.  Apparently the tides on the beach have a 12-foot variance.

Even behind the beach you can get a typical "beach" shot with the dune grasses.

The high tide line is quite a ways up the beach as you can see here.

Quite a few people came down to the beach and left it while we were enjoying our time on the sands.

I had to take my shoes off and made quite a few footprints in the sand.

The clouds cooperated for even better pictures during part of our time there.

We all got to experience the chilly waters of the North Atlantic.

Drawing in the sand was quite fun.

I had fun writing a number of things.

The kids even got into the action with their own sticks.

I walked (carefully) over to the section of beach with quite a few rocks, trying to avoid stepping on the seaweed.

As you can see the seaweed covered most of the rocks in the area.

However, I managed to spot a number of interesting shells affixed to the rocks.

I don't remember if the tide was coming in or going out, but of course we saw plenty of waves.

Before too long it was time to go, so we headed up the stairs.

Back at the changing building we hosed off the sand and got changed back into regular clothes.

Before we drove off I spotted these beautiful flowers.

All of the pictures from Sand Beach as well as the other ones taken throughout much of the park as seen in the past few days of blogs can be seen in this album.

~Matt