The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

On the occasion of a return to Lexington, I walked the Freedom Trail and the Black Heritage Trail in Boston, before taking again a trip to Acadia National Park – for a third consecutive year. As I set up my camera bag on a slope on the shores of Jordan Pond, it toppled, a lens spilled out, and I could only watch as it rolled down into the lake! Later, as I was getting ready to set-up a time-lapse, I downloaded hurriedly a 32GB memory card on two hard drives in order to free-up the space, then reformatted it. Normally, I visually check images, but it was already 11pm, and I was going to get up for sunrise. When I returned home, I realized that I had downloaded the wrong card. My images were overwritten, so no recovery was possible from the card: four days of photography were wiped out. The only images remaining from that Acadia visit are almost all from the last day. Lesson learned! This post presents photographs from my last day in Acadia, the one that followed the memory card incident and therefore was the only one preserved in pixels.

A decade and half ago, I photographed on Ocean Drive the first rays of sun illuminating granite slabs, then afterwards noticed a beach covered with large round pebbles. Since then, I had waited quite a few times there for the light of sunrise – even in the rain. That morning, with a bit of color on the horizon, the dawn was promising.

However, the sunrise time turned out to be misty.

Acadia National Park is known for its jagged coastline of granite, but the park actually includes a sand beach, simply named … “Sand Beach”. I guess there aren’t too many of them around, and being in New England, that’s normally a popular spot, but in early morning, it was totally deserted.

I hiked on a short, but rugged trail to one of the tallest headlands, the Great Head. Just half a mile away from the crowded (and often traffic-jammed) Ocean Drive, the small peninsula has retained its wild character.

By the time I returned to Sand Beach, vacationers had arrived.

I headed towards the quieter part of the Park, along the carriage roads. The weather was cloudy, but looking towards the East, I could see a clearing, so I decided to try and find a wide scenic view.

I hiked to the top of South Bubble, but the view wasn’t great. It was much more interesting from North Bubble, as I could see the Ocean beyond Jordan Pond. I arrived there just in time for some sunset colors. Due to the late hour, beyond the trail junction of the two Bubbles, I didn’t see anybody. I stayed until dark, hiked down, and drove south as I had to be at the museum at noon the next day.

More images of Acadia National Park