#kuwtp: Nutter Butter Grad Trip

My guy and I LOVE to travel so for our kiddos' graduations we have always felt that a travel experience is one of the best grad gifts we could give them. They get to go someplace new and exciting and make fun memories as well! For high school graduation, it's a domestic trip. For college, it's an international one! Since our youngest one-of-three graduated from high school this year, it was our Nutter Butter's turn!

Her trip technically began yesterday. My guy left early Sunday morning to start driving to Providence, Rhode Island to meet us yesterday evening at the airport! Since CJ and I had just come off of a week of camp and hence sleep deprivation, I secured a sweet, super cheap price for airline tickets for the girls and me which ended up being free since I used credit card points and we got some extra time at home before flying out Sunday evening!

Excited to see a GE Engine on our plane and find out that it was likely built in Chris' facility!

We arrived in Providence, grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed to Portland, Maine for the night. This morning we got up EARLY and headed farther north to Acadia National Park to start with Schoodic Point. On the way there, we stopped to snap a few pics as we crossed the Penobscot River. Suddenly, there was a really cool bridge in the middle of nowhere so it seemed like a photo op! We crossed another river with a much less interesting bridge but a VERY interesting name - Passagassawakeag. I looked up the pronunciation (Puh-sag-gus-uh-WAH-keg) but let me tell you, that isn't exactly how we pronounced it.

Ignore the bug guts on the window - I took this one through the windshield!

Acadia is basically an island and part of a peninsula. Schoodic Point is on the peninsula and has lots of giant rocks that lead out to the ocean. It's an entirely different coastal environment than what we are used to in North Carolina!

Caught photobombing my phone!

We had fun climbing on the giant rock slabs, sitting and watching the waves crash against the shore, and snapping pics! The fog was SUPER DUPER heavy all day, so we kinda felt like we were robbed of some nice views. Fingers crossed for tomorrow!! I love taking photos of the small things we saw and the diversity of ecosystems among the rocks and the color variations of the rocks. They were all very patient as I snapped away!

This looked like velvet to me.

My guy snapping a pic of me taking a pic of them.

After leaving Schoodic Point, we started making our way over to the larger part of Acadia. We stopped at a local stand for lunch and some of us enjoyed a lobster roll! I mean you can't come to Maine and not eat lobster, right?!?!

Once we were over on the larger part of Acadia, we hopped onto Park Loop Rd to head to Thunder Hole. It's an area of rocks that contains a cave, of sorts, that when the water comes in, it makes a sound like thunder. The girls said they heard faint thunder, but Chris and I did not. I think our timing was off. You can only hear it at certain times and it depends entirely on the tide coming in and out. It was a fun try and some more rock climbing and waves crashing and of course, the traditional National Park leap!

Thunder Hole - It's difficult to see them, but the girls are at the very tip of that railing area.

We tried a few more sites in the park but the fog got thicker and thicker so we postponed those until tomorrow. Hoping for better views! We made our way to our hotel, a quite historic and vintage one at that, and got cleaned up for some shopping and dinner in Bar Harbor. We ended the evening with a VERY appropriate stop - CJ's Big Dipper Ice Cream!!