This morning we just took the boat a short distance across the Gilley Thorofare and took a spin through Southwest Harbor just to check it out. Then we went up the Somes Sound for a short distance and decided to anchor for the night in Valley Cove. It’s a beautiful cove with two mountains next to it. Because it is on Mount Desert Island, and part of the Acadia National Park, there is a trail that goes around the mountains and up to the summits. We weren’t sure about the trail but we dinghyed to the beach anyhow. We saw the people on the next boat had brought their dinghy up to the beach but the tide was going out so Bill used his “anchor the dinghy where the tide will probably go out to” trick and then tied it off to the beach. Luckily we met someone on the trail that knew the area and he gave Bill the information he needed to assure we could get back to the beach.

The trail wasn’t too hard, or too steep, and after climbing Cadillac Mountain twice in the past few weeks we had no problems. Some of the trail was climbing over big rocks right at the edge of the cliff. There were some great views. The picture above shows our anchorage from way up the St. Saveur Mountain. Moonraker is the boat all the way to the right, our dinghy is the white speck you see on the beach straight ahead of our boat. From the top it was clear that the anchor trick didn’t work. The dinghy was already completely beached and the tide still had a long way to drop. Oh well, we would just have to deal with trying to carry the boat plus its engine back down to the water when we got there. In the mean time we continued on the trail summiting not only St. Saveur Mountain but Valley Peak also.

When we got back to the beach we were lucky enough to see the young man who helped us by taking our picture up on the top of the mountain. Bill asked him if he could help us carry the dinghy back into the water. He did help and it wasn’t too hard with three people. It would have been a lot harder with just the two of us.

On our way back to the boat we stopped to say hello to the people on the next boat. They were from New York and also in Maine for the summer. They invited us on board and we had a great time comparing boats and Maine cruising destinations. It’s great seeing how different other peoples’ boats are. Of course we invited them over to our boat to see ours too.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain. If it does we may just stay here for another day. I hope it does rain – I need a day off!!