Our last day near Acadia National Park had a special treat, an air tour!  Now typically I might gag a bit at the cost of doing something like this, but given the opportunity to not only see Acadia from the air, but to share Wendy and the kids first experience in a small plane (I’ve been up a number of times in one) was too much for me to pass up on.  10:00am rolled around and we headed out to the airport.  For me it was all excitement, but I could tell Wendy was just a touch nervous at what this experience would involve.

The same company we were going with also does open cockpit biplane and glider tours.  Wendy gave me the opportunity to do that with one of the kids (you can have two passengers on either of those two types of flights) but for the same price all four of us could go up in a run of the mill Cessna for an air tour.  I didn’t come on this trip to hog the excitement for myself so it had to be all four of us.

When the time came to walk out to the plane there was a bit of excitement breaking through in everyone.  Our pilot was extremely friendly and had a lot of interesting information to share as we took our flight.  He was ‘all Maine’ if you don’t mind the play on the ‘all man’ expression.  His idea of fun was snowmobiling in 20 below weather and landing planes on lakes (sounds like fun to me).

We were able to see a number of lighthouses from the plane, several key locations in the National Park, as well as various islands in the immediate area.

I was worried that after the ‘high’ (get it?) of the plane ride that the rest of the day would seem a bit depressing, thankfully that wasn’t the case.  The only other thing we did that day besides prepare to depart the next morning was head to a fun little ‘farm to table’ restaurant called Sweet Peas that featured stone oven cooked pizzas.  The kids weren’t overly impressed but we were all moved (yes, it was that serious) by the amazing bacon they served on the pizza.

I’ll apologize for the pictures a bit, it’s hard getting good shots in the cramped cockpit when shooting through the plexiglass windows of the plane.