Acadia

We just returned from a week of camping in Acadia National Park (in Maine).  In short: Acadia is unbelievably beautiful.  (As Janet noted--you don't get to be a National Park if you are just sort of a nice place.)  You could easily spend a month there hiking all over and still not exhaust all the possibilities.  We camped at Seawall, which is one of the two campgrounds in eh National Park itself.  Campgrounds used to be a lot nicer before they started packing everyone in like sardines.  Now they are really just a place to sleep before you head off for the day.  But, for $14/night, you can't complain too much. 

Oddly, in the midst of staggering natural beauty, one of the the most impressive things I saw was the two planned gardens at which we stopped (Janet likes gardens.).

So, if you are looking for a good place to go camping--head off to Acadia.  You won't regret it.

The camping Book Report:

I finished three books on the trip (all read by a campfire at night after the rest of the family had gone to bed--one interesting thing about Acadia--no mosquitoes, so reading by the campfire does not mean being eaten).

1) and 2) Ellery Queen: Wife or Death and The Golden Goose
 These two novels came bundled in a single book ("A Signet Double Mystery by Ellery Queen: 2 Full length novels for the price of one").  I picked up this volume at a library book sale back when I was in college (or maybe high school).  I have had it ever since, but never read it.  I figured camping was a good time to read it.  The one word summary of both novels: Terrible.
Ellery Queen was originally two cousins, but then they let others use the name as a marketing bit.  These two novels were apparently written by hacks.  Both are meant to be the Agatha Christie style solve-the-mystery-using-the-clues-provided.  I think I would have had to read them when I was 7 not to have noticed right away who the murderer was.  The experience of reading them was thus one of hoping that it wasn't really so obvious, that there was a surprise in store, that maybe there was a modicum of cleverness somewhere, but alas, 'twas not to be.  The Golden Goose was the better of the two, by the way, because it at least tried to be funny--it wasn't funny, but at least it tried to be funny.  But, reading this book does have the virtue that for the first time in decades, it will no longer be on my bookshelf.

3) Wells, The First Men in the Moon
Having been utterly disappointed with the first two books I read, I decided to rad this one out of the stack of book I brought along.  I liked the previous books I had read by Wells--not loved them, but liked them, so I figured this was a safe choice to be a pleasant way to spend a couple of evenings.  I was wrong.  It was a disappointment.  This was a pretty influential book, though, so it had the virtue of at least being historically interesting.  I now know, for example, why the first volume of C.S. Lewis' Space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet) was so bad--it was imitating this book by Wells.  The problem with the book is that it was tedious--much of it read like a Jules Verne travel narrative--lots of descriptions abut places which were probably impressive before an era when I have seen countless movies and TV shows about alien planets.  There was an interesting precursor to Brave New World in here.  This book also allowed Wells to go off on his Socialist Utopian dreams, which again was a bit tedious.  Not a horrible book in the end (at least I will keep this one around), but sadly, not the best book to read while camping.

So, all in all, I cannot say that my book selections were the high point of vacation.