John Rockefeller, Jr loved Mount Desert Island. He was experiencing an explosion of the automobile, which threatened his love of driving a team of horses pulling a carriage. So on the island, which his family had their “summer cottage,” which were, actually stunning mansions he developed a pet project by overseeing the construction of miles of horse drawn carriage roads independent and separate from the automobile roadways. Today forty-five miles of these carriage roads are open to hikers, bicycle riders and horseback riders. It is a cyclists’ Mecca. A concessionaire provides the carriage rides. This morning I went on a ranger guided walk on a two-mile portion of the carriage road to explore the design of the bridges. They are masterpieces! Rockefeller hired local stonecutters to work with his engineers to construct these bridges. The stonecutters got so good at their craft that Rockefeller asked them to reverse themselves and make the stone surfaces more rugged, more rustic. It was the most enjoyable ranger lead walk that I had been on in months; our young National Park ranger was excellent and a natural at what she was doing. I strongly encouraged her to stay in the service.
After walking the carriage road and enjoying the views, I decide to keep going on this physical push by taking a bus out to Sand Beach and climb the Bee Hive. The photos of the Bee Hive had intrigued me. It had staple shaped iron bars in embedded in the rock faces to serve as ladder rungs and hand railings. Had to check it out. The trail up to the base of the Bee Hive was a series of granite stair steps up through the woods. Tucked into the trees was a bland signs casually mentioning that the trail was steep with vertical drop offs. To prepare you for the journey ahead you can look up the rock face and see the ant trail of humans slowly climbing up the face weaving first left and then right then straight up all with open exposed faces. Right away the trail tackles the elevation gain by starting up slabs with blue paint swatches on rock faces to mark the route. There was a gap between slabs, which was connected with an iron horizontal ladder, wall on the left, drop off on the right. There was a system of narrow ledges that the blue highway mapped out. When a vertical face had to be climbed, there were the iron ladder rungs with a nice free fall of space. Up and up. A couple were huddled against a ledge with the woman saying she had had enough and was going to stay glued to the wall until her boyfriend went to the top and came back down to help her to descend.
All and all it was a ten minute class four climb with aid in the form of iron bars in difficult places. There definitely was a hazard factor in the way of exposure. When I reached the top, I found a summit slab and kicked back and enjoyed the fog-free view. To get off the hive I took the trail down the backside enabling me to avoid not having to down climb the face.
To finish off my completion of the Bee Hive I walked the three quarters of a mile of the Ocean Trail between Sand Beach and Thunder Hole to watch the surf come slamming into the dead end canyon in the rocks. The seawater would send a plume of spray high into the air with a boom much to the pleasure of the crowd. To end my day I took a relaxing bus ride back to my car. As I did my final descent off the bus steps, I shoved a handful of bills into the donation can. I greatly appreciated the bus service that I used all week long. Thanks L.L. Bean for your contribution.
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